Avodah Mailing List

Volume 35: Number 139

Wed, 13 Dec 2017

• 1. Re: Your Ancestors (Micha Berger)
• 2. Rambam Hilchot Kiddush Hachodesh (Ben Waxman)
• 3. Re: Your Ancestors (Simon Montagu)
• 4. Re: What are the main mitzvos to focus on? (Ben Bradley)
• 5. Purpose of distant galaxies? (hankman)
• 6. Re: Rambam Hilchot Shivtat Assur 3:3 (Micha Berger)
• 7. Re: Women and Torah Study (Micha Berger)
• 8. Re: Rambam Hilchot Kiddush Hachodesh (Micha Berger)

On Sat, Dec 09, 2017 at 06:27:13PM +0200, Simon Montagu via Avodah wrote:
: >      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.

The author is just saying that the same model that giver the result
of 600 years for Euopeans gives a result of 3,600 for all of humanity.

: 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?

Well, really the model says that everyone who is alive today almost
certainly (this is statistics, after all) descended from everyone who
was alive 3,600 who has /any/ living descendents.

Not that there was one such ancestor.

Gut Voch!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             What you get by achieving your goals
mi...@aishdas.org        is not as important as
http://www.aishdas.org   what you become by achieving your goals.
Fax: (270) 514-1507              - Henry David Thoreau

1) Rambam Hilchot Kiddush Hachodesh 3:1 makes it clear that anyone who 
sees the new moon and can get to Jerusalem by the following evening 
should go. How would that work today given that basically means that 
every male in Israel who sees the moon should go (maybe men in Eilat who 
don't own a car would be patur). Were most (or even a small minority of) 
Israeli Jewish males above the age of 13 to look, there is no way that 
the Beit Din could even question all of these men, even if they only 
asked a couple of questions.

Is there any problem in making sure that you don't see the moon? Just 
stay in for the evening. Rambam doesn't say that there is a chiyuv to look.

Or since the Beit Din only takes testimony from trusted witnesses, can 
someone just say "I never got any type of certification that I am a good 
witness, therefore I don't need to go".

Or how about having a few (say 100) men in each major city or region 
entrusted with the job and they would be the designated possible witnesses.

2) Rambam Hilchot Kiddush Hachodes 2:10 says clearly that once the beit 
din declares the new month, that is it, even if they know that they made 
a mistake. Yet in 3:15 and 16 Rambam writes that in the situation where 
no witnesses came on the 30th, if witnesses come later in the month and 
are able to prove that they did see the moon come out on the 29th, that 
month's calendar is redone. Is this not an obvious contradiction? I 
assume that I am reading 3:15 and 16 incorrectly or that I am getting 
something wrong here.

3) Later in the book Rambam goes on at length and in extreme detail 
about how to calculate the moon's position. He adds that we know these 
calculations from science and that since we no longer have a tradition 
about this matter from the nevi'im, it is fine to use outside sources. 
Seeing this made me wonder why we don't apply this rule in other areas. 
For example, I had read that we don't make matza from barley because we 
don't have a tradition as to how it takes barley to become chameitz. So 
why not measure it?

Ben

On Sun, Dec 10, 2017 at 2:07 AM, Micha Berger <mi...@aishdas.org> wrote:

> On Sat, Dec 09, 2017 at 06:27:13PM +0200, Simon Montagu via Avodah wrote:
> : >      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.
>
> The author is just saying that the same model that giver the result
> of 600 years for Euopeans gives a result of 3,600 for all of humanity.
>
>
That's not the non sequitur. The non sequitur is going from "we have a
common ancestor 3,600 years ago" to "Confucius and Socrates are your
ancestors". Confucius and Socrates lived around 2500 years ago, and how
does the author know that they had any living descendants?



> : 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?
>
> Well, really the model says that everyone who is alive today almost
> certainly (this is statistics, after all) descended from everyone who
> was alive 3,600 who has /any/ living descendents.


> Not that there was one such ancestor.
>

I haven't read the model, but the article you linked to talks several times
about "/a/ common ancestor", "/a/" person to whom all living people are
related", etc.


