Volume 34: Number 104
Mon, 29 Aug 2016
Subjects Discussed In This Issue:
Message: 1
From: Zev Sero
Date: Sun, 28 Aug 2016 12:59:03 -0400
Subject: Re: [Avodah] Does Daf Yomi Exemplify Talmud Torah?
On 28/08/16 11:28, Professor L. Levine via Avodah wrote:
> Perhaps those who have only an hour to study each day
> should investigate other types of learning that they can enjoy16 and
> which do fulfill the requirements for the ultimate form of Talmud
> Torah.
In other words, "In the time that he learns daf yomi, he could have
learned a blatt gemoro!"
--
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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Message: 2
From: Micha Berger
Date: Sun, 28 Aug 2016 14:05:05 -0400
Subject: Re: [Avodah] Does Daf Yomi Exemplify Talmud Torah?
On Sun, Aug 28, 2016 at 03:28:15PM +0000, Professor L. Levine via Avodah wrote:
: From the article with this title at
: http://www.hakirah.org/Vol%202%20Zelcer.pdf
:
:> Does Daf Yomi meet the above definition of the ideal type of
:> Talmud Torah? That depends. If a person spends the proper amount
:> of time on each daf so that he can analyze it, understand it, and have
:> it sink into his memory so that he will not forget it, then obviously it
:> does...
As I would put it, daf yomi's true value is in the number of magidei
shiur it requires, rather than the number of attendees. Prep alone means
that more gemara is really being learned than ever before.
In prior iterations, I noted what the AhS (YD 246:17) said about
the phenomena of shuls' chevrah shas -- same pace but without global
synchronization.
R' Hai Gaon advises R' Shmuel haNagid (according to the Rivash) to have
everyone immerse themselves in Mishnah and Talmud, and then even the amei
ha'aretz will be immersed in them and positively influenced -- and there
is no other way to aquire yir'as Shamayim, yir'as cheit, zerizus, anavah,
taharah or qedushah.
Which the AhS believes is even more necessary in his day, with the
rampant flight to heresy.
The Shakh and the Taz (s"q 1) quote the Derishah that in his day (and
ours), with our lesser time allocated for learning, better to learn
halakhah pesuqah -- OC and the publicly relevent dinim of YD, CM, and EhE.
The SAhR (basing myself as much on OC 155:1 as the AhS's quote, since
the quote left me confused) says that a person should learn TSBK, TSBP,
halakhos pesuqos, talmud. But talmud can't be the tachlis of his learning,
because he first needs to know all that halakhah without deep sevaros,
just to do applied halakhah.
But, the AhS concludes, we have seen that if we tell the masses this --
presumably to focus on applied halakhah -- they won't learn at all. People
just want to learn a daf gemara every day. So we shouldn't stop them,
and halevai they keep to it.
"Vekhol divrei Torah meshivas nafesh meivi'ah leyir'as Hashem tehorah!"
...
: Keep in mind that R. Moshe Feinstein, who enthusiastically
: supported Daf Yomi because it covers the entire Gemara, deduced the
: obligation to study the entire Torah from the imperative, "to
: remember all that one has learned."
when it comes to miqra and mishnah, the iqar is to learn the conclusions
-- information, attitudes, values.. But when it comes to gemara, the
iqar is to learn how to think. The essence is the dialectic getting to
the conclusion; the conclusions are Rif / halakhah pesuqah, ie mishnah,
not gemara. I do not understand why RMF demands retention of conclusions,
rather than retention of the skills (and art) of the process. I think
that covering the daf in an hour via spoon feeding (shiur, reading
Schottenstein footnotes before even trying for oneself, etc...) subverts
either goal; but I hadn't seen gemara in terms of that goal.
Tir'u baTov!
-Micha
--
Micha Berger It is our choices...that show what we truly are,
mi...@aishdas.org far more than our abilities.
http://www.aishdas.org - J. K. Rowling
Fax: (270) 514-1507
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Message: 3
From: Micha Berger
Date: Sun, 28 Aug 2016 18:26:15 -0400
Subject: Re: [Avodah] How to teach emuna
On Wed, Aug 17, 2016 at 11:26:19AM +0300, Marty Bluke via Avodah wrote:
: Actually if you look in Tanach the revelation at Sinai is basically ignored
: until Nechemia. The Neviim while mentioning yetzias mitzrayim never mention
: matan torah at Har Sinai... It
: seems that this was not the foundational event that the Kuzari proof claims
: it was.
