Avodah Mailing List

Volume 25: Number 59

Wed, 06 Feb 2008

• 1. Re: Women's aliyot to Torah (Zev Sero)
• 2. Re: The influence of Nusach Sefard on Nusach Ashkenaz (Zev Sero)
• 3. Re: Not Making Kiddush Between 6 p.m. and 7 p.m. (Zev Sero)
• 4. Re: Not Making Kiddush Between 6 p.m. and 7 p.m. (Zev Sero)
• 5. Re: Classes to men by women (Michael Makovi)
• 6. Re: Not Making Kiddush Between 6 p.m. and 7 p.m. (Prof. Levine)
• 7. Re: Not Making Kiddush Between 6 p.m. and 7 p.m. (Sholom Simon)
• 8. Re: [Areivim] "Blei Gissen" should we believe in this? (Micha Berger)
• 9. Not Making Kiddush Between 6 p.m. and 7 p.m. (Prof. Levine)
• 10. Re: Not Making Kiddush Between 6 p.m. and 7 p.m. (Micha Berger)
• 11. Re: Not Making Kiddush Between 6 p.m. and 7 p.m. (Zev Sero)
• 12. Re: Not Making Kiddush Between 6 p.m. and 7 p.m. (Rich, Joel)
• 13. Re: [Areivim] "Blei Gissen" should we believe in this? (David Riceman)
• 14. Re: Classes to men by women (JRich@Sibson.com)
• 15. Re: Shiluach Hakan (Daniel Eidensohn)

Michael Makovi wrote:
> Was: [Avodah] Ramp On!, about handicapped kohanim not being able to do
> avodah, and why.
> 
> Regarding someone's wheelchair-bound husband not being given aliyot to
> the Torah on the basis that it is not proper kavod:
>> Come to think of it, I also never get an aliyah or get asked to lein... In
>> both cases, kavod hatzibur, or kavod haTorah, requires "discrimination."

> But a friend of mine said (I don't know his source) that the primary
> reason is simply that women aren't chayav to hear the Torah, and so
> they cannot fulfill the reading for men. Kavod and tzniut are minor
> factors according to him. Does anyone know the sources for this topic?

It's an explicit braita (Megilah 23a) that a woman *can* read the Torah
and count as one of the 7 olim for Shabbat, "but the chachamim said
that a woman should not read the Torah mipnei kevod hatzibur".  This
language is preserved through the whole chain of halacha - at no point
does a later summariser simply say "a woman may not be called up",
never mind the reason; instead, at each step the language is that she
*can* be called up, but the chachamim said that she shouldn't be for
this reason.   Exactly what this reason means is the subject of much
debate, and how one understands it will dictate whether one thinks it
can be waived in some circumstances; but it's clear that without this
reason women could and would get aliyot in most O shuls. 

-- 
Zev Sero               Something has gone seriously awry with this Court's
zev@sero.name          interpretation of the Constitution.
                       	                          - Clarence Thomas

Prof. Levine wrote:

> I heard Rabbi Bamberger of Sherushei Minhag Ashkenaz fame say at a 
> talk that in the time of the Rishonim many did wear Tefillin during 
> Musaf of RH.

The Taz says to keep them on, in places where Kesser is not said.


> He said that the custom of taking them off before Musaf 
> stems from the fact that the some places say Keser during kedusha and 
> that one should not have two crowns.

This is an explicit Beis Yosef.

-- 
Zev Sero               Something has gone seriously awry with this Court's
zev@sero.name          interpretation of the Constitution.
                       	                          - Clarence Thomas

Prof. Levine wrote:

> What I have never understood is why this is a 60 minute hour and the 
> time is based on the "secular" clock.

There's nothing particularly "secular" about the standard hour,
which is 1/24 of the mean length of the day, nor about the standard
24-hour day centered on mean noon.  It's a perfectly logical way of
dividing the day for purposes that don't depend on sunlight.


> To the best of my knowledge, 
> the 60 minute hour is not "generic" to Halacha.

