Avodah Mailing List

Volume 34: Number 90

Tue, 09 Aug 2016

• 1. Re: how do you teach emuna? (Zev Sero)
• 2. Re: how do you teach emuna? (H Lampel)
• 3. Re: how do you teach emuna? (H Lampel)
• 4. Re: pilegish status (Micha Berger)
• 5. Re: pilegish status (Micha Berger)
• 6. Re: how do you teach emuna? (Marty Bluke)
• 7. intelligent design (Eli Turkel)
• 8. Re: How to teach emuna (Efraim Yawitz)
• 9. Arizal: Ashkenazim should follow the way of Ashkenaz (Professor L. Levine)
• 10. Gelatin Revisited (Professor L. Levine)
• 11. Re: How to teach emuna (Micha Berger)
• 12. Re: How to teach emuna (Zev Sero)
• 13. Re: How to teach emuna (Zev Sero)

On 08/08/16 15:07, Micha Berger via Avodah wrote:
> The point R' Moshe Benovitz was making in the snippet that was originally
> posted here was using "the Kuzari Principle" as an example of such
> an argument that won't hold water. The challenge is not that Tanakh
> implies a break in or a late start of mesorah (the topic Doros haRishonim
> addresses), but that it shows that at times the baalei mesorah were a
> minority, pushing a belief the masses did not share and were not being
> taught by their parents and grandparents, and yet they still managed to
> convince those masses on more than one occasion. Yoshiahu's and Ezra's
> revivals are two of the most famous counter-examples of the Kuzari
> Principle -- and they're from our own history!

Only if you accept the premise that Y and E introduced material that was
new to their audiences.   AIUI the traditional understanding is that they
simply led teshuvah revivals, getting people to return to obeying the Torah
that they already knew from their parents and grandparents.  And that the
sefer torah found in Yoshiahu's day was identical to the ones they already
had, and the fuss was because it was was Moshe Rabbenu's long-lost sefer,
and it was foundrolled to the tochacha.



-- 
Zev Sero               Meaningless combinations of words do not acquire
z...@sero.name          meaning merely by appending them to the two other
                        words `God can'.  Nonsense remains nonsense, even
                        when we talk it about God.   -- C S Lewis

On 8/8/2016 3:07 PM, Micha Berger wrote:
> ... The challenge is not that Tanakh
> implies a break in or a late start of mesorah (the topic Doros haRishonim
> addresses), but that it shows that at times the baalei mesorah were a
> minority, pushing a belief the masses did not share and were not being
> taught by their parents and grandparents, and yet they still managed to
> convince those masses on more than one occasion. Yoshiahu's and Ezra's
> revivals are two of the most famous counter-examples of the Kuzari
> Principle -- and they're from our own history!
This is what the Doros HaRishonim deals with, in volume 6, titled 
Tekufas HaMikreh.

Zvi Lampel

RMB:
>: If you are looking for "proof" you will not find it.

>: Evidence, you will find aplenty.

> A point RNW makes, but again, I couldn't agree with his version because
> he uses equivocation:

> a- Get the student to say they'll accept O if we had proofs
> b- Tell him we have proofs
> c- ... but that "proof" doesn't mean what he thinks it does, it means
>     "as strong evidence as you demand for other decisions".
> d- And then in other parts of the shiurim talk about the same proofs as
> though they are proofs of the sort the student was thinking of in step (a).

I think his point was making the student realize that his life decisions,
and the things he considers as undoubtedly true are never really based
on the mathematical-type proofs he is demanding. Nor most other things
he considers "proven." He is making the student realize that the proofs
he brings are on the level of certainty that the student accepts for
almost everything else.

Unless I'm missing something your referring to in (d).

Zvi Lampel

On Sun, Aug 07, 2016 at 10:01:51AM -0400, Akiva Miller via Avodah wrote:
:> 1- You would need a woman willing to be a concubine. ... ...
: 
: Well, the author of that article is a woman who prefers that status, so I
: think she has pretty much proven that there are indeed such women in
: existence.

As I continued, actually have to agree to be a concubine. Not hide from
the fact by mentally refusing to translate "pilegesh", and wanting to be
the concept that remains.

:> 2- The price would be the eradication qiddushin. That's pretty
:> high. Or to put it another way, every women caught as an agunah
:> because we don't replace qiddushin with pilegesh is in a sense
:> sacrificing herself for qedushas Yisrael.

: I'm really not sure what you are saying here.

