Avodah Mailing List

Volume 34: Number 117

Wed, 21 Sep 2016

• 1. Re: Why should one have to make Hataras Nedarim every year? (Mandel, Seth)
• 2. The Bronze Age Collapse (Micha Berger)
• 3. Re: The Bronze Age Collapse (Chesky Salomon)
• 4. Re: Why should one have to make Hataras Nedarim every year? (Akiva Miller)
• 5. Re: Do you ever recite Birkas Hamazon on crackers? ()
• 6. Re: mezonos rolls (Akiva Miller)
• 7. Re: Do you ever recite Birkas Hamazon on crackers? (Zev Sero)
• 8. Re: Mezonos Becomes HaMotzi (Akiva Miller)
• 9. Re: R Avraham (Micha Berger)
• 10. Re: Mezonos Becomes HaMotzi (Micha Berger)

From: Professor L. Levine <llev...@stevens.edu>
Sent: September 20, 2016 at 1:24:51 PM
> In light of this, why should one have to make Hataras nedarim every
> year? It seems to me that saying it once should suffice forever.

Hattarat n'darim before RhS is a late minhag and had nothing to do
with Hattarat n'darim from the Torah. In fact, you need to do Hattarat
n'darim for any neder you need to be mattir during the year according
to the poskim. It is still a minhag and not an obligation, but almost
everyone does it because it is printed in the siddur.

I recently encountered the idea multiple "coincidental" times, so now
I am wondering about it.

Seems that somewhere around 1207 - 1177 BCE (judging from Egyptian
records), there was a widespread collapse of Bronze Era civilations. To
quote wikipedia <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Late_Bronze_Age_collapse>:

   The Late Bronze Age collapse was a transition in the Aegean Region,
   Southwestern Asia and the Eastern Mediterranean from the Late Bronze
   Age to the Early Iron Age that historians believe was violent, sudden
   and culturally disruptive. The palace economy of the Aegean Region and
   Anatolia that characterised the Late Bronze Age was replaced, after
   a hiatus, by the isolated village cultures of the Greek Dark Ages.

   Between c. 1200 and 1150 BC, the cultural collapse of the Mycenaean
   kingdoms, the Hittite Empire in Anatolia and Syria, and the New
   Kingdom of Egypt in Syria and Canaan interrupted trade routes and
   severely reduced literacy. In the first phase of this period, almost
   every city between Pylos and Gaza was violently destroyed, and often
   left unoccupied thereafter: examples include Hattusa, Mycenae, and
   Ugarit. According to Robert Drews: "Within a period of forty to fifty
   years at the end of the thirteenth and the beginning of the twelfth
   century almost every significant city in the eastern Mediterranean
   world was destroyed, many of them never to be occupied again".

   The gradual end of the Dark Age that ensued saw the eventual rise of
   settled Syro-Hittite states in Cilicia and Syria, Aramaean kingdoms
   of the mid-10th century BC in the Levant, the eventual rise of the
   Neo-Assyrian Empire, and after the Orientalising period of the Aegean,
   Classical Greece.

And:
    Robert Drews describes the collapse as "the worst disaster in
    ancient history, even more calamitous than the collapse of the
    Western Roman Empire."

Historicans are still arguing as to what caused it -- the orthodoxy a
century ago was the invation of the Sea People, whomever there were;
or it could have been climate change, volcanoes, drought, other
migrations or raids, being overtaken by iron-based societies or
other military tech, a "general systems collapse" etc...

The obvious question: By most chronologies, this ould be late Yehoshua
early Shofetim. (As for the Sea People theory, the Pelishtim take over
Azza in 1100 BCE or so.)

Is there anything in Tanakh about this? Could this be the reason why
we fractured from centralized authority (Yehoshua) to lots of local
cheiftans (Shofetim)?

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             I thank God for my handicaps, for, through them,
mi...@aishdas.org        I have found myself, my work, and my God.
http://www.aishdas.org                - Helen Keller
Fax: (270) 514-1507

On 2016-09-20 4:37 PM, Micha Berger via Avodah wrote:
> Seems that somewhere around 1207 - 1177 BCE (judging from Egyptian
> records), there was a widespread collapse of Bronze Era civilations. To
> quote wikipedia <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Late_Bronze_Age_collapse>:
<snip>
> The obvious question: By most chronologies, this ould be late Yehoshua
> early Shofetim. (As for the Sea People theory, the Pelishtim take over
> Azza in 1100 BCE or so.)
> 
> Is there anything in Tanakh about this? Could this be the reason why
> we fractured from centralized authority (Yehoshua) to lots of local
> cheiftans (Shofetim)?

