Avodah Mailing List

Volume 35: Number 138

Sat, 09 Dec 2017

• 1. SEDRA VAYEISHEV ? TIME TO LOOK IN THE MIRROR (Rabbi Meir G. Rabi)
• 2. Re: The 13 middos (Marty Bluke)
• 3. zmanim (Rich, Joel)
• 4. Davening on Airplanes (Prof. Levine)
• 5. Re: Gid ha'nasheh (Alexander Seinfeld)
• 6. Re: Gid ha'nasheh (Micha Berger)
• 7. Re: zmanim (Micha Berger)
• 8. Re: What are the main mitzvos to focus on? (Alexander Seinfeld)
• 9. Re: What are the main mitzvos to focus on? (Micha Berger)
• 10. Your Ancestors (Micha Berger)
• 11. Re: The 13 middos (Jonathan Ziring)
• 12. Re: Your Ancestors (Simon Montagu)
• 13. Rambam Hilchot Shivtat Assur 3:3 (Ben Waxman)

When the little kid threatens a bouncer ? we all laugh. It is funny
precisely because it is so silly and impossible.

DJT, a buffoon, a bumbling, blithering bad-boy, could not possibly win the
presidency.  It was the standing joke that never grew stale ? until he
became POTUS.

Our Sages say, we are truly unmasked by Kiso Koso & KaAso ? by what we?re
like when feeling liberated:
# deciding how to use our valuables i.e. by what we consider to be important
# intoxicated [not necessarily by alcohol]
# we are agitated i.e. by what presses our buttons.

Yosef tells his brothers about his dream ? expecting them to laugh it off
and he gives them a second chance after they?ve had an opportunity to
reconsider their response.

When we get offended and mock ? it?s time to look in the mirror.


Best,

Meir G. Rabi

0423 207 837
+61 423 207 837
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On Wed, Dec 6, 2017 at 9:23 PM, Micha Berger <mi...@aishdas.org> wrote:

> On Tue, Dec 05, 2017 at 07:15:42AM +0200, Marty Bluke via Avodah wrote:
> : See the Mishne Lamelech avadim 3:9 where he states that it is either or
> and
> : the 2 styles cannot be mixed, and his main proof is from the Gemara
> Shavuos
> : 4b where the Gemara asks on Rebbe how can he darshen a ribui umiut like R
> : Akiva if in general he darshens Klal Uprat...
>
> And yet the conclution on 5a is that he holds like R' Yishma'el's beis
> medrash who holds the derashah is not kelal uperat but ribui umi'ut
> ("ribah umi'at"). R Yisma'el, the one who codified the rules of kelal
> uperat is the one who here uses ribui umi'ut!?
>

The Gemara says that this case is an exception because it is not written in
the normal way of a Klal uprat and therefore in this case ONLY Rebbe can
learn a ribui umiut but in general someone who learns Klal uprat could not
use ribui umiut.


> ...
>
> : See also tosafos nidda 30a s.v. Ushma mina where tosafos says that we
> : pasken that we darshen Klal uprat and not ribui umiut...
>
> Nidda 30a "ushma minah tevilah bizmanah mitzvah" is about holding
> like Beis Shammai, and doesn't mention derashos. The previous d"h,
> "shema minah telas" (a near match) also isn't on topic. Could you
> please fix the citation for me?
>

See the last 2 lines in the Tosafos that I quoted, Tosafos states "d'darish
ribui umiut, V'Kayma lan d'darshinan klali uprati" Tosafos paskens that we
darshen klal uprat not ribui umiut, that strongly implies that they are
mutuallt exclusive

>
>
>
>
> Tir'u baTov!
> -Micha
>
>
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As sunrise got later I was at a minyan where the earliest time for tallit
was approximately the same as the minyan starting time. I watched as
everybody watched their cell phones for the exact time to start from
Myzmanim. (Of course that website says not to rely on to it to the minute)
I was wondering whether this close watch was a subset of a broader need of
man modern man to have exactitude in life versus living with gray. (Sort of
a desire to be Newtonian in a quantum world) I was also wondering whether
the advent of the railroad table approach now requires us to halachically
follow that exactness rather than that the "it looks right to me" approach
of Chazal? Thoughts?
KT
Joel Rich

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At 08:12 PM 12/6/2017, R Micha Berger wrote:
>When it comes to kibud, public treatment does indeed matter...
>However, here we are talking about someone in the olam ha'emes. So they
>know that while on the plane you have that actual issur keeping you from
>fulfilling the minhag of saying qaddish...
>So I do not think it's likely the neshamah would mind the lack of kibud
>as much as they would mind the misplacement of values. I would therefore
>not draw any conclusions from the logical linkage of kibud with intent
>and norms.

