Avodah Mailing List

Volume 32: Number 35

Thu, 06 Mar 2014

• 1. Re: Kivrey Avos (Rich, Joel)
• 2. duty to country (saul newman)
• 3. Tzadakah - Guidelines for Giving: To Whom Should I Give? (Prof. Levine)
• 4. Re: duty to country (Moshe Y. Gluck)
• 5. Re: duty to country (Micha Berger)
• 6. Partnership Minyanim vs Deaf/Blind Aliyot (Liron Kopinsky)
• 7. What is geometry? (Was about: Passage of Time / Do the Dead Experience Time) (Arie Folger)
• 8. Can Women Receive a Heter Ora'ah? (Micha Berger)
• 9. Re: Time for the Deceased (Micha Berger)
• 10. Re: Solar and Lunar Eclipses are bad omens (Micha Berger)
• 11. Re: What is geometry? (Was about: Passage of Time / Do the Dead Experience Time) (David Riceman)
• 12. Re: Time for the Deceased (David Riceman)

The gemara asks if the dead know anything. Would RNIQ even know about
the gesture or the frescoes?

R' Shim'on ben Laqish says:
    Ein beineino veletzadiqim ela dibur peh bilvad.

Apparently dead tzadiqim are very high functioning, even by living
people standards. On the other hand, on our current discusion: does this
"ein bein" imply that Reish Laqish holds that tzadiqim niftarim do not
progress to lemaalah min hazeman?

R' Ze'ira says that a niftar hears his eulogy as from within a dream.

-Micha

-- 

OTOH R' Dessler (Michtav Meliyahu-Yamim Noraim) explains the seemingly
contradictory sources on meitim yodim by saying the lower level folks
maintain a connection to this world while the baalei madreiga have no
interest and no knowledge of this world.
KT
Joel Rich
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>>>One of the things missing from much of this discussion so far is the
concept of duty  [ comment on areivim  about draft issues]


-- it has  yet to be  established that

 1] there is a religious chiyuv  to a concept of  duty to country

2]  that  that concept is believed by charedi hashkafa/halacha

 3] that even if there was such a chiyuv  that  it would apply  to a
 'secular jewish state'

4]  that the entire   corpus of israeli haredim are exempt from all such
calls due to their Levitical status  [ a la RMBM, anyone can take the
mantle of Levi]

ie  moshe's exhortations to certain tribes  were relevant only because


 1] it was moshe

  2]  RBSO commanded to  inherit the land  via an 'army'

3] the tribes involved were not Levi
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See http://www.just-tzedakah.org/guidelines/whom.html#category5a

Unfortunately,  I do not see the name of the author on this URL.

 From this URL

If in doubt about the legitimacy of someone requesting tzedakah, one 
should investigate those requesting clothing for possible fraud 
because the requester can wait. However, one should not investigate 
persons asking for food lest they be very hungry and in great 
distress. If one is certain the requester is a fraud he should not 
give anything

Who is poor? A poor person is one who does not have a sufficient 
steady income (including income from assets) to support himself and 
his family. The acceptable standard of living for such a person 
depends on the standard of living of those around him and what he us 
accustomed to


----------
There are some collectors that I see regularly at least once a week 
and others that come more often.  They apparently have a route and go 
to certain minyanim on certain days.

Based on this,  and I to consider that they have a study 
income?   How am I to know if it is sufficient?

And from http://www.mechon-mamre.org/jewfaq/tzedakah.htm

The obligation to perform tzedakah can be fulfilled by giving money 
to the poor, to health care institutions, to 
<http://www.mechon-mamre.org/jewfaq/shul.htm>synagogues, or to 
educational institutions.  It can also be fulfilled by supporting 
your children beyond the age when you are legally required to, or 
supporting your parents in their old age.  The obligation includes 
giving to both Jews and Gentiles; contrary to popular belief, Jews do 
not just "take care of our own".

Judaism acknowledges that many people who ask for charity have no 
genuine need.  In fact, the 
<http://www.mechon-mamre.org/jewfaq/torah.htm#Talmud>Talmud suggests 
that this is a good thing:  if all people who asked for charity were 
in genuine need, we would be subject to punishment (from God) for 
refusing anyone who asked.  The existence of frauds diminishes our 
liability for failing to give to all who ask, because we have some 
legitimate basis for doubting the beggar's sincerity.  It is 
permissible to investigate the legitimacy of a charity before donating to it.

