Avodah Mailing List

Volume 40: Number 88

Thu, 29 Dec 2022

• 1. RLakish & RElozor - Is less than honest thinking a deception OR What is honest thinking (Rabbi Meir G. Rabi)
• 2. Ben PeKuAh - Reviah and Kilayim permitted EVEN MiDerabbanan (Rabbi Meir G. Rabi)
• 3. Tamar and Yehudah - The Missing Markers (Rabbi Meir G. Rabi)
• 4. why believe at all (Joel Rich)
• 5. Re: Tamar and Yehudah - The Missing Markers (Zvi Lampel)
• 6. Who wrote Perush Yonatan? (Motti Yarchinai)
• 7. Interrupting Davening (Prof. L. Levine)

R Elozor was angry with RLakish for voicing a challenging opinion [which he
dismissed] without disclosing that it was in fact the objection of
RYochanan.
This suggests that had he known it was RYochanan?s opinion he would NOT
have dismissed it.
This seems improper. After all RElozor was giving his considered opinion -
would it be right for him to disregard his own opinion because RYochanan
disagreed?
If he would pay heed to RYochanan?s opinion in violation of his own
understanding, would that not be contrary to the Halacha?

I suggested that in matters that are Shikul HaDaAs it is correct to bow to
one?s superior but not in other matters.

Reb Micha queries - When isn't it shiqul hadaas? -
The answer to that Q is - when one feels that there is only a slight
preference for one ruling/interpretation over the other. How large is
?slight?? I have no idea but people generally know it in their gut.
In other words, what may be clear to the mind of one may not be to the mind
of another.

We Pasken as per Beis H bcs they prioritised Beis Sh opinion first, they
gave themselves space to consider the alternate opinion before pronouncing
their own in order to give themselves the best opportunity to consider it
without personal bias and honour/prestige being an influence.

Reb Micha also wrote that - The whole reason why someone who never did
shimush is an am haaretz or a bur is because real pesaq ALWAYS needs a
feel, and not just expertise. -
I think the Maharal has a different approach - see Nesiv HaTorah end ch 15
where he explains that blindly following the Pesak of great TCh is contrary
to the purpose of the Torah and Creation. We are supposed to think and
analyse. That is why, the Maharal explains, one who Paskens from the
Mishnah, even if his Pesak is absolutely correct, is nevertheless a
destroyer of the world. The meaning of Shimush is thus learning to analyse
and probe, to unpick our considerations so that we can identify WHY we take
a particular position, rather than taking a position and then finding
arguments to defend it.

I believe we may have discussed this earlier regarding R Ch Voloshiner's
explanation [PAvos Ch 1] of becoming covered in the dust of the feet of
one's teachers, which he interprets to mean WRESTLE with your teachers,
RAISE THE DUST or have a 'dust up' with them [as we see the Torah describe
YaAkov's fight VaYeOVek Ish Imo] if you have Qs about their ruling.


Best,

Meir G. Rabi

0423 207 837
+61 423 207 837
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Regarding Ben PeKuAh, Reb Micha asks ?What's left that Chazal weren't
gozerim on??
In other words as per the Gezeirah, the Ben PeKuAh is pretty much the same
as any ordinary animal.

Reb Micha, you will likely be surprised to discover that Chazal left very
large gaps in their decree - and it would appear this was quite intentional
- to permit many instances of Ben PeKuAh.

1]  a non fully gestated Ben PeKuAh has no decrees at all, it does not even
require Shechita and it goes without saying that its Cheilev and Gid is
Muttar - and it has no Issur Reviah or Kilayim.

Reb Ch Kanievsky advised that he ruled that the Shechita of the Ben PeKuAh
requires a Beracha [a great Machlokes that surfaces with regard to Ner
Chanukah - when one lights at a second doorway due to Marit HaAyin] and
when queried if this is also true for the non-fully gestated BP he conceded
it requires no Beracha bcs it requires no Shechita.