 From The Mussar Movement,  Volume 1, Part 2 pages 248 - 249.

    On one of the anniversaries of his father's death, R. Israel was in
    Memel. He was informed that someone else in the synagogue wished to
    say Kaddish. Now R. Israel was very insistent that only one person
    at a time be allowed to recite the Kaddish at the services [28]
    and apparently this congregation had complied with his ruling.
    Reb Yitzchak Isaacson was observing the jahrzeit of a daughter who
    had died very young. Now the Halachah gives precedence to a son
    observing the jahrzeit of a parent on these occasions, and R.
    Israel was obviously entitled to the privilege. Sensing the grief
    he would cause the father by depriving him of the opportunity
    to say Kaddish for his daughter, R. Israel went up to him and
    said: "You sir, will say Kaddish." The worshippers expressed
    their surprise. Not only had R. Israel yielded his own right,
    but also overlooked the duty of honoring his father, since he
    was, by law, obliged to say Kaddish. He explained to them that the
    merit of extending kindness (gemi- lut chesed) to a fellow
    Jew possessed far greater value than the saying of Kaddish.[29]

    [28.] See R. Naftali Amsterdam's will, published in Or Hamusar
          No. 13. See Vol. II of the Hebrew edition of this series,
          Tenu'at Hamusar, II, Chap. 25.

    [29.] Ernile Benjamin, op. cit., p. 25.

It seems to me there are two plausible answers, and both may be correct.

1. Yes, he should not have married Rachel. This is in fact what Leah tells
her, ?You stole my husband.? He was tricked, but he accepted Leah, did not
annul the marriage, so too bad for Rachel. She?s the one who gave away the
password.

2. He wasn?t yet Yisroel. He was still a ben Noach. When he becomes
Yisroel, he is now required to keep the Taryag Mitzvos. It is right after
this name change that she dies. I?m not sure why she doesn?t die
immediately (in Beit-El) rather en route to Efrat. But this delay may have
sown doubt into his mind about his status - maybe he is still a ben Noach.
His sons consider themselves Bnai Yisroel, which is why they are eating
meat that for a ben-Noach would be eiver-min-ha-chai, and which is part of
the lashon hara that Yoseph brings back to Yaakov. But his judgment that
they are Bnai Noach is not merely academic, it is personal, because it has
implications in Rachel?s death.

>
>If he was punished, it must be that he was punished for some choice
>that he made. What choice was that? What did he do wrong? If he could
>do it all over again, what ought he do differently? Specifically:
>After having married Leah, should he have not married Rachel?
>Alternatively, (according to those who say that he was not fooled but
>knew that Leah had the simanim,) should he have not married Leah? Or
>should he have protested and annuled the marriage to Leah?
>
>If he was punished, what did he do wrong?

On Wed, Dec 06, 2017 at 06:10:18PM -0500, Akiva Miller via Avodah wrote:
: We DO accept the reality of a "necessary evil", or a "greater good".
: It's not all black and white. "Well, isn't that the halakhah?" Indeed,
: the halacha prescribes The Way To Go, but that is no guarantee that
: there won't be unpleasant side effects...

A number of rishonim (eg Ramban, Seforno) deal with the problem of
miracles. Since HQBH is Perfect and is capable of a perfect creation,
why would He make a world in which He occasionally would have to step
in and override teva? This is where the Ramban comes in with the idea
that not only the miraculous items listed in Pirqei Avos created during
Maaseh Bereishis, every "exception" to the laws of nature are actually
special cases written into the law.

I'll pause here to remind of what I said last email about "at the
time of creation" and "in response to the situation" both being
oversimplifications caused by us temporal beings trying to think about
Hashem's "Action" which is lemaalah min hazeman and has no "when".

Similarly, one can ask about His Authorship of halakhah. Since Hashem
is capable of writing a system of laws to fit the universe in a way
where obeying the law never has "unpleasant side effects", why wouldn't
He?