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R' SZN:

 

>>>One of the things missing from much of this discussion so far is the
concept of duty  [ comment on areivim  about draft issues] 


-- it has  yet to be  established that

 1] there is a religious chiyuv  to a concept of  duty to country

2]  that  that concept is believed by charedi hashkafa/halacha

 3] that even if there was such a chiyuv  that  it would apply  to a
 'secular jewish state'
<SNIP>

----------------------- 

 

The argument I've seen (most recently here on Avodah, IIRC) is that Israel
is in middle of a milchemes mitzvah. I haven't seen a good argument towards
that end, though.

 

KT,
MYG

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On Wed, Mar 05, 2014 at 08:14:12PM -0500, Moshe Y. Gluck wrote:
: R' SZN:
:> -- it has  yet to be  established that

:> 1] there is a religious chiyuv  to a concept of  duty to country
...

: The argument I've seen (most recently here on Avodah, IIRC) is that Israel
: is in middle of a milchemes mitzvah. I haven't seen a good argument towards
: that end, though.

Neither is actually necessary.

There are Jews whose survival depends on the IDF. One has a halachic duty
to those Jews, regardless of statehood.

Similarly, the state or absense of a state doesn't change the mandatory
nature of fighting when bekhol dor vador, omedim aleinu lakhaloseinu.

Whether such a war is a milkhemes mitzvah or a milchemes chovah is a
machloqes tannaim, but there is no nafqa mina to our discussion. See
also RnCL's post from Jan
http://www.aishdas.org/avodah/vol32/v32n013.shtml#13 . Just 5 weeks
ago we were disputing whether the chiyuv includes women, not whether
it exists.

BTW, let me repeat what I said then: If we posit this chiyuv, then boys of
fighting age in chu"l who aren't torasam umnasam should be drafted before
Israelis who actually would be living in the beis medrash otherwise.
(Chareidi, Chardal, boys who are in the real world Hesdernikim, whomever.)

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             "Fortunate indeed, is the man who takes
mi...@aishdas.org        exactly the right measure of himself,  and
http://www.aishdas.org   holds a just balance between what he can
Fax: (270) 514-1507      acquire and what he can use." - Peter Latham

R' Weider from YU wrote the following article about the halachik
impermissibility of partnership minyanim.

   -
   http://www.yucommentator.org/2014/03/the-halakhic-statu
   s-of-partnership-minyanim/

One of his main arguments is that "Talmudic enactments retain binding
authority regardless of the situational applicability of any stated
rationale, unless explicitly stated otherwise."

How can this be reconciled with the following?

   - http://www.torahmusings.com/2007/02/blind-aliyah/
   - http://www.yeshiva.co/ask/?id=1562
   -
   http://www.joshyu
   ter.com/2011/02/20/judaism/calling-a-blind-person-to-the-torah-and-its-i
   mplications-for-womens-aliyot/

If in Talmudic times blind or deaf people were unable to be called to the
Torah, why would situational changes ("Rema (*Orach Chaim* 139:3) adds that
nowadays, when we are lenient to call to the Torah even an ignoramus who
cannot follow the reading, we also call blind men to the Torah") allow for
them to be called?

Kol Tuv,
Liron

-- 
Liron Kopinsky
liron.kopin...@gmail.com
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RDR wrote:
> I think this is a category error.
>
> When the Rambam says "God can't make a square circle" he's not saying
> "God can't deny a tautology", he's saying "there are synthetic a priori
> propositions which must be true in any world which God could have
> made."
>
> The example we were discussing is the prophet saying "Looking at evil is
> beneath God."  What you are doing is illustrating that we (following
> Hilbert) construe geometry to be a complex group of tautologies. But the
> Rambam would not have agreed with Hilbert.  He thought geometry
> consisted of synthetic a priori statements.

Pardon my ignorance, but I didn't quite understand. What is the difference
between "a complex group of tautologies" and "synthetic a priori
statements?"
--
mit freundlichen Gr??en,
with kind regards,
Arie Folger

visit my blog at http://ariefolger.wordpress.com/
sent from my mobile device
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Aside from Yeshivat Maharat, Midreshet Lindenbaum is also giving a heter
hora'ah (yoreh yoreh) to  women.