2]  But even the fully gestated requires no Shechita when it has a fused
hoof or perhaps fused hooves - that is the example given in the Gemara and
quoted by the Mechaber. The Rema however, qualifies that, saying ?or if it
has even the slightest unusual feature? And he likely took his bearings
from the Gaonim who relied upon that to raise herds of Benei PeKuAh and
bring them alive to various public gatherings such as weddings - where they
would decapitate them, cook them and feed the flesh to the assembled
crowds. [the Gaonim were at war with the Karaites who rubbished the entire
notion of Ben PeKuAh, even ruling that Shechting a pregnant animal is
prohibited as Osso VeEss BeNo, thus prompting the RaMBaM and others to
include what is NOT IN THE Gemara, a defense to Shechting pregnant animals]
See the Gaon there who says we are lenient with Dearabanans and ESPECIALLY
WHEN IT?S ONLY MARIT HA?AYIN.

3]  Even a fully gestated without unusual features has no Marit HaAyin
until after it has walked about.

4]  The progeny of non-fully gestateds, even though born fully gestated,
have all the qualities of non-fully Gestateds i.e. they require no Beracha
on their Shechitah; their Cheilev and Gid is Muttar and they have no
Issur Reviah or Kilayim.

Best,

Meir G. Rabi

0423 207 837
+61 423 207 837
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Thank you Rabbi Lampel.

Indeed there is a Medrash that Tamar could not locate Yehudah's passport
and drivers licence.
She only found them when she was already obviously with child for all to
see and be humiliated and condemned.

However, this does not answer our Q.
Actually, it suggests that her strategy was to do exactly as we asked, to
prove to Y, early on, that he was the father, or at least that he had been
with her, and from there to be married to Sheilo and thus all remains
dignified.
This makes sense otherwise she was putting herself in danger as she likely
knew the consequence of being discovered to be with child out of wedlock.
Unless we assert that she thought it was highly unlikely that she would be
from that event, as Chazal say women do not fall pregnant on the first.

Neverthelss, our Q remains - Why did she not send Y a message as soon as
she realised she was with child, even without the actual evidence, she
could describe when they met, where they met, what he promised to give her,
and what he left as a security and either disclose she is with child or
not, probably yes in order to make Y realise that a decision must be made
ASAP if they wish to remain dignified.

Could you please explain your comment, word would get out - she would have
been able to tell Yehuda he accomplished the yibum, //word would get out//,
and all would be fine.
Would it not be preferable that word NOT get out?


Best,

Meir G. Rabi

0423 207 837
+61 423 207 837
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From my discussion (with a wavering  friend) of a recent book :

In the post modern times that we live you can?t prove anything to anybody (
like Ramban ? no slam dunk proofs in Gemara commentary)
Perhaps the best we can hope for is weight of evidence, but if we hang our
hopes on the incredible wisdom of Torah proof, we should be aware that
there are others selling other  incredible wisdom as well. I wish I had a
better answer, but this is a subset of the "why believe at all" issue. I
often think about Rav Lichtenstein?s piece on the source of faith being
faith itself. The challenge is that if you don?t have that "loving feeling"
yourself, somebody else articulating it to you is not necessarily
communicable unless you can do the Vulcan Mind Meld. I wish I had answers.


KT
Joel Rich
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On Tue, Dec 27, 2022 at 8:08 PM Rabbi Meir G. Rabi <meir...@gmail.com>
wrote:

> Thank you Rabbi Lampel.
>
> Indeed there is a Medrash that Tamar could not locate Yehudah's passport
> and drivers licence.
>

That's funny. And it provokes the need to determine a factor that I think
is essential to the account. Could Tamar use the signet, etc., to prove her
story to the Bes Din, or were they only usable to prove her story to
Yehudah?