There?s some interesting discussion of this topic on a thread titled
?The First Dark Age? and saved at Jerry Pournelle?s site:
<http://www.jerrypournelle.com/science/firstdark.html>.

There?s nothing I recall from Yehoshua, Shofetim, or Shemuel which
directly points to any sort of regional collapse.  I wonder whether the
collapse might have occurred during the 40 years wandering the
wilderness, and that our re-encounter with regional powers was in a
post-collapse world so we just assumed that was ?normal?.

I also find it intriguing that this collapse allowed Benei Yisrael to
establish themselves in a part of the world otherwise of all-too-much
interest to empires.

?Chesky Salomon

R' Yitzchok Levine wrote:

: Note the last paragraph says "Behold I make formal declaration
: before: you and I cancel from this time onward all vows,..
:
: In light of this, why should one have to make Hataras nedarim
: every year? It seems to me that saying it once should suffice
: forever.

R' Micha Berger answered:

> Hatarah can't be done lemafreia. It's a nice declaration of
> intent, but the paragraph you're quoting isn't legally binding.

Why isn't a declaration of intent valid? Especially in this case, where one
makes it known to the public?

> Notice that it is said /after/ the beis din was actually matir
> his nedarim.

Why is that relevant? Hatara of an already-made vow is an entirely
different procedure than preventing future utterances from taking effect.

PLEASE NOTE that I am not sufficiently knowledgeable to claim that this
one-time declaration *should* be valid forever. I'm just asking what the
rules are and how it works.

Akiva Miller
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From: "Professor L. Levine via Avodah"  <avo...@lists.aishdas.org>
From today's OU Halacha  Yomis


Q: Do you ever recite Birkas Hamazon on  crackers?

 
 
>>>>
 
I have never recited Birkas Hamazon on crackers but today for the first  
time I recited Birkas Hamazon on my cellphone.  Here is my question:   When I 
close a bentsher  or a siddur I kiss it.  When I finish  bentshing off my 
phone should I kiss the phone before closing that  screen?
 

--Toby Katz
t6...@aol.com
..
=============


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


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Subject: [Avodah] mezonos rolls

I wrote that it is okay for a hechsher to label such rolls as "mezonos", if
that's how they hold the ikar hadin to be. R' Eli Turkel asked:

> which brings up the question of what is a mehadrim
> hashgacha if they follow a minority opinion

Oh, I see. You're under the impression that mehadrin hashgachas don't
follow minority opinions. Well, in that case, I'd have to suggest that the
answer is "marketing".

Hmm... I think R' Zev Sero's answer might be even better. He wrote:

> Who says it's a minority opinion?

which I would interpret as: Depending on which poskim count and which
poskim don't count, the majority/minority can be whichever you want.

Akiva Miller
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On 20/09/16 15:51, via Avodah wrote:
> I have never recited Birkas Hamazon on crackers but today for the
> first time I recited Birkas Hamazon on my cellphone.  Here is my
> question:	When I close a bentsher  or a siddur I kiss it.  When I
> finish bentshing off my phone should I kiss the phone before closing
> that screen?

I don't think so.  A bencher or siddur is kulo kodesh.  But if you were
reading benching from pages 250-253 of a 1000-page encyclopaedia volume
that happened to include it, I don't think you'd kiss the book.

-- 
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

Rabbi Meir G. Rabi wrote:

> An airline meal which, other than to those living in the third
> world, is not a true meal by any stretch of the imagination,
> is not the benchmark for defining Halacha.
> ...
> There are likely many thousands who keep busy work schedules
> and make a meal on the go their regular lunch, but that hardly
> qualifies to set the standard to define a meal.

I thank RMGR for bringing a new question to light: EXACTLY what do we mean
by "seudah" in this context?

