Avodah Mailing List

Volume 38: Number 99

Thu, 19 Nov 2020

• 1. Re: Teaching your child a trade (Prof. Levine)
• 2. Re: chochma on hold: (Moshe Y. Gluck)
• 3. The AriZal and the Baal Shem Tov (Jay F. Shachter)
• 4. ad hayom hazeh (Rich, Joel)
• 5. Are Raw Apples not so Kosher? (Prof. L. Levine)
• 6. Re: Are Raw Apples not so Kosher? (gil.stud...@gmail.com)
• 7. Re: Pushing Off the Upsherin (Akiva Miller)
• 8. Re: ad hayom hazeh (Micha Berger)
• 9. Re: The AriZal and the Baal Shem Tov (Zev Sero)
• 10. Re: Barely a Minyan in COVID Times (Ari Zivotofsky)

At 10:55 PM 11/17/2020, Moshe Y. Gluck wrote:
>R' YL:
>The Agudah has such programs. For example, Daniel Soloff?  is
>
>National Director at Professional Career 
>Services, a division of Agudath Israel which 
>functions in Lakewood. While not overtly 
>supported by BMG, it is known that many who have 
>learned in BMG get job skills through this organization.
>
>
>
>As former BMG registrar and current Agudah 
>employee, I can attest to how great this 
>organization is and how successful its graduates 
>are. That said, it speaks to the opposite of R' 
>YL's point - if such programs exist (and they 
>do, as he said), why should one worry about learning a trade at a younger age?
>
>KT,
>MYG

On the contrary.  I would argue that this is one 
way that requires a father to make sure his son 
acquires the skills to earn a  living.

As far as "learning a trade at a younger 
age",  it is incumbent on the father to make sure 
that his son gets the secular education when he 
is young so that he can participate in such a 
program.  If a young man cannot read, speak, and 
write English on a reasonable level, do basic 
mathematics, etc. then he will have trouble 
participating in such a program and may not be able to complete.

What is the failure rate for those who try to 
complete a course of study in the

National Director at Professional Career 
Services?  When Daniel Soloff met with me some 
years ago, he bemoaned the lack of basic secular 
knowledge of some who wanted to enter the program 
and even wanted me to teach a course in the program.

Some years ago I tutored a chassidic young man 
who attended Touro College in basic 
mathematics.  He knew nothing about fractions, 
percents, etc.  and had failed the a required 
math course at Touro.  As a result,  he was not 
going to graduate despite having completed all of 
the other requirements for graduation.  I was 
shocked at the fact that here was a grown man (He 
was married with a family.)  who had such an 
abysmal knowledge of the fundamentals of 
mathematics.  IMO it was his father's 
responsibility to have made sure that this 
fellow  had been  taught and mastered basic mathematics.

YL
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R' Joel Rich:

> From a book review:
> You will not find here comparative analyses of the various approaches:
> ?Torah Only? versus ?Torah im Derech Eretz? versus ?Torah Umadda.? This
> enhances the book because those arcane discussions have always been more
> the province of scholars in their ivory towers than that of actual wage
> earners out in the workforce.
> Rabbi Lopiansky instead sets out a model elegant in its simplicity: The
> time spent in yeshivah is a period in which a young man takes on the role
> of Shevet Levi??a stratum of undiluted and uncompromised spirituality with
> a minimum of interaction with the material world.? These years are ?the
> stratum [that] becomes the core of our being.? The subsequent years in the
> work world are years in which one must find his role as one of the other
> shevatim??to know our mission in life and to realize it.? Such missions
> must be solidly within the framework of osek b?yishuvo shel olam??the
> constructive building and enhancement of the world.?
>

This reminds me of something R' Dovid Feinstein ZTL told me some 22 years
ago. I asked him, if someone is capable of becoming "toraso umnaso" is he
obligated to do so. He responded by asking me if I learned kol haTorah
kulah, to which I responded that I had not. He motioned to me that I still
need to learn. He added that in general, a person doesn't reach his full
capability in learning Torah; even if a person learned kol haTorah kulah,
he already forgot some of what he learned at the beginning and has to start
over and learn it again.

KT,
MYG
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>
> Date: Mon, 16 Nov 2020 14:23:03 -0500
> From: Zev Sero <z...@sero.name>
> 
>>
>> ... and thus observing this practice may constitute an imitation of
>> pagan ritual.
>>
> 
> The fact that the AriZal and the Baal Shem Tov themselves personally 
> practiced it should be enough to dismiss any such concerns.
> 

Please explain the logic behind that statement.