One backstep... I just realized you mean something broader by "side
effects" than I was talking about. As you later write:
: upon a Mes Mitzvah on Yom Kippur morning, the halacha is clear that he
: must get involved, even if that means that the day's avodah won't go
: as planned...

Similarly, if piquach nefesh is docheh Shabbos, rather than Shabbos
being huterah, one may have the misfortune of having to violate Shabbos.

But that's not sekhar va'onesh, and my question "but what about Divine
Justice?" doesn't apply. Not unless the "unpleasant side effect" is --
as in the case of Yaaqov's widowerhood or his hip -- painful (physically
and/or emotionally).

There is also another issue... Sekhar mitzvos behai alma leiqa. Not
everything in this world is sekhar va'onesh. Li nir'eh, everything in
this world is to draw us to a state of being able to receive more of
Hashem's tov. Onesh, only when we have a chance of it getting us to choose
more constructively. Which is why the mishnah talks about tzadiqim getting
onesh in olam hazah to spare them in olam haba. Not because pain in olam
hazeh pays off the accoun t early, but because a tzadiq will use the
pain to draw closer to HQBH / to his ideal self. And similarly, resha'im
who wouldn't respond constructively to the challenge... Well, HQBH would
share with them his Tov in the here-and-now rather than not at all.

This takes us away from insisting that the universe must be set up so
that every sin contains its own onesh as a consequence. (If we're using
the consequence model to look at things.)

Instead, we can look at the universe as tending toward tov. And therefore
every step away from tov will as a consequence cause a pull back toward
it. (Which could well be onesh, but in olam hazeh, it could be getting us
connected back to the Meitiv in some other way.)

And applying this back to Yaaqov's marrying two wives... Perhaps it's
not an onesh, but the consequent path closer to the Meitiv in a world
where the aretz was made tamei.

And it's even possible that the challenges of this harder path lead to
a closer place than without. So that overall, the net is maximize sekhar.
Lefum tza'ara.

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             We look forward to the time
mi...@aishdas.org        when the power to love
http://www.aishdas.org   will replace the love of power.
Fax: (270) 514-1507                - William Ewart Gladstone

On Thu, Dec 07, 2017 at 05:49:36AM +0000, Rich, Joel via Avodah wrote:
: I was wondering whether this close watch was a subset of a broader
: need of man modern man to have exactitude in life versus living with
: gray...

Or maybe we were always mechuyavim to be as precise as possible.

: wondering whether the advent of the railroad table approach now requires
: us to halachically follow that exactness rather than that the "it looks
: right to me" approach of Chazal? Thoughts?

Li nir'eh there is value to the "in sync with nature" approach of Chazal
that we lose when we think about clock time rather than the cycles of
the sun (a/k/a the earth's spin).

Much the way we lose a lot of what the yamim tovim mean because we aren't
living in agrarian communities, and don't feel the joy of new wheat and
barley when we celebrate our birth as a people, or the joy of bringing
in the year's fruit when we celebrate how HQBH sustained us in the midbar.

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

:: So basically you are saying that the current Charedi hashkafa/lifestyle
of
:: Torah only and Torah learning being the ultimate purpose of life is not a
:: majority opinion in Chazal and in fact you can't find anyone among Chazal
:: who says this.

: I intentionally avoided stating it that confrontationally, but yes.

Forgive me, this may be a side issue to your main point about the 2
ways/reasons to learn, but I feel it should be clarified what you mean.

How do you understand the Shulchan Aruch - Orach Chaim 155-156 - go
immediately from davening to learning, make Torah your ikkar and malacha
your arai; minimize work to only what you need [Be?er Heiteiv, Mishna
Berura] not more???

Not mainstream? Breaking with Chazal? It?s a verbatim quotation from Gemara
Berachos 35b. And maybe related to Taanis 24b (Chanina ben Dosa and his
wife.)

Now, let?s think sociologically for a moment. Why did the Mechaber choose to
state this halacha the way he does? It seems to me that in his time (as in
all times) there were Jews who were pulled to the needs and attractions of
parnasa and spending the vast majority of their time and energy on it and in
his view not in the proper balance. The fact that he has to state this
halacha implies that not everyone was behaving that way. So the fact that
not everyone behaves this way today is no proof whatsoever against the
halacha.