In other words:

We already know that "seudah" means different things in various contexts.
For "Kiddush B'Makom Seudah", the seudah can be as little as a kezayis of
plain pasta. Same thing for Melaveh Malka and many other Seudos Mitzvah.
But even a kebeitzah of pas gamur can be eaten outside the sukkah - it is
only when one eats *more* than a kebeitzah that it must be eaten in the
sukkah. And while I will grant that the word "seudah" might not appear in
that context, this same shiur applies to eating a Seudah prior to
performing mitzvos like ner chanuka or bedikas chometz; only if it is
*more* than a kebeitzah does it constitute a Seudah of the sort that is
assur in such situations. (And if anyone wants to quibble over these
examples, please do so elsewhere. I'm only demonstrating that "Seudah" can
have different definitions in different circumstances.)

If so, it is entirely reasonable to ask: If "mezonos becomes hamotzi when
it is eaten as a meal", what do we mean by "as a meal"? What sort of meal
do we compare it to?

> There are likely many thousands who keep busy work schedules
> and make a meal on the go their regular lunch, but that hardly
> qualifies to set the standard to define a meal.

I think it is fair to say that most of us live in three-meal-per-day
societies, and that the morning meal is consistently the smallest of them.
Of the other two meals, some have the midday meal as larger, and some have
the evening meal larger. Among Shomrei Shabbos, the Shabbos meals are
largest of all. This gives us approximately four different meal sizes, and
none of them constitute the majority of one's meals. I don't think any of
the four even has a clear plurality.

RMGR is emphatic that the sort of lunch one eats on a workday cannot define
a standard meal, but in the course of a week, the meals that one has on
weekday evenings is also in the minority. So which one establishes the
shiur of "as a meal" for the halacha of mezonos becoming hamotzi?

Perhaps some poskim have already discussed this, or maybe we can at least
find some relevant sources.

For example, Mishneh Berurah 639:16 cites the Maamar Mordechai: "One who
eats Pas Habaa B'Kisnin in the morning with coffee, and similar, as is our
practice every day of the year -- even though one would not say Hamotzi
because he's not eating a shiur that people are usually kovea on,
nevertheless, he does require a sukkah because he *is* kovea his seudah on
it. Etc."

The MB continues: "He simply gave a common example. The same would apply
even without drinking coffee, since he *was* Kovea Seudah on Pas Kisnin.
And if he *wasn't* Kovea Seudah on it, but merely ate More Than A
Kebeitzah, there are differing views among the acharonim whether he should
bench Layshev Basukkah."

I really think that the MB is distinguishing between meals and snacks:

(1) The common case of "Pas Habaa B'Kisnin in the morning with coffee"
*does* constitute a meal for Hilchos Sukkah. It would do so even if he
skipped the coffee, and the MB does NOT specify how much mezonos he ate
(except to say that it is not enough to make it Hamotzi). The deciding
factor is that the nature of the situation of "Pas Habaa B'Kisnin in the
morning" constitutes Kevias Seudah for Hilchos Sukkah.

(2) It is possible to eat that same amount of Pas Habaa B'Kisnin, in a
manner that does *not* constitute Kevias Seudah, in which case, the
requirement to eat it in a Sukkah is subject to machlokes. The MB doesn't
doesn't spell out exactly what makes this case different from the above,
but it is obvious to me that the distinction lies in the time of day: A
piece of mezonos in the morning is Breakfast; the same mezonos at another
time is a snack.

I concede that the focus here is on Hilchos Sukkah; the MB already said
very clearly that this breakfast *is* a seudah for Sukkah, but at the same
time, it is *not* a seudah for Hamotzi.

Why not? If it *is* Kevias Seudah for Sukkah, why does Hamotzi have
different rules?

One answer might be that nothing is being eaten together with this
breakfast mezonos, and Chazal have already specified that the shiur to
become Hamotzi in such situations would be 3-4 kebeitzim. If so, then we
see that the shiur of "3-4 kebeitzim" applies across the board, to all
meals, and the fact that breakfast tends to be small is irrelevant. If so,
then I would imagine it to be equally irrelevant that Shabbos meals tend to
be large. Rather, there must be a "standard meal" to be used in the halacha
that "mezonos becomes hamotzi when it is eaten as a meal."

