Volume 33: Number 72
Wed, 06 May 2015
Subjects Discussed In This Issue:
Message: 1
From: Micha Berger
Date: Wed, 6 May 2015 06:13:28 -0400
Subject: Re: [Avodah] The Disappearing Doctor of Iyyar: Virtual
On Wed, May 06, 2015 at 05:02:54AM -0400, Prof. Levine via Avodah wrote:
: See http://tinyurl.com/mdz6883
Quoting the Treasures of Ashkenaz blog [transliterations mine]:
> The aleph stands for ani, the two yuds for HQBH, and the reish? fo
> rofekha. The month is thereby depicted as a month of healing. The vort
> seemingly is based on an old minhog of many generations among Yidden,
> in which the letters yud-yud (sans hyphen) are used to represent the
> venerated name of Hashem
However, even yud-yud is not the original minhag. In older manuscripts
they used three yuds, with the middle one slightly above the line, making
a triangle. Preserved in this printed edition of Siddur R' Saadia Gaon
<http://www.hebrewbooks.org/pdfpager.aspx?req=20685pgnum=75>.
I suggested two possible reasons for the third yud's disappearance:
- The printing press made that middle yud hard to insert into books,
because it would require a special letter in the type box. I find this
one less than compelling, because they kept an alef-lamed ligature in
the type box, and that got less usage.
- Xians read their own significance into the three letters. This
would be clearner, if there were any evidence of them actually doing so.
So the two-yud notation was just one step along the way. The general
question of why non-chassidic Ashkenazim (or non-Chida-influenced
Sepharadim) suddenly started writing out the sheim in siddurim is
compelling, but the two-yud notation isn't necessarily some venerable
alternative.
The three yuds was often explained as beind the initial letters of
Birkhas Kohanim; the yuds from Yevarekhekha, Ya'er, and Yisa.
Some suggest that the two yuds represent the first and last letters of
an intertwined sheim havayah and sheim adnus: YUD alef HEI dalet ... HEI
yud. Itself heavily al pi qabbalah.
And associating the two yuds with the transliteration into Hebrew
of an Akkadian month name (Ayyaru = n. blossom) requires even more
omnisignificance and mysticism than does finding significance in
presenting sheim havayah written out.
Where I really see this change as a problem is not because of venerable
minhagim, but because books have less shelf life now than in the
past. Cheap printing means also cheaper paper, not to mention faster
replacement. And if generations past wanted to minimize their sheimos
problems, al achas kamah vekamah we should.
Tir'u baTov!
-Micha
--
Micha Berger Today is the 32nd day, which is
mi...@aishdas.org 4 weeks and 4 days in/toward the omer.
http://www.aishdas.org Netzach sheb'Hod: What type of submission
Fax: (270) 514-1507 really results in dominating others?
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Message: 2
From: Eli Turkel
Date: Wed, 6 May 2015 10:31:51 +0300
Subject: [Avodah] long peyot
In some circles it is common for men to keep long peyot (as an aside it has
become common also in some chardal circles)
The book Keren Zavit says he doesn't understand the custom. The problem is
not in long sidebruns but rather that the hair from under the ear rarely
grows long. The long "peyot" usually grow from hair above the ear and so
has no connection to peyot and in fact come from part of the head where
there is no prohibition to shave
--
Eli Turkel
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Message: 3
From: Shalom Berger
Date: Wed, 6 May 2015 16:38:38 +0300
Subject: Re: [Avodah] A woman is acquired
While Micha is correct that the Gemara clearly states "ishah DELO
QANI LEIH GUFAH" and that there are many, many differences between true
ownership and marriage, this does not keep the Tosafot HaRosh (Ketubot 2a
sv Nistahpa Sadeihu) from concluding: "ha-isha kinyan kaspo shel ha-ish
kemo avdo ve-shoro va-hamoro."
I would like to find a source in the rishonim that clearly rejects the
approach of the Tosafot HaRosh.
Shalom
Rabbi Shalom Z. Berger, Ed.D.