>
> Gut Voch!
> -Micha
>
> --
> Micha Berger             What you get by achieving your goals
> mi...@aishdas.org        is not as important as
> http://www.aishdas.org   what you become by achieving your goals.
> Fax: (270) 514-1507              - Henry David Thoreau
>
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I don't recall everything I've read on this subject of the purpose of
talmud torah, but the conversation here so far seems to be missing a
crucial piece, namely the transformative aspect of talmud torah on the
individual learning it.

The problem with the instrumental view is that it doesn't account for a
number of aspects of the way chazal unanimously viewed talmud torah. If it
was just about knowing how to keep the mitzvos then, I think, we'd have
trouble with the following off the top of my head

  1.  The intensive way chazal went about talmud torah - the lack of sleep
  involved, the amora who sat on his hands until they bled, disappearing
  from family for years at a time
  2.  The viewing of talmud torah as a unending project
  3.  The depth and incisiveness of analysis expected in learning gemara. Eg being able to metaher a sheret
  4.  the lack of differentiation between learning issues of practical use and those which you will never need to know from a practical point of view


Maybe I'm missing something, but knowing how to keep the mitzvos per se need not involve any of these.

There are clear indications of the transformative nature of talmud torah in
chazal, even if these aren't stated as its purpose explicitly. Perhaps
there's a distinction between its purpose and the meaning of lishma. So
learning torah lishma, whatever that means, is transformative, which is a
primary purpose if not the only one.

That would also bring talmud torah in line with the other mitzvos, since
they all have a transformative benefit to the individual. It would also set
it apart since it is more transformative than all the others, ie kneged
kulam. It is the most transformative, and thus the most important. That
said, considerations other than personal growth give priority to other
mitzvos in many situations.


Ben



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I have just been watching a show on Discovery Science about a lay version
of quantum mechanics. At one point the moderator was talking about the
notion of entanglement and explained  how in theory this involves the
connection of entangled particles over any distance instantaneously. He
then continued to say that given the big bang theory, all of existence was
at a single point and then expanded (inflated) from then to the great
distances, billions of light years, we witness today. But at the initial
moment after the singularity, all the particles of the universe were close
enough to possibly become entangled with some other, but then after the
expansion, the partner entangled particle might have ended up in some
distant far removed  galaxy and but  thereby still be related to its
entangled partner particle perhaps now in our body here on Earth.

I then thought back to some of the earlier discussions here on Avodah about
the purpose of these distant galaxies that could never affect us here on
Earth and that we did not even know existed until recently. Perhaps this
possibility of entanglement with distant particles of those galaxies from
the time of creation may provide some logic to the purpose of the existence
of those distant galaxies?

Happy Chanukah veKol tuv

Chaim Manaster
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On Sat, Dec 09, 2017 at 10:20:41PM +0200, Ben Waxman via Avodah wrote:
: 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.

Isn't the very definition of a minhag ta'us one that promotes doing
an issur, or violating an asei? At least, violating an asei actively;
I don't know if I would include a minhag not to fulfil an asei besheiv
ve'al ta'aseh. That kind of thing would require more research.

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             Worrying is like a rocking chair:
mi...@aishdas.org        it gives you something to do for a while,
http://www.aishdas.org   but in the end it gets you nowhere.
Fax: (270) 514-1507

On Sun, Dec 03, 2017 at 06:40:43AM +0000, RJR reposted here a comment
of his on a recent post on Lehrhaus:
: Is encouraging intensive study of Talmud for women a community priority
: or is the priority to make such study available for those who choose to
: avail themselves of the opportunity? Especially if the former, where
: does it stand in relation to other community priorities and how does
: the answer differ from study for men? IMHO these questions have not been
: sufficiently addressed. Do my concern resonate at all?

Mod-Yeshivish (in contrast to other forms of MO) may argue that since
learning primarily means shas and lomdus, and the iqar method for refining
one's soul is learning, now that women are given the toolds to be able to
make sense of Talmud, making it available to them is a community priority.