I must be honest with myself. If this "standard meal" is neither breakfast
nor a Shabbos meal, then it is probably lunch or dinner, or some
combination. I have seen many groceries in frum neighborhoods where one can
purchase a pre-made tuna sandwich (or other kinds) on a mezonos roll. I
would still be very wary of saying Mezonos on such a sandwich at noon --
but to do so at 3 PM or 10 PM doesn't sound so outlandish any more.

Akiva Miller
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On Wed, Sep 14, 2016 at 06:03:32PM +0300, Eli Turkel via Avodah wrote:
:> I don't get this. First he says that the same mechanicsm does work
:> the other way, then he says it can't -- that the self-change is
:> only possible through a chessed associated with teshuvah?
: 
: His position is that teshuva on an individual sin(s) is a normal process
...

This may depend on peshat in Hil' Teshuvah 3:3, "kol mi shenicheim al
hemitzvos she'asah" loses them all. The Rambam only discusses wholesale
regret. The Kesef Mishnah cites Rashbi (Qidushin 40b) as a source, who
cite "tzidqas tzadiq lo satzilenu beyom pish'o" (Yechezqeil 33:12).

One might even derive from that gemara that we are talking about
regretting mitzvos in wholesale AND (thus?) personality -- the person's
tzidqus is forfeited, which sounds like personality, not deeds.

: The second teshuva is the change of the entire personality. RMA claim is
: that is only by a special gift from G-d. This works in both directions,
: since one is a new person it can remove both sins and good deeds (then its
: not really a gift). In this case one need not go through the technicalities
: of teshuva.

I am missing something.

So, when it comes to teshuvah on the entire personality, it's a special
gift from G-d and usable as teshuvah -- without which such teshuvah would
be impossible. But, it's also a non-gift when used to remove deeds? There
some logical ability to remove the good middos but we need a gift from
the RBSO to remove the bad ones?

And why "good deeds", doesn't this sort of teshuvah deal in middos,
not actions?


Personally, I would have guessed the reverse -- teshuvah on specific
aveiros is the gift, since an event in the past is past, the action
itself cannot be undone.

Whereas teshuvah on character is more logical; whatever character
one has at the end of the "game" is the character Hashem assesses.
And then, teshuvah mei'ahavah, by turning past sins into things to
regret, motivation to do better, could certainly turn those aveiros into
zekhuyos. After all, those memories are now positive motivators in our
character. No need to invoke beyond-teva gifts.

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             The Maharal of Prague created a golem, and
mi...@aishdas.org        this was a great wonder. But it is much more
http://www.aishdas.org   wonderful to transform a corporeal person into a
Fax: (270) 514-1507      "mensch"!     -Rav Yisrael Salanter

On Sat, Sep 17, 2016 at 08:24:33PM +1000, Rabbi Meir G. Rabi via Avodah wrote:
: In the same way that bread we eat today would without question be deemed to
: be Mezonos in Talmudic times (and we may similarly reflect - in the reverse
: - on soft Matza) as we've added oil and sugar...

Back a couple of more steps...

The whole concept of meal changed.

Their meals were generally a bunch of foods you ate on/with some flatbread
-- pita, laffa / taboon, Indian rota, dosa, etc... Those foods being
"lefes". This is what we're talking about when we speak of someone
being qoveia se'udah on bread, and the other foods (minus the usual)
being covered by its berakhos.

Picture a typical Israeli or Sepharadi appetizer course.

I therefore wonder how we knew these rules still applied as those of us
in the golah outside the Middle East evolved away from that kind of meal.
And why they would. Maybe sandwiches are similar enough to think the
same notion of qevi'as se'udah would apply. But in general?

I similarly do not understand how we made this decision when it came
to the berakhah on the loaf-shaped bread itself. How did hamotzi come
to be applied to loaf shaped breads altogether, since they aren't used
to scoop up lefes. Even more reason to assume our breads that have more
than the basic two ingredients are pas haba bekisnin; but even a bread
from a simple dough isn't being used the same.

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             Man is equipped with such far-reaching vision,
mi...@aishdas.org        yet the smallest coin can obstruct his view.
http://www.aishdas.org                         - Rav Yisrael Salanter
Fax: (270) 514-1507


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