                        Jay F. ("Yaakov") Shachter
                        6424 North Whipple Street
                        Chicago IL  60645-4111
                                (1-773)7613784   landline
                                (1-410)9964737   GoogleVoice
                                j...@m5.chicago.il.us
                                http://m5.chicago.il.us

                        "Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum videtur"

The phrase "ad hayom hazeh" (until this day) appears 76 times in Tanach and
"ad hayom" another 12 times. Some authorities understand it generally to
mean until the time the Torah was written while others understand it as
forever.
Does the latter interpretation mean that some avenues of free will are foreclosed? According to the former, why bother telling us?
KT
Joel Rich

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From https://vosizneias.com/2020/11/18/are-raw-apples-not-so-kosher/?utm_source=feedburner&;utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+vin+%28Vos+Iz+Neias%29

Recently, a family member purchased apples from Costco.  The label on it
states in small lettering that there is a coating on it which may very well
be halachically problematic.


After apples are picked off the trees, growers often wash them to remove
bugs, dirt and leaf litter. Most of the apple?s natural wax is washed away
dulling the apple?s appearance.  A coat of edible synthetic wax is used to
replace it to make up for it. Mostly, this is either shellac or carnauba
wax.  They help to both seal in the moisture and extend the shelf life of
the fruit.

But where does shellac come from?  It comes from a beetle known as Kerria Lacca.

<snip>


The issue is not a new issue. What is new is that a growing number of
organizations and people are taking the more stringent view. Why this has
happened is another issue. But few can deny that the matter is of growing
concern.

THREE-WAY DEBATE

The debate seems to be a three-way debate between Rav Moshe Feinstein zt?l,
Rav Elyashiv zt?l, and Dayan Weiss zt?l. It concerns the Kashrus of
confectioner?s glaze and other food resins that are used on hundreds of
food products, including apples and candy, and come from beetles.

<Snip>

So far, no kashrus agency has extended effort to research which apples are
kosher and which ones apply the questionable coating.  Until that happens,
one can either choose to rely on the lenient Poskim or employ one of the
following four methods of shellac removal.

See the above URL for much more.

YL
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This is an old question from the 80's. Rav Belsky permitted it because the
non-kosher ingredients in the wax are batel and are inedible.


Gil Student
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.
R' Yitzchok Levine wrote:

> I think it is most likely that she simply followed what she
> saw others doing and did not even consider asking any posek.
>
> Mimetic Judaism is still very much alive when it comes to
> being influenced by the practices of those around us. ...
>
> There are many other examples of this.  People who never went
> to a bonfire on Lag B'Omer now go. ...
>
> Following the crowd is a powerful human draw.

Yes it is! And isn't that exactly how minhagim are *supposed* to work?

Once upon a time, the traditionalists said Birchos Krias Shema exactly as
had been done for centuries. And along came the innovators, introducing
their Piyutim. Now, the traditionalists want to continue saying their
Piyutim, and the innovators are more sensitive to the problems of Hefsek.

Is one more correct than the other? Some say things must never change, and
others say it is natural and normal. I prefer the middle road, where
changes come slowly and carefully, and under the guidance of our leaders.

Akiva Miller
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On Wed, Nov 18, 2020 at 05:44:55AM +0000, Rich, Joel via Avodah wrote:
> The phrase "ad hayom hazeh" (until this day) appears 76 times in Tanach
> and "ad hayom" another 12 times. Some authorities understand it generally
> to mean until the time the Torah was written while others understand it
> as forever.

I think this is related to the question of diberah Torah belashon benei
adam. Which benei adam? Does this give license to say the Torah was written
specifically to make sense to the Dor haMidbar? Or, that the Torah was
written in a language aimed at all the generations of its audience?

The difference is in approaches like R/Dr Joshua Berman's, where much of
the Torah is explained in contrast to the AZ and politics of that era.
See an interview with him for examples
https://www.torahmusings.com/2015/03/qa-with-r-prof-joshua-berman/
(and he since came out with a book. But RJB is far from alone in this.

But if DTbLBA means the language of the Ancient Near East, then when the
Torah says "hayom hazeh", it has to be something that makes sense to an
ANE reader. And needn't continue to be true afterwards.