The Lookstein Center for Jewish Education
Bar-Ilan University
http://www.lookstein.org
https://www.facebook.com/groups/lookjed/
Follow me on Twitter: @szberger
NETWORK*LEARN*GROW
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Message: 4
From: elazar teitz
Date: Wed, 6 May 2015 12:26:18 -0400
Subject: Re: [Avodah] tree of 40 fruits
The question was asked, "What's the halakha regarding eating fruit
from one of these trees? Since
the grafting was done by a non-Jew, is it okay to eat?"
The only issur achila of kilayim is kilei hakerem. Anything else may
be eaten.
With regard to the fruits of a graft, the explicit halacha in Yoreh
Deiah (295:7) is that it may be eaten even by the one who violated the
prohibition by performing the graft. (That halacha also continues that one
may take a branch from the graft and plant it.)
As to the original question about the potato-tomato combination,
grafting is prohibited: even though neither is a tree (295:3), but as
above, the resulting product may be eaten.
EMT
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Message: 5
From: elazar teitz
Date: Wed, 6 May 2015 13:28:26 -0400
Subject: Re: [Avodah] Spouses with Conflicting Customs
The din of a kohein's daughter not eating t'ruma upon marriage to a
non-kohein was mentioned in conjunction with this topic.
However, I submit that perquisites of k'huna are unrelated to the
adoption of one's spouse's customs. How else can we understand the din
that a person can give the parts of a slaughtered animal due to the kohein
(z'roa, l'chayayim v'keiva) even to a kohein's daughter married to a
Yisraeil, or, for that matter, even to her Yisraeil husband (and according
to one opinion, the same is true for pidyon habein)?
EMT
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Message: 6
From: via Avodah
Date: Wed, 6 May 2015 13:37:45 -0400
Subject: Re: [Avodah] Looking for help with an analogy
From: Yosef Gavriel Bechhofer via Avodah <avo...@lists.aishdas.org>
Can anyone here please explain how chazakos (d'mei'ikara, d'hashta)
would relate to Schroedinger's Cat?
Thanks!
KT,
YGB
>>>>>
Not sure where you're going with this but you seem to be saying that
chazakos have no independent, objective reality. That a chazaka is in the eye
of the beholder.
Oops. Looks like you've let the cat out of the bag...
--Toby Katz
t6...@aol.com
..
=============
-------------------------------------------------------------------
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Message: 7
From: Prof. Levine
Date: Wed, 06 May 2015 14:13:35 -0400
Subject: [Avodah] The Strange History of Lag B'Omer
There is an interesting talk by Dr. Shnayer Leiman with the above title at
http://yutorah.org/lectures/lecture.cfm/734356/
Yitzchok Levine
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Message: 8
From: Micha Berger
Date: Wed, 6 May 2015 14:48:38 -0400
Subject: Re: [Avodah] Looking for help with an analogy
On Mon, May 04, 2015 at 7:07pm EDT, RYGB wrote:
: Can anyone here please explain how chazakos (d'mei'ikara, d'hashta)
: would relate to Schroedinger's Cat?
Quantum Uncertainty is more similar to rov than chazaqah.
And it could model how we can embrace conflicting majorities. Such as
in the case of two pieces of shuman and one of cheilev, and being able
to eat all three one after the other. (Or perhaps even in a ta'aroves,
but that just complicates the picture.) It would fit if we treat
the physical state of each piece of fat as
( 2 |shuman> + |cheilev) / 3
rather than as a 67% chance of being shuman.
And then those things that were observed are immune from such weirdness,
much like qavu'ah.
That said:
The notion that wavefunction collapse is due to observation, the
Copenhagen Interpretation, was once taken as a given. But alternatives
involving entanglement, wave function collapse, multiuniverse theory,
etc.. have been gaining ground for decades. This parallel to qavu'ah
could be illusory.
On Tue, May 05, 2015 at 1:11am GMT, R Akive Miller wrote:
: My first knee-jerk reaction is to say that they DON'T relate. Chazakos
: are all about law, and what the law will *presume* the reality to have
: been...
: Schroedinger's Cat and similar ventures are attempts to establish what
: the *reality* is...
