Avodah Mailing List

Volume 16 : Number 086

Thursday, January 12 2006

• 1000 sacrified for 1 Godol
• Re: citations & g'neivas da'as
• re: Kashrus standards
• Re: Three steps forward
• RE: citations & g'neivas da'as
• Re: citations & g'neivas da'as
• using kesef maaser to support one's own children
• RE: Kashrut supervision
• Subject: RE: Xmax and Assimilation
• The Menestrual Cycle According to the Rambam
• RE: Length of Maaseh Breshis has no impact on halacha (science of origins is speculative and suspect)
• RE: citations & g'neivas da'as
• Re: citations & g'neivas da'as
• Re veset kavua nowadays
• Re: MBP

Sat, 07 Jan 2006  Daniel Eidensohn yadmoshe@012.net.il
> Rav Dessler (Vol 3 page 357) talks about the sacrifice we must be
> preparred to make to produce gedolim. He cites the Rambam "Let a 1000
> fools be sacrificed in order that one gadol benefits".
> Where does the Rambam state this? ...

Perhaps he was referring to Rambam's remark in the preface to Moreh
Nevuchim:
    "[W]hen I ... can see no other way of teaching a well established
    truth except by pleasing one intelligent man and displeasing ten
    thousand fools--I prefer to address myself to the one man, and to
    take no notice whatever of the condemnation of the multitude."

The concept is also found in the Rambam's introduction to his Mishna
commentary where he explains the Aggada that Hashem is only concerned
about the dalet amos shel halacha, where he develops the idea that the
purpose of entire world's population is to help porduce the one man of
perfection. I also think sucha concept is contained in his Letters.

Zvi Lampel

On Sun, Jan 08, 2006 at 11:45:59AM -0500, Gil Student wrote:
: Someone asked on Areivim whether there is a heter for someone
: to quote from an online source (e.g. Wikipedia) without
: attribution and pretend that it is his words...

Shinui is permitted when people will accept a shtikl Torah or some mussar
if it weren't for the source. Whether that means placing your own words
in your rebbe's mouth (something we discussed a few weeks back), or not
mentioning a source that people would look down upon.

The latter would explain why no one in Cheshbon haNefesh or any of its
mafteichos mentioned Ben Franklin's connection. Or (if this theory is
emes) why REED doesn't mention that he saw the suggestions he gave for
becoming a ma'avir al midosav came from a Reader's Digest article on
Dale Carnegie's "How to Win Friends and Influence People".

-mi

-- 
Micha Berger             With the "Echad" of the Shema, the Jew crowns
micha@aishdas.org        G-d as King of the entire cosmos and all four
http://www.aishdas.org   corners of the world, but sometimes he forgets
Fax: (270) 514-1507      to include himself.     - Rav Yisrael Salanter

Someone recently asked a Rav about being mattir neder for Chalav Stam.
The Rav said, "You can't drink that stuff, it's not kosher. I don't
mean R' Moshe's hetter. I mean, the problem (of about 11 years ago)
with operations being done on cows' stomachs that were a shaylah of
a treifah. The Chalav Yisrael companies stopped doing the operation,
the others didn't."

Does anyone have any more information on:
1. Metzius - are the facts correct?
2. Psak - what do others pasken (we know the OU disagrees, what about
others?)

On Jan 11, 2006, at 10:10 PM, Micha Berger wrote:
> I find this a strange reversal. R' Avi Mensura and I discussed
> qiddush when I was at his home. (Correction, his dirat arai while on
> shelichut. His home remains in EY.) Ashkenazim finish the berakhah
> "hagafen", and similarly for Baladi Teimanim, the last word is
> "hajafen". However, Sepharadim say "hagefen". Why? He explained that
> Sepharadim consider "amen" to be part of the sentence. (I invite RAM to
> mention any meqoros. I forgot details.)

First of all, hello to the Avodah list! I'm new here, and frankly, y'all
intimidate me. I'm not a rav, a mohel (speaking of MbP) or a shohheit,
or needless to say a yo`etzet, to`enet or rebbetzin... just a melamed.

Anyway, i've got something to add here to this discussion/thread, so
i'm jumping in.