In general this approach demands that contemporary readers of the chumash
read it keeping the times and other context in mind. That we are reading
a book phrased as though it is for someone else

Which is pretty much why I am /not/ in favor of that approach. It requires
preserving way too much context, without which too much of the Torah's
meaning is lost. The Torah is /for/ every generation, so why wouldn't
be in /language equally meaningful to/ every generation?

And thus keeping the phrase to mean that it uses human idiom. Knowing that
"Yad Hashem" means His power, not that He has a Hand.

Or using the word "raqia" doesn't mean that the Author was literaly
describing a shell the stars were embedded in. Any more than Neil de
Grass Tyson needs to believe in geocentrism to use the words "sunrise"
and "sunset" -- something I once heard him talk about on YouTube.

RJB finds his approach in the Rambam, From that interview:

    Do you have to have a PhD in Egyptology in order to understand
    the Torah? Can that be?

    In the Guide to the Perplexed (3:49), the Rambam expresses sorrow
    that he didn't know more about ancient practices, because that would
    have helped him better understand the Torah. There certainly are
    many things that we can understand today because of our enhanced
    understanding of the ancient Near East....

But li nir'eh that doesn't mean peshat in the pasuq. The Rambam is
talking about the content of mitzvos requiring knowing what AZ was like,
in order to better know how the Torah weens us away from them.

Which, frankly, I have a harder time with than saying the text is written
for its time. But that's a well known issue: How does the Rambam in the
Moreh make it sound like the role of qorbanos is specific to weaning us
away from a kind of AZ we don't see anymore, and yet still discuss the
restoration of qorbanos and their being a mitzvah ledoros in the Yad?


AND... The Rambam's use of DTBbA isn't even Chazal's use! R Yishma'el
didn't say it about anthropomorphications, but about grammar. R Aqiva,
who darshened al kol qotz vaqotz tilei tilin shel halakhos, who darshened
the word "es", had 19 middos of derashah that looked at each word.
RY held no, the words themselves are the normal use of language, it's
their meanings we should darshen. Not that "akh" is a mi'ut, but is the
meaning of a given word or phrase a perat?

> Does the latter interpretation mean that some avenues of free will
> are foreclosed? According to the former, why bother telling us?

Let me give a mashal from Widen Your Tent sec. 2.5 (I agree with the
author on this point):

    When you drop a drop of ink into a cup of water, the ink spirals
    around in some chaotic pattern and eventually diffuses until the
    entire liquid is a uniform light blue. Even though each time you
    repeat the experiment the dance and spiral are different, something
    about the process in general is predictable. If you had different
    snapshots of the sequence that were significantly far enough apart
    in time, you could place them in historical order. Entropy always
    increases until it reaches the maximum. The system runs a certain way,
    reaching equilibrium.

    History also has a known final state the Messianic Era. The colorless,
    pure potential of this world will be eventually assigned a meaning
    represented by the sky blue of techeles, of the vision of sapphire
    paving stones under the Heavenly Throne during the revelation at
    Sinai. (Shemos 24:10) People have free will, and therefore how the
    process unfolds is not fixed. And, like ink in water, it's hard
    to understand the purpose of any particular dance or spiral in the
    process of history. Still, the general parameters are known. We are
    tending toward equilibrium.

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger                 Circumstances don't make a person,
http://www.aishdas.org/asp   they reveal a person.
Author: Widen Your Tent
- https://amzn.to/2JRxnDF

On 17/11/20 5:38 pm, Jay F. Shachter via Avodah wrote:
>> Date: Mon, 16 Nov 2020 14:23:03 -0500
>> From: Zev Sero<z...@sero.name>
>>
>>> ... and thus observing this practice may constitute an imitation of
>>> pagan ritual.

>> The fact that the AriZal and the Baal Shem Tov themselves personally
>> practiced it should be enough to dismiss any such concerns.

> Please explain the logic behind that statement.

The logic is very simple.  Maaseh rav.  If they did something then it is 
impossible for it to be assur, and it is a chutzpah to suggest that it 
might be.

-- 
Zev Sero            Wishing everyone a *healthy* and happy 5781
z...@sero.name       "May this year and its curses end
                      May a new year and its blessings begin"

Rich, Joel via Avodah wrote:
> From 
> https://vosizneias.com/2020/11/17/barely-a-minyan-in-covid-times/

>> What happens when not all of the ten people that have gathered for the 
>> minyan are davening now? Is it considered Tefilah b'Tzibbur?  ...

> The author was looking for yechaveh daat 5:7

see this article text and note 4:
https://outorah.org/p/5704/


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