If we eliminate the problem of man-made agunos (as opposed to actual
lost husbands) by eliminating qiddushin in favor of pilagshos, we have
done *major* damage to qedushas Yisrael.

I don't think too many posqim would be willing to do that (assuming it
works), even though the human cost in lonely woman who can't close a
painful chapter in their lives is high.

Which is why I said that the women who are stuck agunos because we
are unwilling to pay that price are in effect sacrificed to preserve
qedushas Yisrael.

...
: The author concedes that kiddushin does have real benefits, and each of us
: might add to that list, as RMB did. But it also has drawbacks. Each of us
: weighs these factors differently, and given her experiences as an agunah, I
: can certainly sympathize with the weight she gives to the ability for a
: pilegesh to end that relationship unilaterally.

As I do too. But as I hope I said more clearly this time:

1- I don't think women today would be willingly become pilagshos, if they
really thought about what it means, rather than treating it as a dry term
to protects against igun.

2- The price in qedushah is just plain huge. We are talking about taking
an axe to the cornerstone of the qedushah of the Jewish home.

-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             Zion will be redeemed through justice,
mi...@aishdas.org        and her returnees, through righteousness.
http://www.aishdas.org
Fax: (270) 514-1507

On Mon, Aug 08, 2016 at 06:13:51PM -0400, Micha Berger wrote:
: If we eliminate the problem of man-made agunos (as opposed to actual
: lost husbands) by eliminating qiddushin in favor of pilagshos, we have
: done *major* damage to qedushas Yisrael.

Someone wrote in private email that he didn't understand this part of
my reply to RAM. So, to clarify in public with the assumption that
if I wasn't clear, he wasn't alone:

A pilegesh is a contract arrangement. She is provided for by the man,
and this commitment legitimizes any sex between them. Like any other
contract, each side trades the duties they're willing to impose on
themselves in tradeoff for the gains. It's a step above zenus because it's
monoandrous, and therefore the bonding nature of sex is being utilized,
not subverted. But there is enough similarity between a pilegesh and a
zonah for Radaq and Malbim to understand Shofetim 11:1 calling Yiftach's
mother a zonah because she was a pilegesh, not a literal zonah. (The
Radaq's perspective is much like mine; that must be where the idea got
planted in my head.)

In contrast, qiddushin is a restoration of the two halves of Adam --
"vedavaq be'ishto veyahu levasar echad". It's a beris, covenental, a union
in which both sides commit to contribute to buld a common good. (Quite
different than a contract.) The work Adam was made for.

Quite a distance from a deal between a ba'al and a pilegesh to have
various needs met.

--


but not my second: See the Rema (EhE 25:1). The Raavad allows a commoner
to have a pilegesh. The Rambam, the Rosh, the Tur and the Rama limit
pilegesh to the king. Even RYEmden, a translation of whose teshuvah I
posted a link to last time, refused to allow it in practice unless two
others signed on. There as no record of those two others.

So, in terms of halakhah lemaaseh (which admittedly isn't Avodah's focus),
we don't allow pilagshos.

-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             Zion will be redeemed through justice,
mi...@aishdas.org        and her returnees, through righteousness.
http://www.aishdas.org
Fax: (270) 514-1507

The Ramban al Hatorah (Bamidbar 15:22) when talking about how the entire
Jewish people could sin bshogeg writes:

*"In our sinfulness, this has already happened in the days of the evil
kings of Israel, such as Jeroboam, that most of the nation completely
forgot Torah and the commandments, and the instance in the book of Ezra
about the people of the Second Temple."*

The Ramban writes that in the times of the first Beis Hamikdash as well as
the time of Ezra most of the Jewish people *completely* forgot the Torah.
So according to the Ramban these were not teshuva revivals but reteaching
them the Torah that they had forgotten.