There are two positions I would want to keep distinct:
1- The appeal to tradition, which I believe was R' Yehudah haLevi's intent.
and
2- The Kuzari Principle, which is a 20th cent converson of the Kuzari's
point into something more rigorous philosophically by trying to prove
that such traditions can't be faked. Or that even claiming a National
Revalation is a globally unique tradition. And the like.
In the Kuzari (1:11), the chaver defines his Deity as "E-lokei Avraham,
Yitzchaq veYaaqov" who took the Jews out of Mitzrayim with osos and
mofesim, fed them in the Midbar, apportioned them the land of Kenaan,
sent them Moshe with His Torah, and after him thousands of nevi'im...
Maamud Har Sinai and its national nature don't get mention until 1:87,
discussing the meaning of Shabbos.
... They also saw Moses enter it and emerge from it; they distinctly
heard the Ten Commandments, which represent the very essence of
the Law. One of them is the ordination of Sabbath, a law which had
previously been connected with the gift of the Manna. The people
did not receive these ten commandments from single individuals,
nor from a prophet, but from God, only they did not possess the
strength of Moses to bear the grandeur of the scene. Henceforth the
people believed that Moses held direct communication with God, that
his words were not creations of his own mind, that prophecy did not
(as philosophers assume) burst forth in a pure soul, become united
with the Active Intellect (also termed Holy Spirit or Gabriel),
and be then inspired. They did not believe Moses had seen a vision
in sleep, or that some one had spoken with him between sleeping
and waking, so that he only heard the words in fancy, but not with
his ears, that he saw a phantom, and afterwards pretended that God
had spoken with him. Before such an impressive scene all ideas of
jugglery vanished. The divine allocution was followed by the divine
writing....
I would say Rihal finds a role in national revelation to buttress our
belief in the Divine origin of the Torah, but not G-d's existence to
begin with.
Apiqursus -- denial of creation; meenus -- denial of personal or national
redemption; kefiah -- denial of revalation. Maamad Har Sinai is the
bullwark against kefirah.
In Shemos 19:9 Hashem does say that He will be speaking to Moshe with
everyone in the audience "vegam bekha ya'aminu le'olam". So it seems
Ma'amad Yar Sinai was designed to be a cornerstone of our faith (but
I would not necessarily say in the KP sense), in that Torah miSinai is
indeed a cornerstone.
Similarly Devarim 5:8-10, "Umi goy gadol asher lo chuqim umishpatim
... Hishamer lekha ... pen tishkach es hadevarim asher ra'u einekha
... Yom ashe amadta lifnei H' Elokeikha bechoreiv..."
Which would mean that nevi'im, who are trying to evince basic
mentchlachkeit and monotheism out of the masses wouldn't need to invoke
Har Sinai. That's only for people whose message is "... so follow halakhah
already"! Their message was more Avraham's than Moshe's.
In contrast to an introduction to mishnah, where the point is belief
that all the complexity of halakahh is from G-d. There wone would expect
something like, "Moshe qibel Torah miSinai, umaserah liYhoshua..."
Tir'u baTov!
-Micha
--
Micha Berger It isn't what you have, or who you are, or where
mi...@aishdas.org you are, or what you are doing, that makes you
http://www.aishdas.org happy or unhappy. It's what you think about.
Fax: (270) 514-1507 - Dale Carnegie
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Message: 4
From: Micha Berger
Date: Sun, 28 Aug 2016 19:10:54 -0400
Subject: Re: [Avodah] The takana of krias hatorah on Monday and
On Sun, Aug 21, 2016 at 10:54am +0300, R Marty Bluke wrote:
: Todays daf (Bava Kama 82a) discusses the takanos of Ezra and one of the
: takanas mentioned is that of reading the Torah on Mondays and Thursdays.
: The Gemara says that the takana was made so that people would not go 3 days
: without Torah based on the pasuk vayelchu shloshes yamim bamidbar vlo matzu
: mayim.