I am very inclined to agree.
R' Aqiva Eiger (teshuvah $136) makes a chiluq between sefeiqos in the
metzi'us and sefeiqos in din. Rov holds when we have sefeiqos in the
metzi'us. So we can pasqen about something that is rov-kasher. But if
someone knew the metzi'us, then there was a din established for the
fat. Now that we don't know what it was, we have a safeiq as to what
that din is.
LAD, the whole thing is about human experience. See
<http://www.aishdas.org/asp/phenomenology>, which has 10 posts covering
things like chazaqah (both types), rov, qavu'ah, terei mekei'ah (which
I argue ignores rov for the same reason as qavu'ah), nosein ta'am,
using tequfas Shemu'el for birkhas hachamah, microsopic bugs etc....
The hashkafic premise is that the goal of halakhah is to shape the
self (whether into a tamim, a shelaim, to acheive deveiqus, etc...) And
therefore the metzi'us a din has to work with is how we experience reality
(and thus birur when we're in doubt) and how we can experience it (only
visible bugs count). And not how the universe works in ways we can only
understand in the abstract.
The most lomdishe consequence of my whole edifice is that it manages to
explain why a chazaqah trumps a migo in a case where there are also
trei utrei eidim, but why a migo trumps a chazaqah when there are no
eidim.
Tir'u baTov!
-Micha
--
Micha Berger Today is the 32nd day, which is
mi...@aishdas.org 4 weeks and 4 days in/toward the omer.
http://www.aishdas.org Netzach sheb'Hod: What type of submission
Fax: (270) 514-1507 really results in dominating others?
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Message: 9
From: Micha Berger
Date: Wed, 6 May 2015 15:13:53 -0400
Subject: Re: [Avodah] long peyot
On Wed, May 06, 2015 at 10:31:51AM +0300, Eli Turkel via Avodah wrote:
: The book Keren Zavit says he doesn't understand the custom. The problem is
: not in long sidebruns but rather that the hair from under the ear rarely
: grows long. The long "peyot" usually grow from hair above the ear and so
: has no connection to peyot and in fact come from part of the head where
: there is no prohibition to shave
The custom is shared by Chassidim, Chidah-influenced Sepharadim (those
with many Qabbalah-based pesaqim) and Teimanim. So there seems to be
an ancient maqor unrelated to any reasons given al pi qabbalah by the
first two groups.
R' Chaim Kanievsky is a living example of a minhag/hanhagah that was once
more common -- not combing one's peyos because of the hairs plucked out.
Rav Dovid Lifshitz, so now we're talking Litta, had two thick blocks
of hair going back from his temples to over his ear.
According to the SA YD 181:9, peyos run as high as the hairline above
the forehead until the bottom of the ear, where the earlobe detaches from
the face.
So the prohibition does include the area the KZ is asking about -- there
are inches of hair between the top of the ear until you get parallel to
the hairline. And this is the very area that the majority of the hair in
long peyos grows from. I therefore don't understand the KZ's question.
Tir'u baTov!
-Micha
--
Micha Berger Today is the 32nd day, which is
mi...@aishdas.org 4 weeks and 4 days in/toward the omer.
http://www.aishdas.org Netzach sheb'Hod: What type of submission
Fax: (270) 514-1507 really results in dominating others?
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Message: 10
From: Eli Turkel
Date: Wed, 6 May 2015 22:40:23 +0300
Subject: [Avodah] long peyot
From <http://www.yutorah.org/lectures/lecture.cfm/735346>:
B. Highest Point. The location of the highest point on the head that
the peyos extend is described in Shulchan Aruch (181:9) as "across from
the hair on is forehead". There are two basic opinions as to the precise
location the Shulchan Aruch refers to:
1. Rabbi Yisroel Belsky (Shulchan Halevi page 122) writes that he had
heard directly from Rav Yakov Kaminetzky zt"l that the upper limit of
the peyos ha'rosh begins "at the highest point of the hairline as it
arches over the ear and extends in a slightly curved line across to
where the hairline of the forehead turns sharply downwards towards the
sideburns. All the hair from the imaginary line that connect these two
points and below comprises the peyos ha'rosh".