But anyone who wonders on what basis do some Orthodox Jews forsake full-time
jobs and toil in Torah should read the Beur Halacha on Siman 155.1 - ?Eis
lilmode? 

> 


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On Thu, Dec 07, 2017 at 11:42:27PM -0500, Alexander Seinfeld via Avodah wrote:
::: So basically you are saying that the current Charedi hashkafa/lifestyle of
::: Torah only and Torah learning being the ultimate purpose of life is not a
::: majority opinion in Chazal and in fact you can't find anyone among Chazal
::: who says this.

:: I intentionally avoided stating it that confrontationally, but yes.

: Forgive me, this may be a side issue to your main point about the 2
: ways/reasons to learn, but I feel it should be clarified what you mean.

: How do you understand the Shulchan Aruch - Orach Chaim 155-156 - go
: immediately from davening to learning, make Torah your ikkar and malacha
: your arai; minimize work to only what you need [Be?er Heiteiv, Mishna
: Berura] not more???

You are shifting topics. I wrote about the reasons to learn, and asserted
"Torah only and Torah learning being the ultimate purpose of life...
you can't find anyone among Chazal who says this."

Torah learning should well be the anchor of your day in comparison to
earning a parnasah. (Although if one is learning rather than going to
teach, other mitzvos are dochim.) But not as an ends, as a means.

The hashkafah is new, the priorities not. But the new hashkafah changes
the weighting to be even more in favor of learning.

For example: I don't know what's going on today, but in my day Neir
Yisrael / Baltimore was unique among American "yeshivish" yeshivos
in encouraging talmidim to volunteer to staff kiruv shabbatonim.
(Most/all YU RY were very proactively pro becoming an NCSY advisor.)
The others felt that at this time in their lives, bachurim shouldn't
be distracted from learning. This, despite the fact that adolescents
respond better if there are peer-teachers rather than full grownups of
a different generation, and the program was begging for them. This is
one of the reasons JEP failed.

That's the worldview of the American and Israeli "Litvisher" yeshiva.
Now let's look at actual pre-war Litvisher gedolim. And I don't mean
the obvious mussarists. `Would the aforementioned Meshekh Chokhmah have
agreed with this decision? Is it in concert with RCV's admonition to
his son? What about R' Shimon Shkop, who opens Shaarei Yosher's
haqdamah with (empshasis added):

    Yisbarakh HaBorei Veyis'alah HaYotzeir
    who created us in His "Image" and in the likeness of His "Structure"
    VECHAYEI OLAM NATA BESOKHAINU
    such that our greated desire should be to benefit others
    to the indivindual and the masses,
    now and in the future,
    in imitation of the Creator (kevayachol).

Ikkar doesn't mean "ultimate purpose", and making learning one's ultimate
purpose does push one to go beyond making it the day's ikkar.

:-)BBii!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             Brains to the lazy
mi...@aishdas.org        are like a torch to the blind --
http://www.aishdas.org   a useless burden.
Fax: (270) 514-1507                 - Bechinas haOlam

R' Mike Gerver posted to Mail-Jewish in 1994 a request to help him collect
more date to tighten an argument that odds are, every Jew alive either:
- is a geir or all his ancestry are from geirim recently enough for him to
  know, or
- descends from Rashi. (Or anyone else of that era or earlier.)

See <http://www.ottmall.com/mj_ht_arch/v11/mj_v11i88.html#CYU>

Calculations involve estimating rate of marriage across social strata,
between towns, and between eidot.

All Jews. Even Teimanim. (Ethiopians weren't a discussion yet, odds are
no.)

Well, this article makes that all the more probable:
    http://bigthink.com/stephen-johnson/why-youre-probably-related-to-nefertiti-and-confucius
     Why You're Probably Related to Nefertiti, Confucius, and Socrates
     December 7, 2017   by Stephen Johnson
     ....
     [J]ust how far back do humans need to go to find a common ancestor
     of their own: a person to whom all living people are related?

     The answer, for people of European descent at least, is surprisingly
     recent: 600 years. The common ancestor for every single person alive
     on the planet today, no matter where, lived approximately 3,600 years
     ago. That means Confucius, Nefertiti, Socrates, and any figure from
     ancient history that had children, is in some way your ancestor.