: I am having trouble understanding this takana. They didn't learn Torah in
: the midbar? Without this takana people would just sit and waste the day and
: not learn any Torah? ...
Well, not Torah sheBikhsav. Until Arvos Moreh Moshe at most had megillos
of what would someday be combined (appended together? redacted?) into
the Torah, and some tannaim hold we didn't get /any/ Torah until then. So
there wasn't a seifer Torah to read from yet.
But in any case, Ezra didn't make the taqanah then. The taqanah waiting
for Ezra implies that it was /his/ generation that had too many men
going three days without learning. Why would this imply anything about
previous generations and how much /they/ learned?
If anything, it raises questions about why the Sanhedrin didn't feel
a need during Menashe's rule. Maybe they thought it would be pointles.
Maybe in those days, enough people did indeed say Qeri'as Shema to not
need another enactment. Maybe the whole point of the taqanah was to
get peer pressure pushing people to open a seifer Torah for at least
3 pesuqim.
Or maybe AKhG simply felt that learning the same verses every day wasn't
broad enough exposure, and they wante to force more of a survey of the
text. Enough to get some conversations going.
Tir'u baTov!
-Micha
--
Micha Berger For those with faith there are no questions.
mi...@aishdas.org For those who lack faith there are no answers.
http://www.aishdas.org - Rav Yaakov of Radzimin
Fax: (270) 514-1507
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Message: 5
From: Micha Berger
Date: Sun, 28 Aug 2016 18:44:40 -0400
Subject: Re: [Avodah] blinded by the light?
On Thu, Aug 18, 2016 at 12:30:39PM +0000, Rich, Joel via Avodah wrote:
: There's a fascinating Ran on the Gemara in Kiddushin 31a concerning
: R'Yosef being blind in which he states that R'Yosef blinded himself so
: as not to have to see things outside of his 4 amot..
"Venistama hava" means he blinded himself? The hitpa'el of "nistama"
would imply as much, but "hava" refers to a state, not an event, no?
: Even if
: not chovel, should/may one do something which limits his ability to do
: mitzvoth (any Torah ones perhaps)?
The gemara he is commenting on is about his joy on learning that a blind
person is still a bar chiyuva. Meaning, before he was blind, back when
he thought being blinded would remove one's chiyuvim, he chose being
removed from his ability to do ANY mitzvos as a metzuveh ve'oseh in
order not to be distracted by seeing the wrong thing?
That would yeild a fascinating hashkafic point.
Anyway, Rabbeinu Gershom at the end of Menachos says that R' Yosef and
R Sheishes followed R' Shimi's practice of staring at the ground, and
it blinded them.
HaMiqra vehaMesorah (pg 14, #3) quotes a Zohar that they blinded
themselves by staying in the dark for 40 days and afterwards looked
at avnei shayish. They were trying to eliminate their far-sight, so
that they would only see what they intentionally tried to look at,
and accidentally blinded themselves altogether.
(Shayish is usually translated as marble or alabaster, perhaps the
meaning here is to the glare off the stone's whiteness when well lit?)
Either way, it was either unintentional, or not entirely intentional.
Tir'u baTov!
-Micha
--
Micha Berger Every child comes with the message
mi...@aishdas.org that God is not yet discouraged with
http://www.aishdas.org humanity.
Fax: (270) 514-1507 - Rabindranath Tagore
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Message: 6
From: Akiva Miller
Date: Sun, 28 Aug 2016 22:29:21 -0400
Subject: Re: [Avodah] Kabbala Fact or Fancy?
Cantor Wolberg wrote:
> Let's learn from God's actions to determine the truth here. God
> granted man senses. His will is clear: accept what your senses
> tell you is real, which by definition means God desires we reject
> what we don't perceive. Thus, God does not wish we imagine a
> bridge to be sitting before a high cliff, and that we continue
> driving to our death. God wishes instead, that we accept our
> senses, that there is no bridge, and that we drive in another
> direction. All 5 principles in the quote above violate God's
> will, as they ask us to blindly accept nonsensical ideas.
I see no requirement to "reject what we don't perceive". We should indeed
reject that which goes *against* logic, but that is very different from
that which we merely "don't perceive".