On Monday, August 8, 2016, Zev Sero <z...@sero.name> wrote:

> On 08/08/16 15:07, Micha Berger via Avodah wrote:
>
>> The point R' Moshe Benovitz was making in the snippet that was originally
>> posted here was using "the Kuzari Principle" as an example of such
>> an argument that won't hold water. The challenge is not that Tanakh
>> implies a break in or a late start of mesorah (the topic Doros haRishonim
>> addresses), but that it shows that at times the baalei mesorah were a
>> minority, pushing a belief the masses did not share and were not being
>> taught by their parents and grandparents, and yet they still managed to
>> convince those masses on more than one occasion. Yoshiahu's and Ezra's
>> revivals are two of the most famous counter-examples of the Kuzari
>> Principle -- and they're from our own history!
>>
>
> Only if you accept the premise that Y and E introduced material that was
> new to their audiences.   AIUI the traditional understanding is that they
> simply led teshuvah revivals, getting people to return to obeying the Torah
> that they already knew from their parents and grandparents.  And that the
> sefer torah found in Yoshiahu's day was identical to the ones they already
> had, and the fuss was because it was was Moshe Rabbenu's long-lost sefer,
> and it was foundrolled to the tochacha.
>
>
>
> --
> Zev Sero               Meaningless combinations of words do not acquire
> z...@sero.name          meaning merely by appending them to the two other
>                        words `God can'.  Nonsense remains nonsense, even
>                        when we talk it about God.   -- C S Lewis
>
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from http://www.intelligentdesign.org/whatisid.php

Is intelligent design the same as creationism?

No. The theory of intelligent design is simply an effort to empirically
detect whether the "apparent design" in nature acknowledged by virtually
all biologists is genuine design (the product of an intelligent cause) or
is simply the product of an undirected process such as natural selection
acting on random variations. Creationism typically starts with a religious
text and tries to see how the findings of science can be reconciled to it.
Intelligent design starts with the empirical evidence of nature and seeks
to ascertain what inferences can be drawn from that evidence. Unlike
creationism, the scientific theory of intelligent design does not claim
that modern biology can identify whether the intelligent cause detected
through science is supernatural.

some of the arguments of intelligent design include
Irreducible complexity
                                                       Fine-tuned Universe
anthropic principle

Hence, I don't understand RYGB comments
There are no cogent arguments against intelligent design properly understood

Hence, most scientists don't accept intelligent design, those that do say
it doesn't prove that the is a creator and it certainly has nothing to do
with Torah mi-Sinai and mitzvot

While these arguments are good for some baale teshuva it is not the basis
of Judaism

-- 
Eli Turkel
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On Mon, Aug 8, 2016 at 10:25 PM, Micha Berger wrote:

    >>Yoshiahu's and Ezra's revivals are two of the most famous
counter-examples of the Kuzari
    >>Principle -- and they're from our own history!

I'm not sure I'm ready to accept that these are "counter-examples".  Do we
have evidence that the "non-frum" in the days of Yoshiahu or Ezra denied
that their great-great-grandparents or whatever
did believe in the facts of Yetzias Mitzrayim and Matan Torah?  Who says
they were any different from todays "non-frum" who admit that their
ancestors were believers, even if they (the descendants)
consider them to have been naive for being such?  Non-observance as such
does not necessarily imply a denial that their own ancestors were believing
and observant, and therefore "baalei masora" themselves.
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See

http://tinyurl.com/ze9rdr7

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From

http://tinyurl.com/hf7xzce


It is well known that a few generations ago the Poskim discussed whether
gelatin made from animal bones is kosher, and the general consensus in the
United States was that it is not kosher. This article will focus on the
more-recent developments regarding this ingredient.


See the above URL for more.  YL


Note:  Although the article is from 2005 I think that it is still relevant since it does not appear to have been updated.
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On Tue, Aug 09, 2016 at 01:02:21PM +0300, Efraim Yawitz via Avodah wrote:
:> Yoshiahu's and Ezra's revivals are two of the most famous
:> counter-examples of the Kuzari Principle -- and they're from our own
:> history!

: I'm not sure I'm ready to accept that these are "counter-examples".  Do we
: have evidence that the "non-frum" in the days of Yoshiahu or Ezra denied
: that their great-great-grandparents or whatever
: did believe in the facts of Yetzias Mitzrayim and Matan Torah? ...

Things today are not as bad as then. Even in some of bayis rishon's
better times, most were ovedei AZ. So in the worse times, fewer had
traditional grandparents to remember.

In Yoshiahu's day, the number of people who knew enough Torah to even
recognize one when they found one was small enough to qualify as a cabal.

In Ezra's day, the masses had to relearn the the alphabet.

The mesorah was entirely broken. R Moshe Benovitz's assumption that Matan
Torah was no better remembered than the alphabet compelling. But it
needn't be; the fact that it's a plausible understanding of Tanakh that
Yehoach or AkH had to start again from scratch is enough to defuse the
usability of a proof that is based on assuming it can't be done.
After all, RMF is talking about polemics, how to teach emunah, not
whether or not a given proof actually is valid in the abstract. So,
we can disagree about the validity of the misnamed Kuzari Principle
and still agree with his point that insisting a student accept it is
ineffective at sparking emunah for the current generation.

