Volume 37: Number 99
Mon, 30 Dec 2019
Subjects Discussed In This Issue:
Message: 1
From: Prof. L. Levine
Date: Thu, 26 Dec 2019 17:42:22 +0000
Subject: [Avodah] Celebrating Birthdays ? A Torah View
https://rabbiefremgoldberg.org/audio_listing/celebrating-birthdays-a-torah-view/
I think that many will be surprised by this talk. There are opinions that
Jews should not celebrate birthdays. Rabbi Efrem Goldberg strongly makes
the point that even according to those who say it is OK to celebrate
birthdays that the celebration should be on the Hebrew date and not on the
secular date.
YL
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Message: 2
From: Rich, Joel
Date: Fri, 27 Dec 2019 04:05:48 +0000
Subject: Re: [Avodah] Celebrating Birthdays ? A Torah View
There are opinions that Jews should not celebrate birthdays. Rabbi Efrem
Goldberg strongly makes the point that even according to those who say it
is OK to celebrate birthdays that the celebration should be on the Hebrew
date and not on the secular date.
YL
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I gave a shiur on this a number of years back. My main take away was it should be used as an opportunity for reflection, Not A celebration per se
Kt
Joel rich
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Message: 3
From: Joshua Meisner
Date: Thu, 26 Dec 2019 23:07:55 -0500
Subject: Re: [Avodah] Chanukah and the Jews Living in Bavel
On Thu, Dec 19, 2019 at 12:36 AM Joseph Kaplan via Avodah <
avo...@lists.aishdas.org> wrote:
> ?Prof. Levine posted the following quote about the Jews who went to Bavel
> in the time of the Hasmoneans in Areivim 37/102 (I?m replying here in
> Avodah because the moderators told me my comment is sufficiently Torah
> related):
>
> "While it seemed like tragedy at the time, these brilliant men, Torah
> scholars all, immediately established a Jewish infrastructure upon arrival
> in Babylon. A dozen years later when the Temple was destroyed, the Jews who
> were exiled to Babylon found there yeshivas, synagogues, kosher butchers,
> etc., all the essentials for maintaining a Jewish life. (See Part 23<
> https://www.simpletoremember.com/articles/a/babylonian_exile/>)?
>
> Prof. Levine?s question arising from the quote was the following:
>
> ? However, I have never heard that the Jews living in Bavel offered any
> assistance to the Jews in EY during the 30 years of the fighting. Surely
> the Jews in Bavel must have become aware of what was going on in EY during
> this 30 year period. I can only wonder why they did not come to the
> assistance of the Jews living in EY. Does anyone have any information
> about this??
>
> I?m not particularly interested in that question. What I do wonder about
> is the quote. More specifically, I wonder how the person who wrote it knows
> what he appears to say are historical facts. I looked at the linked article
> and the link in that article but I really didn?t find any historical
> sources supporting ?Torah scholars all, yeshivas, synagogues, kosher
> butchers.?
>
I assume that the author was taking creative license based on Sanhedrin
38a, which states more generally that the galus of Tzidkiyahu was pushed
earlier so that they would arrive while the charash and the masger of the
galus of Yechonya were still alive.
To address RDYL's question, what would such help have looked like? A
brigade of soldiers (or elephants)? A steady stream of volunteers?
Massive infusions of gold that could be used to buy modern weaponry on the
black market? Considering the distance between Bavel and Eretz Yisroel and
the difficulty in traveling between one and the other, this question may
have a very modern bias to it.
I was going to suggest that the king of Persia may have further objected to
any of this assistance leaving his territory, but, according to Wikipedia,
the Parthians did not conquer Bavel until shortly after the neis of
Chanukah, prior to which it was until the control of the... Seleucids.
Hence, the Seleucid governor of Bavel certainly would not have approved of
any aid being provided to the rebellion in Eretz Yisroel. Did the decrees
against Torah in Eretz Yisroel also apply in Bavel? I've never heard this
discussed.
More generally, it seems that we (or maybe just I?) know little about the
Jews of Bavel during the time period in question. Ezra (and perhaps
Zerubavel) left there a couple of centuries earlier, while Nechemya left
from and Mordechai and Esther were in Paras. There are a handful of
tanna'im called Bavli'im, but the center of the chachmei hamishnah was
clearly in Eretz Yisroel. While it's conceivable (although perhaps not
likely) that there were direct lines from the yeshivos of the charash and
masgeir to the yeshivos of Rav and Shmuel, that wouldn't necessarily mean
that there was strong religious leadership the whole time that would have
coordinated such an assistance drive for the Chashmona'im.
Just a few thoughts.
A lichtige Chanukah (What's the origin of this phrase, by the way?),
Josh
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