If we were to reject things merely because we don't perceive them, then we
should have rejected heliocentrism, germs, and quantum physics. And many
*did* reject them. But after much research and time, evidence was found and
these "nonsensical ideas" became widely accepted. Who knows if someday we
may find a basis for the ideas that Cantor Wolberg feels should be rejected?
On the other hand, if anyone knows of a double-blind study, in which
randomized groups of people did and did not eat fish and meat together, or
randomized groups of pregnant women who did and did not step on cut
fingernails, I'd be very interested in seeing the results of such studies.
Of course, those studies would have to consider mitigating factors; if a
person committed the supposedly dangerous act, but suffered no ill
consequences because of whatever zechuyos, that would certainly skew the
research.
Until such research is done, how dare we say that these ideas are
nonsensical? I will certainly agree that I do not understand how these
causes lead to those effects, but until Isaac Newton, we didn't really
understand why apples fall either. And maybe even since then.
Akiva Miller
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Message: 7
From: via Avodah
Date: Mon, 29 Aug 2016 01:40:27 -0400
Subject: Re: [Avodah] Using an oven for both fleishigs and milchigs
From: Micha Berger via Avodah avo...@lists.aishdas.org
: However, Rav Schachter said that
: there is reason to be lenient with regard to kashering a conventional
: oven. In a conventional oven, the food is always placed in pans and
: does not directly touch the surfaces of the oven.
1- How often do people put food directly in the microwave without a plate?
--
Micha Berger
mi...@aishdas.org
>>>>
In all the back-and-forth I have not seen anyone mention that the plate or
bowl of food is not placed directly on the floor of the microwave, but on
a glass tray. Even if the walls and ceiling do not become hot, the glass
tray becomes hot where the hot dish is sitting on it. But it is easy enough
to buy a spare glass tray at Target or Walmart. Put some red nail polish
on one glass tray and some blue nail polish on the other glass tray.
Whenever you warm something up in the microwave, be sure to use the glass tray
of the appropriate gender. Also, cover the food with some plastic wrap or
one of those plastic covers that are made to be used in the microwave. My
microwave oven is spotless, nothing ever splashes or explodes in it. If
anything ever spills, it just spills onto the glass tray.
--Toby Katz
t6...@aol.com
..
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Message: 8
From: Marty Bluke
Date: Mon, 29 Aug 2016 08:14:41 +0300
Subject: Re: [Avodah] The takana of krias hatorah on Monday and
On Monday, August 29, 2016, Micha Berger <mi...@aishdas.org> wrote:
> But in any case, Ezra didn't make the taqanah then. The taqanah waiting
> for Ezra implies that it was /his/ generation that had too many men
> going three days without learning. Why would this imply anything about
> previous generations and how much /they/ learned?
> If anything, it raises questions about why the Sanhedrin didn't feel
> a need during Menashe's rule. Maybe they thought it would be pointles.
> Maybe in those days, enough people did indeed say Qeri'as Shema to not
> need another enactment. Maybe the whole point of the taqanah was to
> get peer pressure pushing people to open a seifer Torah for at least
> 3 pesuqim.
The Gemara states that Moshe made the original Takana of 3 pesukim and
Ezra expanded it. So this Takana already existed at the time of Menashe
that they would read the Torah on Mondays and Thursday's. In fact it
existed in the midbar because Moshe made it.
On Mon, Aug 29, 2016 at 2:10 AM, Micha Berger <mi...@aishdas.org> wrote:
> Well, not Torah sheBikhsav. Until Arvos Moreh Moshe at most had megillos
> of what would someday be combined (appended together? redacted?) into
> the Torah, and some tannaim hold we didn't get /any/ Torah until then. So
> there wasn't a seifer Torah to read from yet.
While your point sounds good, the Gemara states (see the Rambam hilchos
tefila 12:1) that Moshe Rabenu (or very early Neviim) was mesaken krias
hatorah on Mondays and Thursdays.
This reminds me of something I saw about tefillin in the midbar. I had
always assumed that after the Jews got the Torah of course they started
wearing tefillin, after all it is one of the 613 mitzvos. However, it is
not so simple.
Tefillin have to have the 4 parshiyos from the Torah placed within them.