(BTW, Rihal himself touches on this question, see the kings's words at
Kuzari 3:54.)

-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             Zion will be redeemed through justice,
mi...@aishdas.org        and her returnees, through righteousness.
http://www.aishdas.org
Fax: (270) 514-1507

On 09/08/16 16:25, Micha Berger via Avodah wrote:
> On Tue, Aug 09, 2016 at 01:02:21PM +0300, Efraim Yawitz via Avodah wrote:
> :> Yoshiahu's and Ezra's revivals are two of the most famous
> :> counter-examples of the Kuzari Principle -- and they're from our own
> :> history!
>
> : I'm not sure I'm ready to accept that these are "counter-examples".  Do we
> : have evidence that the "non-frum" in the days of Yoshiahu or Ezra denied
> : that their great-great-grandparents or whatever
> : did believe in the facts of Yetzias Mitzrayim and Matan Torah? ...
>
> Things today are not as bad as then. Even in some of bayis rishon's
> better times, most were ovedei AZ. So in the worse times, fewer had
> traditional grandparents to remember.

What makes you think that these ovdei AZ weren't also ovdei Hashem?  What
makes you think they weren't boki beshas (or its then equivalent)?  These
were *not* untraditional Jews.  They were active Jews who also worshipped
AZ, because they had a strong yetzer hara to do so.



> In Yoshiahu's day, the number of people who knew enough Torah to even
> recognize one when they found one was small enough to qualify as a cabal.

How do you know this?


> In Ezra's day, the masses had to relearn the the alphabet.

Where is this written?



-- 
Zev Sero               Meaningless combinations of words do not acquire
z...@sero.name          meaning merely by appending them to the two other
                        words `God can'.  Nonsense remains nonsense, even
                        when we talk it about God.   -- C S Lewis

On 09/08/16 17:27, Micha Berger wrote:
> On Tue, Aug 09, 2016 at 05:11:14PM -0400, Zev Sero via Avodah wrote:
> : What makes you think that these ovdei AZ weren't also ovdei Hashem?  What
> : makes you think they weren't boki beshas (or its then equivalent)?  These
> : were *not* untraditional Jews.  They were active Jews who also worshipped
> : AZ, because they had a strong yetzer hara to do so.
>
> You mean like the guy who consecrated a potsherd to Havayah "and his
> consort, Asheirah", found among the material the Waqf bulldozed off
> Har haBayis? He may have worshipped a god named Y-HV-H, but to talk
> about him as a source of remembering matan Torah is a stretch.

How so?  Menashe certainly knew the Torah, and yet served AZ because his
yetzer hara was strong.  Frum Jews served AZ, just as today frum Jews get
involved in all kinds of znus.  It's a yetzer hara.  It doesn't change the
fact that  99% of the time they do right, and it certainly doesn't change
the fact that they *know* right.


>
> :> In Yoshiahu's day, the number of people who knew enough Torah to even
> :> recognize one when they found one was small enough to qualify as a cabal.
>
> : How do you know this?
>
> It took Barukh to recognize it.

Baruch?!   Was he even alive then?   And where do you see that it took
anybody to recognise it?


> :> In Ezra's day, the masses had to relearn the the alphabet.
>
> : Where is this written?
>
> Sanhedrin 21b-22a. Shabbos 104a. Shakehechum vechazar veyasdum. Unless
> you hold like Mar Zutra/Uqva and R Yossi who says this was the first use
> of Ashuris for sta"m. (But both R' Sherira Gaon and R Hai Gaon reject R
> Yossi's position. And the third position, aside from being listed last,
> has the most names attached; pashut peshat is that it's the masqanah.

That doesn't at all mean people had forgotten the Torah.  All it means is
that over the 850 years of bayis rishon it had become the custom to write
sifrei torah in ksav ivri, so more people could read them, and Ezra
reintroduced the practise of writing them in ksav ashuri.  This doesn't
show any lapse in the transmission of the Torah.   The Torah in the new
writing was the same as in the old.


-- 
Zev Sero               Meaningless combinations of words do not acquire
z...@sero.name          meaning merely by appending them to the two other
                        words `God can'.  Nonsense remains nonsense, even
                        when we talk it about God.   -- C S Lewis


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