2. Rabbi Belsky also quotes "some rabbonim have a mesora, a tradition
from their Rabbis, that the peyos do not extend above the upper cartilage
of the ear (tenuch ha'ozen) at all. According to their mesorah, the
imaginary line extends horizontally from the point in the hairline above
the foremost part of ear almost until where the downward slope of the
frontal hairline angles back towards the ear.
For a picture see
<http://www.cckollel.org/parsha_encounters/5770/shemos_70.pdf>
--
Eli Turkel
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Message: 11
From: Joel Schnur
Date: Wed, 06 May 2015 16:42:39 -0400
Subject: [Avodah] Not saying Tachanun
No one says tachnun on the Gra's yarhzeit. it's 3rd day chol hamoed succos
___________________________
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Government Affairs/Public Relations
Schnur Associates, Inc.
25 West 45th Street, Suite 1405
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Message: 12
From: Micha Berger
Date: Wed, 6 May 2015 17:13:38 -0400
Subject: Re: [Avodah] A woman is acquired
On Tue, May 5, 2015 at 9:01pm GMT, R Akiva Miller wrote:
:> I think that it is fairly clear that Jewish law does not believe that
:> a woman is owned by her husband, ...
: That depends on what you mean by "own".
:
: I own my shoes. This gives me certain rights...
I suggested more than once in the past that baalus has more to do with
responsibility than western notions of property.
Which is why yorshim do not inherit chameitz on Pesach. Even though the
father owned chameitz in the sense of bal yeira'eh bal yimatzei, he lacked
ba'alus at the time of his passing. Or why a rentor has a chiyuv to hang
a mezuzah -- he has some measure of ba'alus, despite not being an owner.
RAF (CCed) shared my post on Facebook, and since I have no idea what
can be seen by the public, I'll paraphrase a couple of responses I thought
would be of interest.
On my line that "qinyan is a broader concept than purchase", one person
compared the mishnah in Avos "qeneih lekha chaver".
This morning, at 8:59am PDT, R Shalom Z Berger asked for a rishon who
clearly rejected the Tosafos haRosh's statement (Kesuvos 2a "nitapecha
sadeihu) that "ha'ishah qinyan kaspo shel ha'ish, kemo avdo veshoro
vechamoro".
Someone else on FB noted that the Rashba, in his chiddushim on the first
pereq of Qiddushin, repeatedly points out that all the rishonim other
than the Rosh reject the idea out of hand.
Tir'u baTov!
-Micha
--
Micha Berger Today is the 32nd day, which is
mi...@aishdas.org 4 weeks and 4 days in/toward the omer.
http://www.aishdas.org Netzach sheb'Hod: What type of submission
Fax: (270) 514-1507 really results in dominating others?
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Message: 13
From: saul newman
Date: Wed, 6 May 2015 15:09:17 -0700
Subject: [Avodah] shabbat mikes
http://www.jpost.com/Israel-News/Shabbat-
microphones-catching-on-among-orthodox-despite-taboos-402173
i thought that tzomet products are meant for sha'at hadchak /bedieved
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Message: 14
From: Micha Berger
Date: Wed, 6 May 2015 20:12:04 -0400
Subject: Re: [Avodah] shabbat mikes
On Wed, May 06, 2015 at 03:09:17PM -0700, saul newman via Avodah wrote:
: http://www.jpost.com/Israel-News/Shab
: bat-microphones-catching-on-among-orthodox-despite-taboos-402173
:
: i thought that tzomet products are meant for sha'at hadchak /bedieved
Gerama devices, yes. But a passive element microphone feeding a PA
system that is never entirely off -- so it's never turned off or on --
and has no lit indicators is an entirely different beast.
(Most microphones generate current when vibrated; a passive element
microphone changes resistance.)
Still not an open-and-shut heter, as this article makes it sound. And
there are more grounds for Sepharadim to be meiqil then Ashkenazim,
based on a machloqes between the Mechaber and the Rama in OC 252:5.