The Malbim makes the following fascinating point. There is a dispute
between R' Yochanan and Resh Lakish whether the Torah was given Megilla
Megilla or chasuma nitna. Rashi explains that megilla, megilla means that
as soon as an event happened Moshe would write it down and after 40 years
in the Midbar he put them all together and made a sefer torah. Resh Lakish
holds that the Torah was only written down after 40 years in the midbar
when it was finished. The Malbim says that according to Resh Lakish who
holds that Torah chasuma nitna they didn't put on tefillin all 40 years
because they didn't have the parshiyos yet while according to R' Yochanan
they did once the 4 parshiyos were written. However, the Chavatzelet
Hasharon points out that there is an explicit medrash in Shir Hashirim that
states that the Jews wore tefillin in the midbar and he discusses
additional sources relating to this question.
This is very similar to the point that you are making. Certainly according
to Resh Lakish who holds that Torah chasuma nitna, how could Moshe Rabenu
have been misaken krias hatorah on Mondays and Thursdays, what did they
read? And even according to R' Yochanan that megila megila what did they
read from, there was no complete sefer torah yet?
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Message: 9
From: Simon Montagu
Date: Mon, 29 Aug 2016 14:43:04 +0300
Subject: Re: [Avodah] Using an oven for both fleishigs and milchigs
On Mon, Aug 29, 2016 at 8:40 AM, Rn T Katz via Avodah <
avo...@lists.aishdas.org> wrote:
>
> In all the back-and-forth I have not seen anyone mention that the plate or
> bowl of food is not placed directly on the floor of the microwave, but on a
> glass tray. Even if the walls and ceiling do not become hot, the glass
> tray becomes hot where the hot dish is sitting on it. But it is easy
> enough to buy a spare glass tray at Target or Walmart. Put some red nail
> polish on one glass tray and some blue nail polish on the other glass
> tray. Whenever you warm something up in the microwave, be sure to use
> the glass tray of the appropriate gender.
>
Why go to such trouble? Glass is neither bolea` nor polet. I understand
that some people are mahmir not to use the same glassware for both meat and
milk, but this case (assuming non-parev food is never directly on the glass
plate) is like NTbNTbNTbNT, and hettera to boot, so it seems hardly
necessary to have separate glass plates.
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Message: 10
From: via Avodah
Date: Mon, 29 Aug 2016 11:03:46 -0400
Subject: Re: [Avodah] Using an oven for both fleishigs and milchigs
In a message dated 8/29/2016 7:43:05 A.M. Eastern Daylight Time,
simon.mont...@gmail.com writes:
Why go to such trouble? Glass is neither bolea` nor polet. I understand
that some people are mahmir not to use the same glassware for both meat and
milk, but this case (assuming non-parev food is never directly on the glass
plate) is like NTbNTbNTbNT, and hettera to boot, so it seems hardly
necessary to have separate glass plates.
>>>>
Non-parev hot food is frequently on the glass plate because of spills.
That's exactly why you need the glass plate and don't want to put your bowl
or dish directly on the floor of the microwave.
--Toby Katz
t6...@aol.com
..
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Message: 11
From: Lisa Liel
Date: Mon, 29 Aug 2016 15:29:49 +0300
Subject: [Avodah] aveilut for an abuser
Do the laws of aveilut change at all if a parent sexually abuses a child
and the parent dies?
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Message: 12
From: Rich, Joel
Date: Mon, 29 Aug 2016 18:28:19 +0000
Subject: Re: [Avodah] aveilut for an abuser
> Do the laws of aveilut change at all if a parent sexually abuses a child and the parent
See http://www.hakirah.org/Vol%209%20Wolowelsky.pdf
Kol tuv
Joel rich
>
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Message: 13
From: Zev Sero
Date: Mon, 29 Aug 2016 15:15:39 -0400
Subject: Re: [Avodah] Using an oven for both fleishigs and milchigs
On 29/08/16 07:43, Simon Montagu via Avodah wrote:
> Why go to such trouble? Glass is neither bolea` nor polet.
Only for Sefardim. Ashkenazim hold that glass is the same as ceramics,
and not only is it bolea` and polet, but hag`ala doesn't help.
> I understand that some people are mahmir not to use the same
> glassware for both meat and milk,
This is not a chumra. It's ikar hadin, according to Ashkenazim.
--
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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