 From the footnotes of SIDDUR EIZOR EILIYAHU, keminhag Ashkenaz (Polin)
Hayashan, `al pi da`at haGR"A, 5765 (fourth) edition, brown cover,
page #tzadi-tet:

BOREI' PERI HAGAFEN.
With _qomatz_ -- so emended R' Shabtai Sofeir [5370s] (according to the
rules of a sof-pasuq), and so it appears in the siddur of R' `Azriel &
R' Eliya Vilna [Berlin, 5473], and in all the siddurim written after
them, (and so it appears in the Pesahh Haggada of R' M.M. miSklov).
But in all the older siddurim before RSh"S it was vocalized _borei' peri
hagEfen_ with a _segol_, like the nusahh of the Sefaradim until today
(even though in Birkot Hashahhar it had _yadayim_, _`aved_, _gaver_ --
all of them with _qomatz_, and more research is necessary). And even
though the emendation was not accepted immediately (in the Siddur Derekh
Yeshara, FFD"M 5463, and even in the Haggada of Ofenbakh 5482 we still
found _gEfen_ with _segol_), nevertheless later on it was accepted in
the nusahhim of Ashkenaz without dissent*.

*=the phrase used here is _lelo' `orerin_. not sure if 'without dissent'
is the best translation.

 From other comments in the siddur it seems that R' Shabtai Sofeir was
very much into making the grammar of the tefilla fit in with the grammar
of Biblical Hebrew. In addition to changing many words at the ends of
sentences to their Biblical pausal forms, he also replaced many words
with the Hhazalic Hebrew masculine suffix _-akh_ with their Biblical
equivalents in _-ekha_, because he felt _-akh_ sounded too epicene.

-Stephen 'Steg' Belsky
  "word-making is world-making."
      ~ the DAG"Z

On January 8, 2006, Gil Student wrote:
> Someone asked on Areivim whether there is a heter for someone
> to quote from an online source (e.g. Wikipedia) without
> attribution and pretend that it is his words. R. Aaron Levine
> discusses a similar situation in his new book Moral Issues
> of the Marketplace in Jewish Law (published by Yashar). See
> <http://www.yasharbooks.com/2005/12/proper-attribution-of-secondary.html>
> for the relevant excerpt. In short, it all depends on the assumptions
> of the readers. If the readers assume that the author did the research
> to arrive at this information, then it is geneivas da'as to refrain
> from citing the source. If the readers have no such expectation and
> know perfectly well that the material is not original, then there is no
> geneivas da'as in not stating explicitly that it is not original.

There is another obvious issue here that has not been considered. If a
person eats chazir, for instance, despite the fact that he did not mean to
do so, there is a level of timtum halev that exists. The Ramban in Toras
haAdam discusses this concept and suggests that this is the meaning of
yesurin shel ahava. Gineyvas Daas, on the other hand, has no such timtum
associated with it. If the person quoting Wikipedia didn't mean to be
gonev anyone's daas, then he is not oiver the issuer of gineyvas daas
despite the fact that some people may impute the information quoted
directly to him. There are many circumstances that can be envisioned
whereby a person honestly did not consider the ramifications of quoting
others without quoting the source. Gineyvas daas must be done with intent.

Simcha Coffer

Micha Berger wrote:
>The latter would explain why no one in Cheshbon haNefesh or any of its
>mafteichos mentioned Ben Franklin's connection.

The original editions of Cheshbon HaNefesh did in fact mention Benjamin
Franklin. There is a kuntres written by R' Yitzchok Borodanski (Menahel
Ruchni of Yeshiva Kol Torah) which discusses the signifance of learning
principles from non-Jews - and in particular the fact that Cheshbon
HaNefesh was based on Franklin. It also discusses the issue of whether
the author was a maskil. It is published in the Liebowitz-Kest series.

Daniel Eidensohn

I've been looking at some Teshuvos about maaser in IM the past few
nights. The basic klal is that anything we are obligated to do, may not
be paid for from kesef maaser (KM).

In one teshvah RMF writes that sending one's daughters to a Torah
institution is critical to their spiritual well being and is obligatory
and so one may not KM for that.