R' Ovadia was matir.
Tir'u baTov!
-Micha
--
Micha Berger Today is the 32nd day, which is
mi...@aishdas.org 4 weeks and 4 days in/toward the omer.
http://www.aishdas.org Netzach sheb'Hod: What type of submission
Fax: (270) 514-1507 really results in dominating others?
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Message: 15
From: Kenneth Miller
Date: Thu, 7 May 2015 01:18:22 GMT
Subject: Re: [Avodah] shabbat mikes
R' Saul Newman asked:
> i thought that tzomet products are meant for sha'at
> hadchak /bedieved
I've never read any of their material, but I'm pretty sure that they have
MANY halachic "tools" in their arsenal, and not all of them carry the same
restrictions. For example, a grama switch would only be useful for a very
limited number of situations, as would a pen that writes with disappearing
ink. But if you can make an electronic device that generates zero heat and
zero light, it just *might* be acceptable for general use.
Exhibit A: Hearing aids. I'll admit that a hearing aid is not the same
thing as a loudspeaker system. But without getting into a whole discussion,
the only point I'm making is that you have to look at the thing, and not
just reject it out of hand.
One might say that "Hearing aids are by definition for a shaas hadchak; how
can this technology help the average person? So I bring you Exhibit B:
Sabbath Mode ovens. Without any doubt, one DOES manipulate the electric
circuit with these gadgets. If not on Shabbos, then at least on Yom Tov.
But I think that the real answer to your question might be: "If the people in shul can't hear the rabbi or the chazan, that IS a shaas hadchak."
In any case, about 15 years ago I happened to spend Shabbos at a shul that
used one of these systems, and there were two large notices by the entrance
to the main sanctuary, pointing out that the system was designed by Zomet.
If I remember correctly, there was also a letter on the wall giving more
halachic details about it.
Which is the bigger chumra: To avoid using such devices, or to insure that
even the hard-of-hearing can follow hear? Or, if you prefer, which is the
bigger kula: To use such devices, or to disenfranchise part of the tzibur?
(I'm not taking sides, just illustrating the issues. If you want answers,
ask your LOR.)
Akiva Miller
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Message: 16
From: Kenneth Miller
Date: Thu, 7 May 2015 01:45:24 GMT
Subject: Re: [Avodah] The Disappearing Doctor of Iyyar: Virtual
R' Yitzchok Levine posted:
> See http://tinyurl.com/mdz6883
That article has only slight relevance to anything medical. It is actually
about the practice of abbreviating HaShem's Name with a double (or triple)
Yud in siddurim, and how this practice is losing ground recently, with more
siddurim using the Four-Lettered Name. That article says:
> ... even in the printing of siddurim, where in the past, Shem
> Hashem was not written out explicitly, based on venerable, old
> practice. In other words, the spelling out of the letters, Yud
> ? Kay ? Vov ? Kay in the past was done in Biblical texts, such
> as Sifrei Torah and Sifrei Nach. In texts of tefilos, however,
> it was not done. Instead, Yud ? Yud was substituted.
I am very curious why this distinction was made, that the siddurim use the Yuds, while the printed Tanachs do use the Four Lettered Name.
I note that towards the end of that article, he refers to an "Azharah
L'Madfisim (Warning To Printers)" on this topic, written by the son-in-law
of the Nesivos Hamishpat. Curiously, he writes that the Two Yuds should be
printed in siddurim *and* *chumashim*.
On the other hand, a few lines later, the Azharah explains a point I've
long wondered about. The Four Lettered Name is just one of the *seven*
Names Which May Not Be Erased. Why did this abbreviation arise for the Four
Lettered Name and not for any of the others? I always figured it was
because this one is *truly* a Name; "the Most Holy among equals" one might
say. But the Azharah gives an entirely different explanation. Namely, the
difference between this Name and the other six is that no matter how you
spell it, it is not to be pronounced normally, so what is to be gained by
using the correct letters? Therefore, find an abbreviation of some sort for
this one, but the others should be spelled as they will be pronounced.
Akiva Miller
KennethGMil...@juno.com
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