If they were like his passport and driver's license, then Yehudah could not
deny they are his, and she could credibly threaten to publicly expose him
by producing them. On the other hand, he may invent another explanation as
to why Tamar has them. Or, he may bank on her resisting publicly
embarrassing him.

If they were only usable to convince Yehudah that he is the one who
impregnated Tamar, then Tamar could only rely on his integrity to call off
her serayfa.

Two sources take the case to be the latter.

Maharam Shif questions how the Gemara learns from Tamar the preference of
throwing oneself into a fiery furnace to publicly embarrassing someone. He
notes that Tamar had nothing to gain by publicly accusing Yehudah,
because he could simply deny the charge.

Rabbi  Y. Herczeg sent me a piece from Yalkut HaMachiri on Mishlei 28:14,
which praises Yehuda for overcoming his yetser hara in response to Tamar's
plea to him to publicly admit his actions, "haker na," taken in the sense
of being aware of the Creator. (The terminology is, Haker es Bora-a-cha
v-al tisbayeish mibasar v-dam. I'm not sure of the meaning of the phrase
v-al tisbayeish mi-basar v-dam. Do not allow yourself to be embarrassed?
Overcome your embarrassment? Do what is right despite the embarrassment?)

Both sources understand that it was very hard for Yehudah to admit his role
in the events. The Yalkut HaMachiri states that as a reward for doing so,
he saved his sons from death!



> She only found them when she was already obviously with child for all to
> see and be humiliated and condemned.... it suggests that her strategy was
> to do exactly as we asked, to prove to Y, early on, that he was the father,
> or at least that he had been with her, and from there to be married to
> Sheilo and thus all remains dignified.
>
Yes.

> This makes sense. otherwise she was putting herself in danger as she
> likely knew the consequence of being discovered to be with child out of
> wedlock. Unless we assert that she thought it was highly unlikely that she
> would be from that event, as Chazal say women do not fall pregnant on the
> first.
>
Yes.

>
> Neverthelss, our Q remains - Why did she not send Y a message as soon as
> she realised she was with child, even without the actual evidence, she
> could describe when they met, where they met, what he promised to give her,
> and what he left as a security and either disclose she is with child or
> not,
>

The Abarbanel points out some more relevant factors that emerge from the
pesukim that may help explain.

Yehudah thought his two previous sons had died innocently, as a result of
intimacy with Tamar, and that Tamar did not get pregnant from them because
of a flaw in her biology. That is why he kept Sheilah away from her. She
knew better, but either would not let Yehudah know the truth, or he didn't
believe it.

I am now suggesting that it follows that for her to tell Yehudah before she
got noticeably pregnant that she tricked him into intimacy with her
would destroy their relationship. He would think that she was in effect
killing him. When she did become noticeably pregnant months later, and
presented him the evidence that she was intimate with him, he realized that
he was wrong on both counts. She could become pregnant, and intimacy with
her was not a fatal affair. So she had to wait until she was noticeably
pregnant before telling him. Unfortunately, she was not quick enough,
others noticed her pregnant state and assumed it was due to her being
intimate with a non-yibum candidate, and they told Yehudah who thought the
same and sentenced her.

Rather than telling him explicitly that she was pregnant from him, using
lashon nekiah she messaged him that the owner of the signet, etc. is the
one who impregnated her. It was now up to him to save her life and face the
embarrassment of being wrong about her and his sons. He indeed overcame the
strong yetzer hara to be silent, and admitted Tsadkah mimeni. (He might
have said this to whoever she sent with the items to Yehudah, and Yehudah
may then have simply reported to the Beis Din that upon investigation
Tamar's pregnancy was not caused through any illegitimate act on her part,
or explicitly that it was through him and one hundred percent kosher. I
would lean towards the latter, because otherwise there would be the
question of who then married Tamar, and who is the father of her children.)

probably yes in order to make Y realise that a decision must be made ASAP
> if they wish to remain dignified.
>

A decision by Yehudah to cover up his failure to have either Sheilah or
himself perform yibum withTamar, due to his mistakes about Tamar and about
his sons (keep in mind that this was Yehuda's shame, not his apparent
engagement with a prostitute) would indeed strip Tamar of her dignity and
life, but it would leave his own public image unscathed. Apparently, that
yetzer hara to not admit to his mistakes and failure was very, very,
strong.