I stated on Areivim that it wasn't clear to me that it is possible for a
woman to receive a heter hora'ah. After all, hora'ah bifnei rabo requires
a heter to begin with, teaching zil q'ri bei rav halakhah does not. It's
not simply open to anyone with ability. Given that, pesaq today still
devolves from beis din's initial lo sosur mikol asher yagidu lekha. So,
is hora'ah open to those who aren't in principle qualified to become
dayanim? Or is it joining a shalsheles that they are choq-like simply
excluded from?

I am not trying to re-raise the broader issue; I'm really only curious
about the one point. Has someone shown that hora'ah is indeed something
performed by anyone who is capable?

Let's go ad absurdum.... Let's say anyone who is empowered to give
hora'ah should be given a heter to do so. Would you argue a non-Jew's
pesaq has some kind of binding authority on the sho'el? (I don't know,
maybe the "poseiq" didn't know he was adopted until the morning of his
chag hasmichah and decided not to convert. A silly hypothetical can
still have value.)

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             How wonderful it is that
mi...@aishdas.org        nobody need wait a single moment
http://www.aishdas.org   before starting to improve the world.
Fax: (270) 514-1507              - Anne Frank Hy"d

On Thu, Mar 06, 2014 at 12:23:07PM +0100, Arie Folger wrote:
: Pardon my ignorance, but I didn't quite understand. What is the difference
: between "a complex group of tautologies" and "synthetic a priori
: statements?"

An analytic proposition is true by definition. Like tautologies, or other
cases where the predicate is contained in the subject. ("All husbands are
married.")

This is in contrast to synthetic statements where the truth is because
of how the definition relates to the world. ("Yaakov is married.")

There is a second chiluq that sounds similar but is also critical to
speaking Kant: a priori vs a posteriori, ideas that can be justified
without checking against experinece, and those that can only be provent
given experiences. This only makes sense for synthetic propositions;
all analyties propositions must be a priori true -- if something is true
by definition, then I can prove it's true without someone experiencing.

The analytic / synthetic chiluq is about what makes it true.
The a priori / a posteriori chiluq is about how we can prove it's true.

(And now you see why someone raised on R' Chaim's lomdus could find
an affinity for Kant.)

But Kant shows there are synthetic a priori propositions -- ideas that
are true only because what they describe happen to be real, but are
self-evidence without having experienced it. He puts all of metaphysics
in that class, and then asks if we can ever determine which sythentic
a priori propositions are true, or if metaphysicians and theologians
are just wasting their time.

***

Kant considered mathematical propositions to be synthetic a priori. The
fact that the shortest distance between two points is a straight line
was both true, and no inherent in the words. Similarly "2 + 1 = 2".

The logical positivists (Frege, Carnap) enlarged the sense of analytic,
showing there are enough other ways to use pure logic to show something
is inherently true. Byt the time they're done, math was considered
analytic -- the study of things that are true by the consequences of
their definition. (My rewording here is intentional.)

Which now gets us back to the discussion of whether my mashal of parallel
lines not meeting, or not meeting in a flat space, is a good parable.

***

So to recast the Rambam into these categories...

On Tue, Mar 04, 2014 at 06:28:21PM -0500, David Riceman wrote:
> When the Rambam says "God can't make a square circle" he's not saying  
> "God can't deny a tautology", he's saying "there are synthetic a priori  
> propositions which must be true in any world which God could have made."

I disagree. I believe the Rambam would be saying (if he thought in these
terms) that analytic truths are Emes, of HQBH's Essence, and thus have
nothing to do with Omnipotence. A "round square", like a "difleb" is
simply nonsense, not something Hashem can or cannot do. And that the
Rambam would say that Omnipotence includes /every/ synthetic proposition.

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             "Someday I will do it." - is self-deceptive. 
mi...@aishdas.org        "I want to do it." - is weak. 
http://www.aishdas.org   "I am doing it." - that is the right way.
Fax: (270) 514-1507                   - Reb Menachem Mendel of Kotzk

On Tue, Mar 04, 2014 at 11:24:49AM +0200, Marty Bluke wrote:
: Todays daf (Succah 29a) discusses the various bad omens that a solar/lunar
: eclipse portend as well as what Aveiros cause an eclipse.
: 
: Given that eclipses are natural events whose time is well known how are we
: to understand this Gemara that they are bad omens as well as caused by sins?

