Avodah Mailing List

Volume 42: Number 7

Fri, 26 Jan 2024

• 1. rava vs abaye (Joel Rich)
• 2. Re: Quantum of Halachic Time (Micha Berger)
• 3. Re: rava vs abaye (Micha Berger)
• 4. Re: rava vs abaye (Micha Berger)

How do we understand that the halacha follows rava vs abaye except for yaal
kgam? Did the later amoraim review each disagreement and reach a conclusion
in each case? Did they have a general rule (based on intellect? experience?
lineage? Something else?) and carved out these 8 cases? (why?)
Bsorot tovot
Joel Rich
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On Mon, Jan 22, 2024 at 10:13:41PM +0200, Akiva Miller via Avodah wrote:
>> Assuming people walk in shul at the same speed they walk
>> to get places.
> 
> Thank you! If I understand you correctly, you are suggesting that people
> might NOT walk 4 amos at the same speed as they walk a whole mil, so the
> time it takes to walk those 4 amos might NOT be 1/500 of the time it takes
> to walk a mil.

Particularly since the time it takes to walk 4 amos appears most often
in the context of davening -- eg, the pause between entering shul and
davening, or minimum time before taking 3 steps back after Shemoneh Esrei.

So, when I said "in shul", I meant specifically how people walk 4 amos
in shul, or another formal setting.

Similarly, "Shalom Eilekha Rebbe [uMori]" would normally take less than
3-1/3 sec to say. But, if one treated one's rebbe with proper kavod,
and were treating greating him as a formal statement...

Therefore, the speed difference I was focusing on was not about distance,
but about different social settings -- walking in general vs walking
in a maqom qadosh. Which makes RAM's speculation more of a tangent. But
it's interesting none-the-less.

> This brings us to a very fundamental question about the very definition of
> "the time it takes to walk one mil". Yes, I do realize that I am changing
> the subject, because we had previously been talking about four amos, but if
> you can't trust the "one mil" calculation then there's no way to translate
> it into shorter distances.

To take a more extreme parallel case:
This is like the difference between sprinters and marathon runners. You
expect very different average speeds in the two kinds of races.

> In some systems of measurement, time and distance are interchangeable. For
> example, one unit of Planck time is how long it takes light to travel one
> Planck length. Similarly, keday hiluch mil is, *by* *definition*, the time
> it takes an average person to walk one mil.

Maybe: the time it takes an average person to walk one mil during a one-day
walk?

(Like saying: the time it takes a marathon runner to run a mile, averaged
over the 26.2188 mi run.)

> My guess is that the bottom line might be: How much precision did Chazal
> expect from us in these things?

The pet theory originally under discussion is that "the time it takes to
walk 4 amos", presumably in shul, is like using "one mississippi" to count
a second. (And tokh kedei dibbur all the more so.) Not precise, just practical.

But here, it's not practical. No one would "just" walk a mil at what they hope
is typical speed to estimate 18 to 24 min.

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger                 Take time,
http://www.aishdas.org/asp   be exact,
Author: Widen Your Tent      unclutter the mind.
- https://amzn.to/2JRxnDF          - Rabbi Simcha Zissel Ziv, Alter of Kelm

On Wed, Jan 24, 2024 at 05:50:57AM +0200, Joel Rich via Avodah wrote:
> How do we understand that the halacha follows rava vs abaye except for yaal
> kgam? Did the later amoraim review each disagreement and reach a conclusion
> in each case? Did they have a general rule (based on intellect? experience?
> lineage? Something else?) and carved out these 8 cases? (why?)

There is a postcast I highly recommend, Matmonim, given by R David Lapin
of Raanana. R Lapin has a Wikipedia entry at
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Lapin
(He and his brother are different people, don't let the initial "dalet"
confuse you.)

Matmonim are "buried treasures" found on the daf. Typically the podcast
involves one sugya in the gemara, a discusion of that sugya in rishonim
and/or acharonim, and a fundamental point about hashkafah or mussar --
something about how to live life -- that emerges from that dialectic.

A high point of my day. Not an exageration.

Anyway, three shiurim involve this topic (transliterations of the
Hebrew/Aramaic half of the titles mine):

Gittin 22a: The Physical and the Conceptual - Machloqes Abayei veRava beNaqvo
    baAretz veNofo beChu"L
    https://rabbilapinmatmonim.buzzsprout.com/1528778/12986974

That is the primary discussion.