>
> Could you please explain your comment, word would get out - she would
> have been able to tell Yehuda he accomplished the yibum, //word would get
> out//, and all would be fine.
> Would it not be preferable that word NOT get out?
>

I meant word would get out that her pregnancy was due to Yehudah, and that
it was a matter of yibum, and kosher, and he did a mitzva (albeit without
kavanah) and she did not have relations with an outsider.

Zvi Lampel
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In many chumashim, there is a commentary on Targum Yonatan headed "Perush
Yonatan." Does anyone know who wrote it, or t least when (approximately) it
was written?
Note, I don't ask who wrote the Targum Yonatan itself, because no-one
knows. It is wrongly named Yonatan, reputedly because some publisher
mistook the abbreviation T"Y for Targum Yonatan and thought it meant
Yonatan ben Uziel, but he did not translate any of the first section of
Tanach. TY actually stood for Targum Yerushalmi (meaning it was a "western"
translation, not of "eastern" (i.e. Babylonian) origin, but nobody knows
who the author was, only that he was from Eretz Yisrael. Among scholars, it
is more correctly called Targum Pseudo-Jonathan.
Targum Pseudo-Jonathan is not exactly a translation in the strict sense of
the word, because he adds material of non-biblical origin, which is not in
the text of the Torah, even by implication. A striking example of this is
in his translation of Bereshit 1:16. It contains a bit of calendar
arithmetic, which he no doubt felt had great significance, but it was
completely non-understandable, until a fragment from the Cairo Geniza
material published by Solomon Shechter at the turn of the 20th Century shed
light on what he meant by it.
The author of Perush Yonatan is one of those who did not understand its
significance because he tries to correct the time quantity mentioned by TY,
but his correction makes even less sense and, in light of what we now know
(information that was buried for centuries), the time-quantity contained in
TY needs no correction at all, and that information may go some way to
explaining TY's motivation for including it in a translation, where it
really has no place, because it is not part of the text he is purporting to
translate.
I would like to know (at least) when, and by whom that perush on TY was
written. The one person I know (a Rabbi Mattis Kantor) who might know the
answer to that question, is, I fear, no longer in a condition to answer the
question.

Motti
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The following is from today's OU Kosher Halacha Yomis.


Q. Shulchan Aruch rules that one who needs to use the bathroom may not
daven. What should a person do if he realizes that he needs the bathroom
after he already began Shmoneh Esrei?

A. Shulchan Aruch (OC 92:2) writes that if one realized that he needs the
bathroom after he already began Shmoneh Esrei, he may not interrupt his
davening. The Rema partially disagrees. He writes that if one is at the
point that he is violating bal teshaktzu (i.e., he has a strong urge to
relieve himself), then one must stop davening and use the bathroom.
Afterwards, one should continue from where they left off (provided that the
break was not long enough to daven the entire Shmoneh Esrei, which would be
a hefsek). The Magen Avrohom disagrees with the Rema. He writes that since
Chazal forbade interrupting Shmoneh Esrei, one must continue davening even
though he has reached the point of bal teshaktzu. He reasons as follows.
Just as kavod ha?briyos (avoiding embarrassment and preserving human
dignity) overrides the prohibition of bal teshaktzu, so too the prohibition
to be mafsik (interrupt)in the middle of Shmoneh Esrei overrides baal
teshaktzu. The Mishnah Berurah (92:11) accepts the
  ruling of Magen Avrohom but adds that if one cannot wait to use the
  bathroom until after Shmoneh Esrei, all agree that one must interrupt the
  davening and continue afterwards.


Professor Yitzchok Levine

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