To quote RALichtenstein from
<https://www.thelehrhaus.com/commentary/women-talmud-study-and-avodat-hashem>:

   What is the cardinal principle that lies at the heart, on the one hand,
   of Yeshiva education and, on the other hand, is the lynchpin of liberal
   education. It is, first and foremost, the notion that one is concerned
   with molding the person and only secondarily with preparing or training
   for the fulfillment of a certain role. John Cardinal Newman's
   statement, that "we are men by nature, geometrists only by chance,"
   epitomizes this approach and it is one with respect to which, I have
   indicated, the Yeshiva world and the world of liberal education at its
   best coincide.

   Of course, that is not to suggest that preparing for a role, be it a
   domestic role, a professional role, or a communal role, is not
   important. It is important, but secondary. The first principle, I
   think, with regard to education generally, and which needs to be
   particularly emphasized in the field of women's education, is that
   first and foremost one needs to mold the person as an individual in all
   respects, with regard to character, personality, intellectual ability,
   and above all, of course, in religious terms, as an oved Hashem.
   ...
   If we ask ourselves: Here are the goals! "[leyir'ah, le'avah, la'avod,
   lishmor, ledavqah, lalekhet bekhol derakhav]," to fear [God], to love
   [God], to serve [God], to cling [to Him] to go in all His ways." What
   are the means? Traditionally, over the centuries, there has been a
   fairly sharp dichotomy precisely regarding this very issue, namely
   the means to be employed in relation to men versus women...

   This is not the occasion to examine whether that was justified
   historically. What is clear, however, is that notwithstanding how one
   judges the past retrospectively, in our present historical and social
   setting we need to view the teaching and the learning of girls and
   women as both a major challenge, as well as a primary need.
   ...

But this is creating a role for halakhah study out of whole cloth that
is really RAL's chiddush. After all, historically curricula for girls'
and women did include character-shaping material, but OVERTLY so --
mussar, hashkafah and the lessons in each taken from studying Tanakh.
And leave halakhah to learning the job, rather than liberal arts.

And I would repeat a point made by RYGB when asked about this topic:
Where is the evidence that our current boys' curriculum works so well
that we're in a rush to make the curriculum for girls' more similar to it?

In general, the yeshivish -- including the ModY -- take NhC shaar 4 to
mean that learning refines the soul in some mystical way. Just learn, and
the problem will solve itself. Whereas I personally think the data points
the other way. And that the NhC intended that statement prescriptively --
true talmud Torah is learning in a way that consciously aims to refine
the soul. Which is why there is all that Mussar and Middos talk around
AishDas and its web site.

My own inclination, and this really just translates to "my parents
provided a RWMO upbrining" (with some variety thrown in in the form
of school choices), would be that we can't prioritize providing talmud
study for women over clear-cut chiyuvim.

Talmud study should be made available, but for those women who feel
a need for talmud study. Which puts me in the same camp as the LR's
effective position. Women coming to kiruv with egalitarian leanings were
encouraged by the LR to learn Talmud if they wish to. But you wont find
a gemara class in Beis Rivka.

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             "And you shall love H' your G-d with your whole
mi...@aishdas.org        heart, your entire soul, and all you own."
http://www.aishdas.org   Love is not two who look at each other,
Fax: (270) 514-1507      It is two who look in the same direction.

On Sat, Dec 09, 2017 at 10:59:26PM +0200, Ben Waxman via Avodah wrote:
: 1) Rambam Hilchot Kiddush Hachodesh 3:1 makes it clear that anyone
: who sees the new moon and can get to Jerusalem by the following
: evening should go. How would that work today....

And then think what happens if the calculations were for a long month. The
guy invests all that effort just to get to locked Lishkas haGazis doors. I
would be frustrated.

But to get to your question. I think that's a taqanah in order to insure
that there is eidus. Rather than everyone saying someone else will go.