Then, quoting Adam Rutherfore's new book, A Brief History of Everyone Who Ever Lived:
    "We are all special, which also means that none of us is," writes
    Rutherford in the book. "This is merely a numbers game. You have two
    parents, four grandparents, eight great-grandparents, and so on. Each
    generation back the number of ancestors you have doubles. But this
    ancestral expansion is not borne back ceaselessly into the past. If
    it were, your family tree when Charlemagne was Le Grand Fromage would
    harbor around 137,438,953,472 individuals on it -- more people than
    were alive then, now, or in total."

So, why not?

    "You can be, and in fact are, descended from the same
    individual many times over," Rutherford writes. "Your
    great-great-great-great-great-grandmother might hold that position
    in your family tree twice, or many times, as her lines of descent
    branch out from her, but collapse onto you. The further back through
    time we go, the more these lines will coalesce on fewer individuals."

    The startling discovery that all Europeans might share a common
    ancestor who walked the Earth just 600 years ago was first
    proposed in 1999 by a Yale statistician named Joseph Chang. In
    his paper Recent Common Ancestors of All Present-Day Individuals,"
    <https://www.jstor.org/stable/1428340> Chang used complex mathematical
    conceptslike Poisson distributions and Markov chainsto show how
    webbed pedigrees can overlap to produce common ancestors.

If that is true of Europeans in 600 years, Jews over 800 years lo kol
shekein?

:-)BBii!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             We are great, and our foibles are great,
mi...@aishdas.org        and therefore our troubles are great --
http://www.aishdas.org   but our consolations will also be great.
Fax: (270) 514-1507                        - Rabbi AY Kook

[I had to edit this post significantly to fit Avodah's format constaints.
-micha]

Shalom,

I'm touched to be asked.  I have wondered about this (and have again this
week due to Daf Yomi).  I can't say I have strongly formed opinions on it,
but the sugyot do seem to imply that these are more tendencies rather than
rules, at lease re: Klal UPrat vs. Ribbui and Miut.  The drashot of vavim
and the like seem more absolute (X is not doresh vav). Yaakov Elman makes
that point in his article on Ribbui.

A few articles that deal with the topic that I've glanced through are:

The Formal Development of [Kelal uPerat uKelal]
Michael Chernick
<http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2307/23596005>

Tarbiz, pp. 393-410
Towards a History of "Ribbuy" in the Babylonian Talmud

and Yaakov Elman
Proceedings of the World Congress of Jewish Studies
Vol. 11, Division C: Thought and Literature, Volume I:
Rabbinic and Talmudic Literature (1993), pp. 87-94

In general, Michael Chernick and devoted much time to this.  A few other
relevant articles by him:
The Development of Ribbuim and Mi 'utim Hermeneutics," PAAJR",1982-3.
"The Use of Ribbuyim and Mi'utim in the Halakic Midrash ofR. Ishmael," JQK,
1979.
"The Hermeneutic Kelal u-Ferat u-Kelal: Its History and Development," AAJR
Annual Meeting, 1980

I think this will spur me to think more systematically about this.  If I
come up with anything, I will definitely share it.

Jonathan

On Fri, Dec 8, 2017 at 4:11 PM, Micha Berger via Avodah <
avo...@lists.aishdas.org> wrote:
>
>     http://bigthink.com/stephen-johnson/why-youre-probably-
> related-to-nefertiti-and-confucius
>      Why You're Probably Related to Nefertiti, Confucius, and Socrates
>      December 7, 2017   by Stephen Johnson
>      ....
>      [J]ust how far back do humans need to go to find a common ancestor
>      of their own: a person to whom all living people are related?
>
>      The answer, for people of European descent at least, is surprisingly
>      recent: 600 years. The common ancestor for every single person alive
>      on the planet today, no matter where, lived approximately 3,600 years
>      ago. That means Confucius, Nefertiti, Socrates, and any figure from
>      ancient history that had children, is in some way your ancestor.


Unless I'm missing something, those last two sentences are a huge non
sequitur.

I have a slightly different take-away from the article: it says that
everybody has a common ancestor who lived approximately 3,600 years ago.
Isn't that exactly what the Torah says?
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Rambam Hilchot Shivtat Assur 3:3: The Rambam writes a clal: A minhag can 
not cancel something that is assur. A minhag can only prohibit something 
that is permitted.

Is this rule seen as a veto or are there indeed issurim which have been 
become muttar via the power of minhag?



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