In another teshuvah, RMF discusses wheher or not feeding one's own
children would be allowed from KM. When they are very young it's clear
we are obligated to feed them. But there was a time in our history when
kids would be expected to go out and earn some food for themselves at
age 6 or 7, and back then feeding any child who ws older wouldn't be
obligatory. Things have changed. Now it's much older.

It isn't clear to me though, at what age they are considered old enough
to fend for themselves. I think I saw RMF say that nowadays the cutoff
point is when they leave the house, but I still have some questions.
Is RMF saying it really depends on the prevalent societal norm? Can that
vary from community to community? MIght we say perhaps that right after
high school, kids could theoretically fend for themselves, so any clothing
and food for post high school aged kids can be bought with KM? Or maybe
it depends on if they move out of the house? What if they moved into
a Yeshiva dorm? Are they still considered under our obligation once
in Yeshiva?

Someone recetnly asked me about a committment he made to support his
son in law for 5 years in kollel. Is that pashut that this can come from
KM? It seems so to me, but am I missing something?

He also asked me what I thought about paying for his daughters to learn
a trade. That one seems like it may be a stretch, but does anyone have
something to offer for that one?

How about his sons who are post high school and in Beis Medrash? Is
there a clear age wher he isn't abligated to pay for their chinuch,
so he could use KM for that? (I'm not talking about the part that goes
for other kids - that's a different point)

How about the money he gives them for spending money during their time
in Yeshiva?

[R Joshua Meisner:]
> If a kashrus organization negligently causes someone to eat treif, they'd
> be oveir on lifnei iveir, but would the oveir get off entirely scot-free?
> Is responsibility for a sin transferrable?

IIRC we've discussed whether timtum halev attaches in this situation
but that certainly there's no aveira if you follow settled (sorry judge
alito is on my mind :-)) halacha

Kt
Joel Rich

R' Zvi Lampel wrote:
<<<Where was it that I read that the right perspective of things would
be that the children, in hakaros hatov to their parents for all they
did to bring them into the world and raise them<>>>>

Why? Wasn't the conclusion that noach lo l'adam SHELO nivro?...

Kol Tuv,
 - Avigdor Feldstein

I wrote:
> Interesting to note, as it seems from the Rambam (quoted in BY YD 183),
> the average menstrual cycle in the times of the Talmud was a perfect 7+11
> (7 niddah days in which the period was to be expected and considered
> "normal", 11 zivah days in which if the woman was to see blood, it would
> be attributed to an illness).

R' EMT responded:
> That's not the shittas haRambam. What he says is that regardless of
> what a woman's veses is, her niddah-zivah cycle is always 7 followed by
> 11, starting from menarche (first menstruation). It's a most difficult
> shittah to understand, but that's what he holds. See Hilchos Issurei
> Bi'ah 6:6.

It indeed is difficult to comprehend that this is actually how the
menstrual cycles worked according to the Rambam, but lan"d it's muchrach
in the Rambam.

1. If according to the Rambam women b'zman habayis had regular 30+/-
day cycles like nowadays, they would their whole life constantly be busy
bringing korbanos almost every second month.

2. The halacha is a women can't be koveia a vest in the y'mei zivah. If so
a vest haflaga can only be between 18 and 25 days, or more than 32 days,
and since regular vest hachodesh is virtually impossible according to
the Rambam (the Machtzis Hashekel 183 indeed asks this question on the
Rambam, but it's still possible to have a vest hachodesh even according
to the Rambam every third chodesh, if two of the chadoshim are choser),
and if the average cycle was thirty days - stam vest sheloshim yom,
then according to the Rambam most women never had a vest haflaga neither.

3. The Torah calls the yemei zivah "b'lo eis nidasa" - not her regular
time to see blood. It's unfathomable how the Rambam will learn p'shat
in this possuk otherwise than saying that in the times of old, the
yemei zivah indeed was b'lo eis nidasa. This is such an "oiven oif"
question and IIRC none of the poskim who are disagree with the Rambam
notice this question. It is largely due to this question that I came to
the conclusion, that according to the Rambam, in the days of old this
was the normal cycle.