We discussed the Mahara's answer to this a couple of years ago.
<http://www.aishdas.org/avodah/getindex.cgi?section=R#REALITY>
Be'er haGolah, sixth Be'er, RDR says to try pg 145 in R Hartman's
edition. He writes:
> Consider the example (the source is in a previous post) of Hazal's
> list of sins which induce solar eclipses. The Maharal explains that
> Hazal knew perfectly well that solar eclipses can be predicted, and
> are explained by astronomical phenomena. What they meant was that God
> designed human nature and the stellar bodies in parallel: the ability
> to have solar eclipses and the ability to commit those certain sins
> are parallel capacities. I can't imagine how to fit that example into
> either of your descriptions.

> Incidentally, the Maharal cites the pasuk "v'chofrah halevanah ubosha
> hahama" (Is. 24:23) to demonstrate that the same capacity can parallel
> something entirely different in eschatalogical time.

-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             "'When Adar enters, we increase our joy'
mi...@aishdas.org         'Joy is nothing but Torah.'
http://www.aishdas.org    'And whoever does more, he is praiseworthy.'"
Fax: (270) 514-1507                     - Rav Dovid Lifshitz zt"l

RAF:
>
> Pardon my ignorance, but I didn't quite understand. What is the 
> difference between "a complex group of tautologies" and "synthetic a 
> priori statements?"
>
Mathematicians tend to think of mathematical objects as real things, and 
they think of themselves as explorers rather than creators, whereas 
philosophers think of them as playing a particular game of logic.

Before the modern era, though, geometry was an applied science, which we 
might nowadays call "surveying".  Its primary concern was measuring 
locations and areas of places.

When the Rambam says that there are no square circles, he is saying 
something about a property of a piece of land, and he thinks that any 
piece of land in any "possible world" has that property.

But when RMB reads the Rambam he thinks that the Rambam is saying that 
God can't change the rules of the game: in the context of the game of 
geometry God has no more authority than any other player.

David Riceman

RAM:

<<I think we all might agree that the things God does are good by 
definition. If so, then He is definitionally unable to do evil, just as 
He is difinitionally unable to make the rock or the rectangle. I think 
RDR is saying that God is not only definitionally unable to *do* evil, 
but even to *look* at evil. And I might agree, except that I don't 
really know what "God looking at evil" *means*.>>

<snip>

<<How can that be? Can one really think that God is unaware of the evil 
in this world? I don't even know where to begin to argue against that.>>

I entered this discussion in the middle.  You and RMB (and possibly some 
others) were discussing how God construes time.  I offered the 
suggestion that God doesn't construe time as a single category, but that 
He construes different spans of time (e.g., Tishrei, Nisan) as different 
archetypes (e.g., geulah al derech hateva, geulah al derech neis).

I pointed you to Wolfson's article about intradeical and extradeical 
Platonic ideas, and, of course, neglected to mention that I'm using 
"archetype" as a synonym for "Platonic ideas".

At this point we are impinging on the muddy boundary between Jewish 
thought and classical philosophy, so please bear with me as I spend a 
few minutes with Plato.

One of the conceptual problems people have raised about Plato is that, 
throughout the dialogues, there are  many examples of Platonic ideas, 
but none of them are negative.  He discusses "Justice", for example, but 
not "Injustice".  Why not?

Socrates, according to Plato, was of the opinion that people do wrong 
only through ignorance (cf. MN II:11).  Platonic ideas represent the 
ideal version of something real, which (modern philosophers might think 
this paragraph is meaningless) cannot be the product of a mistake.  So 
"Injustice" can't be a Platonic idea because it's not the ideal version 
of anything.

There is a parallel discussion among Jewish thinkers about why evil 
exists (I strongly recommend that you learn through the Ramban's 
commentary on Iyov), and it contains many disagreements (MN III:12).

But one of those opinions is that evil is a mirage induced by the lack 
of a sufficiently broad perspective.  The classic example is that when 
you punish your kids, they think that's bad, but it serves a good goal 
in the long run. So one answer to your question is that God is aware of 
what happens, but He construes it using archetypes other than "Evil", 
because
in the long run it has a good end, and the depredations of 
Nebuchadnezzar, which the prophet was discussing, were in the long run 
productive.

David Riceman


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