The rosh pereq: R AY Kook (Ein AYa"H Berakhos, longer quote that RDL's
available at
<https://he.wikisource.org/wiki/%D7%A2%D7%99%D7%9F_%D7%90%D7%99%D7%94_%D7%A2%D7%9C_%D7%91%D7%A8%D7%9B%D7%95%D7%AA_%D7%96_%D7%9B%D7%96>)
identifies Rava as one who pursued halachic concepts to the n-th degree,
Abayei was more focused on how the halakhah aided the spiritual elevation
of the person.


But the idea is further developed in the following two related shiurim:

Gittin 48b-49a: Is the Torah Rational? - R' Shim'on Darish Ta'ama deQra
    https://rabbilapinmatmonim.buzzsprout.com/1528778/13151371

Gittin 84a: I Just Can't - Al Menas sheTokhli Besar Chatzir
    https://rabbilapinmatmonim.buzzsprout.com/1528778/13361426

I took the liberty of collecting the three mar'eh meqomos sheets into
a single PDF:
https://www.aishdas.org/avodah/faxes/Matmonim-AbayeiVeRaba.pdf

(And you realize how long Avodah has been running when you are reminded
that originally, our attachments tended to be faxes, and I named the
directory in that web address accordingly.)

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger                 When one truly looks at everyone's good side,
http://www.aishdas.org/asp   others come to love him very naturally, and
Author: Widen Your Tent      he does not need even a speck of flattery.
- https://amzn.to/2JRxnDF                      - Rabbi AY Kook

On Wed, Jan 24, 2024 at 05:50:57AM +0200, Joel Rich via Avodah wrote:
> How do we understand that the halacha follows rava vs abaye except for yaal
> kgam? Did the later amoraim review each disagreement and reach a conclusion
> in each case? Did they have a general rule (based on intellect? experience?
> lineage? Something else?) and carved out these 8 cases? (why?)

There is a postcast I highly recommend, Matmonim, given by R David Lapin
of Raanana. R Lapin has a Wikipedia entry at
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Lapin
(He and his brother are different people, don't let the initial "dalet"
confuse you.)

Matmonim are "buried treasures" found on the daf. Typically the podcast
involves one sugya in the gemara, a discusion of that sugya in rishonim
and/or acharonim, and a fundamental point about hashkafah or mussar --
something about how to live life -- that emerges from that dialectic.

A high point of my day. Not an exageration.

Anyway, three shiurim involve this topic (transliterations of the
Hebrew/Aramaic half of the titles mine):

Gittin 22a: The Physical and the Conceptual - Machloqes Abayei veRava beNaqvo
    baAretz veNofo beChu"L
    https://rabbilapinmatmonim.buzzsprout.com/1528778/12986974

That is the primary discussion.

The rosh pereq: R AY Kook (Ein AYa"H Berakhos, longer quote that RDL's
available at
<https://he.wikisource.org/wiki/%D7%A2%D7%99%D7%9F_%D7%90%D7%99%D7%94_%D7%A2%D7%9C_%D7%91%D7%A8%D7%9B%D7%95%D7%AA_%D7%96_%D7%9B%D7%96>)
identifies Rava as one who pursued halachic concepts to the n-th degree,
Abayei was more focused on how the halakhah aided the spiritual elevation
of the person.


But the idea is further developed in the following two related shiurim:

Gittin 48b-49a: Is the Torah Rational? - R' Shim'on Darish Ta'ama deQra
    https://rabbilapinmatmonim.buzzsprout.com/1528778/13151371

Gittin 84a: I Just Can't - Al Menas sheTokhli Besar Chatzir
    https://rabbilapinmatmonim.buzzsprout.com/1528778/13361426

I took the liberty of collecting the three mar'eh meqomos sheets into
a single PDF:
https://www.aishdas.org/avodah/faxes/Matmonim-AbayeiVeRaba.pdf

(And you realize how long Avodah has been running when you are reminded
that originally, our attachments tended to be faxes, and I named the
directory in that web address accordingly.)

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger                 When one truly looks at everyone's good side,
http://www.aishdas.org/asp   others come to love him very naturally, and
Author: Widen Your Tent      he does not need even a speck of flattery.
- https://amzn.to/2JRxnDF                      - Rabbi AY Kook


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