Zivah as explained by the Ramban al hatorah, is that the woman saw blood
not in her regular time, and is therefore an indication of illness. Though
the Rav Hamagid brings that the Ramban is mechulak on the Rambam on
how to calculate the yemei niddah and yemei zivah, it's mistaber that
the Rambam isn't mechulak on the Ramban's explanation, for if not so,
how would the Rambam explain the reason for the requirement of a korban,
short of g'zeiras hakasuv.

Kol Tuv,
- Avigdor Feldstein

On January 10, 2006,  kennethgmiller@juno.com wrote:
> I'm not among those who say the dinosaurs never existed. Nor am I among
> those who are sure that they did. Rather, I admit that I do not know,
> and have not been convinced either way.

You are not convinced either way? Why not? Science has documented
countless of cases of dinosaur fossils. Anyone who says dinosaurs never
existed is simply misinformed. It is a knee jerk reaction to the idea
that dinosaur fossils somehow contradicts the Torah's description of MB.

> That said, I hope it's okay for me to respond on behalf of "those who
> say they didn't":

> G-d put them there. He did it for a reason, and that reason might well
> have been something OTHER than "to test us".

I have serious issues with this idea. Personally, I believe that the only
reason an idea like this need be forwarded is due to a lack of awareness
about what the Theory of Evolution really is. If people understood that
it is merely a theory and possesses no evidence on a macro evolutionary
level, people wouldn't hasten to dismiss empirical evidence of creatures
such as dinosaurs. It makes us look bad when we claim dinosaurs never
existed.

[Email #2. -mi]

On January 10, 2006, Zev Sero wrote:
> In a universe in which a mountain or a star can form or be destroyed in
> a day, what would become of human flesh?

Are you saying that Hashem couldn't create huge star worlds instantly,
stabilize the physical laws associated with these worlds in an instant,
and then create man in a fully mature and stabilized environment? Aren't
you limiting his yecholes by suggesting such a thing?

Simcha Coffer

[R Simcha Coffer:]
> There is another obvious issue here that has not been considered. If
> a person eats chazir, for instance, despite the fact that he did not
> mean to do so, there is a level of timtum halev that exists. The Ramban
> in Toras haAdam discusses this concept and suggests that this is the
> meaning of yesurin shel ahava. Gineyvas Daas, on the other hand, has no
> such timtum associated with it.

Source for this chiluk?

KT
Joel Rich

Rav Simcha Coffer wrote:
> There is another obvious issue here that has not been considered. If
> a person eats chazir, for instance, despite the fact that he did not
> mean to do so, there is a level of timtum halev that exists. The Ramban
> in Toras haAdam discusses this concept and suggests that this is the
> meaning of yesurin shel ahava. Gineyvas Daas, on the other hand, has no
> such timtum associated with it.

What is timtum haleiv? How can it be anything but the effect of avirah on
the self and still fit within the notion of "hakol biydei Shamayim chutz
miyir'as Shamayim"?

See also my discussion with RGS which eventually got posted on-list as
<http://www.aishdas.org/avodah/vol07/v07n057.shtml#02> and later posts in
that digest about teshuvah vs gehenom, and about the shemirah of mezuzah.

So, I'd like to see this Ramban inerveinig.

Second, RMPopper was wrote in a ma'aseh with R' Schwab, where parents
came to him wondering what happened to the chinukh they gave their
son. He bedavka asked if the money spent to buy the son's food was
acquired glatt yosheir, as that too could be metamteim es haleiv.

-mi

-- 
Micha Berger             "Fortunate indeed, is the man who takes
micha@aishdas.org        exactly the right measure of himself,  and
http://www.aishdas.org   holds a just balance between what he can
Fax: (270) 514-1507      acquire and what he can use." - Peter Latham

RSB writes:
>In another post someone raised the issue of 3 or 4 repeats to set the
>veset. I'm specifically referring to women who can state clearly that
>they had the same haflaga (date is rarer) for xx years -- since shortly
>after they received their period. Sometimes the haflaga is more complex
>-- the haflaga isn't a single time but a period of, for example, always
>28-30 days (never earlier and never later) that can be determined by
>observation over a period of years.