There is no how that would work today, since you need a Sanhedrin to make
it work. But isn't this a derabbnan, to make sure all those who see the
moon don't assume someone else will go, and there ends up not having 2
kosher eidim? So, if the the next Sanhedrin finds that too many people
are coming / would come and we're far from needing such a guarantee,
they can repeal this din.


: 2) Rambam Hilchot Kiddush Hachodes 2:10 says clearly that once the
: beit din declares the new month, that is it, even if they know that
: they made a mistake. Yet in 3:15 and 16 Rambam writes that in the
: situation where no witnesses came on the 30th, if witnesses come
: later in the month and are able to prove that they did see the moon
: come out on the 29th, that month's calendar is redone. Is this not
: an obvious contradiction? I assume that I am reading 3:15 and 16
: incorrectly or that I am getting something wrong here.

The famous story of the calendar dispute between Rabban Gamliel and R'
Yehoshua (RH 2:8-9) includes R' Aqiva saying,
    "Eileh mo'adei H' asher tiqre'u osam" --
    bein bizmanan, bein shelo bizmanan,
    ein Li mo'ados ela eilu.

Which is what the Rambam is saying in 2:10. He quotes R' Aqiva's
prooftext.

In that mishnah, both R' Gamliel and R' Yehoshua knew the metzi'us, they
were arguing over whether to accept the eidim despite a flaw in their
story. They may have even been arguing about the cheshbon, and whether
there was a need to accept whatever eidim one had. The beginning of
mishnah 9 has R' Gamliel ordering R' Yehoshua to show up "beyom
haKippurim shechal lihyos *becheshbonkha*".

There may be a difference between making a mistake in terms of
decision-making and making one because they were working with bad or
incomplete data. 2:20 is about their decision being wrong, 3:15-16 is
about a lack of eidus. An error in the cheshbon or perhaps decision in
general vs an error in facts. While this guess about p' 2 is less than
compelling, it would seem that in p' 3 he is empowering a BD to go back to
their cheshbon when they were forced by a lack of testimony to lengthen
the month despite it. After all, 3:15 describes BD sitting all of the
30th, meaning wanting a short month, without witnesses comming. So I
feel more comfortable with that part of the guess. Maybe R' Yehoshua
would have renegged without needing R' Aqiva had other eidim arrived
days later to corroborate the first two.

: 3) Later in the book Rambam goes on at length and in extreme detail
: about how to calculate the moon's position. He adds that we know
: these calculations from science and that since we no longer have a
: tradition about this matter from the nevi'im, it is fine to use
: outside sources. Seeing this made me wonder why we don't apply this
: rule in other areas. For example, I had read that we don't make
: matza from barley because we don't have a tradition as to how it
: takes barley to become chameitz. So why not measure it?

But lemaaseh we don't, because we need a Sanhedrin to make a RC. For
that matter, we even pad when we say Qiddush Levanah, making the one
day difference irrelevent. So what halakhah lemaaseh is the Rambam
talking about, that relies on the calculations? Giving license to
the next Sanhedrin?

I am not even sure we know the scientific difference between chameitz
and sirchah. Or even if there is one. Why is dough made with 100%
juice a different thing than if the juice were diluted, or if it were
all water? If we don't know what it is we should measure, how can we
use science to measure it?

I think it has to be something like that, because the lack of barley
matzah isn't a modern issue. And the ability to measure rising doesn't
require some modern measuring equipment. So, why was the question left
unsolved by centuries of acharonim if it were resolable?

Similarly, we know the medical communities' various definitions of
death. (They're all pretty similar.) But we don't know if halachic misah
would use the same definition. But even those who stick with heart death
would use the latest scientific tools to determine whether or not the
person had their last heartbeat (lo aleinu).

So I would posit the issue is a chiluq between using science to determine
the physical state vs having a pesaq as to what physical state needs
determining.

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             Like a bird, man can reach undreamed-of
mi...@aishdas.org        heights as long as he works his wings.
http://www.aishdas.org   But if he relaxes them for but one minute,
Fax: (270) 514-1507      he plummets downward.   - Rav Yisrael Salanter


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