I was taught that this is not a veset kavua. That even the question
of always having one's period on the same day, but sometimes during the
day and sometimes at night raised the question that there might not be
a veset kavua and that certainly a range of dates did not qualify.

Do you have some sources for this? The examples given in the Shulchan
Aruch do not seem to me to allow for this possibility (but of course the
SA may well not be the be all and end all of poskening on this matter).

>In one case, a young woman had written down every veset for the past
>few years. She had a veset haflaga that was built of cycles of 30 days
>-- 26 days -- 30 days -- 26 days. We marked the calendar and saw that
>this repeated again and again and again. The Rav we asked to confirm
>the wedding date also stated that this was a veset kavu'a, and that she
>didn't have to worry about the optional dates (check for 26 when it was
>time for 30 etc.).

This is the one I was specifically wondering about as potentially
borderline - which is why I brought as an even more complext example
six repetitions, which I understood as being clearly outside the range.
Eg, if somebody had a complex version that went:

28 days, 24 days, 25 days, 29 days, 26 days, and then started repeating
again 28 days etc, even though if you had enough data you might be able
to accurately avoid a chuppas nida, my understanding was that this was
unquestionably not a veset kavua, as you could not derive from any of any
of the three to four periods something that could be considered stable.

Somebody asked me off list about YD siman 189, si'if 8. I agree that
seems to be the most complex example given in the Shulchan Aruch.
But even there, the pattern he describes is: always sees on day 15 of
a month, day 16 of the next month, day 17 of the next month, and then
reset to day 15 of the next month, day 16 of the next month, and day 17
of the next month etc.

Now the thing about this example is that prima facie, one would have
though (assumed) that the next date after the three pattern was sees on
day 18, that would have been a classic veset kavua b'dilug (see si'if
7). But instead there was a consistent break each time precisely at
the point that one expected to establish the veset, and it was broken
in precisely the same way, by resetting to day 15. And note that the
Mechaber describes it a kind of veset kavua b'dilug. And he explains
in si'if 7 that you do not have a veset kavua b'dilug until you have the
fourth day (in si'if 7 that of day 18 because you don't count the first
day for this type of count) so all you are really doing here in si'if
8 is allowing day 15 to be subsituted for day 18, which is not really
much of a stretch.

The kind of pattern I describe, of a what appear to be six arbitrary
dates, just that over a number of years it turns out precisely the same
pattern repeats again and again and again, seems a long way beyond 189:8.
Surely if the Mechaber had meant to include anything as complex, he
would have put in far more complicated examples than YD 189:8?

The pattern you describe is, unlike my example of six repeating, probably
the next pattern that goes beyond what seems to be described in YD 189
(ie it is the least stretch), and I have wondered whether there were
any people who held that this was a veset kavua (especially given my
mother's "quasi scientific" explanation of what is going on with some
of these two-some repeating patterns - ie there are two ovaries, so if
each ovulates in turn, maybe they have slightly different parameters).
My limited understanding is that what you are describing, because where we
are talking about b'haflaga the necessary key factor is a consistency over
three periods (as opposed to a double set of three periods) this did not
constitute a veset kavua, although again I am only going on what I have
been told, and have never really looked (in terms of source material)
beyond the Shulchan Aruch.

Regards
Chana Luntz

On Areivim, RHM wrote:
> You can't have it both ways. If a Posek Paskins that MBP is Me'akev
> the Mila than ACCORDING TO THAT POSEK, all those who didn't, require
> Hatafas Dam Bris. 

To what purpose? The person is not an orel, and there has already been
dam bris shed. Taking another drop of blood won't make up for the lack
of metzitzah - nobody does metzitza at a hatofas dam. So what would
the hatofas dam achieve?

However, there are serious poskim, every bit as great as the ones you
cite, who hold that if MBP can't be done on the day, then the bris
should be delayed until it can be done properly. That's how serious
the requirement is. And, of course, MBP is done on shabbos, which
wouldn't be allowed if it wasn't required; this further proves that
those who do it do not regard it as a mere minhag but as a fundamental
halachic requirement. After all, according to the poskim you prefer,
all those who do metzitza on Shabbos are mechalel shabbos.

-- 
Zev Sero
zev@sero.name

*********************


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