It is, e.g., in kiddush hachodesh.  And RMF holds that mean noon
is the halachic noon for all purposes, including the calculation
of "sha'ot z'maniyot", which are therefore different in the morning
than in the afternoon.


> So why aren't Shaos Z'manios used in the 
> determination of what between 6 and 7 means, rather than secular 
> time.

Because this is astrology, and it makes little sense to say that
a planet's influence is affected by when the sun happens to rise or
set in a particular location.  (Then again, this may indeed have been
how the Maharil understood the hourly system, and therefore how the
minhag he describes was in fact observed, regardless of how the
Amoraim understood the original system.)


> For the record. the 60 minute hour goes back to the Babylonians 
> whose number system used base 60.

Yes.  They also came up with the astrological theories that are
in the gemara.  But I don't see how the division of the hour into
60 is relevant here.  The relevant division is that of the day
into 24, which is *also* a Babylonian invention.

-- 
Zev Sero               Something has gone seriously awry with this Court's
zev@sero.name          interpretation of the Constitution.
                       	                          - Clarence Thomas

Micha Berger wrote:

> A couple of us were once invited to a shtiebl to run a singing minyan
> for Qabbalas Shabbos and Maariv. The rav was getting antsy at a few
> minutes to 6 EDT

EDT?  That's Summer Time, right?  He was observing this minhag
according to Summer Time?


> Also, our clocks are set according to time zone, not local time. 12:00
> is the middle between sunrise and sunset averaged over the year in the
> middle of the time zone

Not necessarily the middle of the zone.  Zone boundaries are drawn for
convenience, so the point that is an exact multiple of 15 (or 7.5 or 3.75)
degrees from Greenwich may be anywhere in the zone.  In any case, in the
Greater NYC area the adjustment due to Railroad time is 4 minutes, so
mean noon is at 11:56, and the "correct" hour of Mars is 5:56 to 6:56.
(In the eastern reaches of Queens it's 5 minutes, while in parts west
of Elizabeth it's 3 minutes.)


-- 
Zev Sero               Something has gone seriously awry with this Court's
zev@sero.name          interpretation of the Constitution.
                       	                          - Clarence Thomas

>The rosh yeshiva of the hesder yeshiva **agreed** with the
> army that what the boys did was uncalled for.

But wait, according to
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/125168, the rosh
yeshiva agrees with, and is proud of, these boys.

"Rabbi Melamed expressed pride in his students, "who made their
decision on their own, without consulting me. I think they did the
right thing, and they built themselves in the process, and they
deserve much credit..."

So what is the source for the ">" quotation above?

Mikha'el Makovi

At 11:55 AM 2/6/2008, Sholom Simon wrote:
> > What I have never understood is why this is a 60 minute hour and the
> > time is based on the "secular" clock. To the best of my knowledge,
> > the 60 minute hour is not "generic" to Halacha. The times of the day
> > are based on Shaos Z'manios. So why aren't Shaos Z'manios used in the
> > determination of what between 6 and 7 means, rather than secular
> > time.
>
>I don't know the actual reason, but I could posit one that seems intuitive
>to me.  The Shaos Z'manios are based on the sun.  But this "influence" of
>various planets are not.  If we go by the stars (ignore that these planets
>are not what we call stars today) it makes more sense to use a fixed hour
>than a solar-type hour.
>
>But on my question, we digres . . . . <g>
>
>-- Sholom

But presumably this reason for avoiding a certain hour to make 
Kiddush predates the institution of the secular hour by the 
Babylonians. For a discussion of this see 
http://tinyurl.com/yugh47  and http://tinyurl.com/9rb7r . Thus, if 
doing this is to make sense, the hour should be Shaos Z'manios, not 
(gentile) hours.

Are you implying that there is something inherently true, from a 
halachic standpoint, about using base 60?

YL



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> But presumably this reason for avoiding a certain hour to make
> Kiddush predates the institution of the secular hour by the
> Babylonians. For a discussion of this see
> http://tinyurl.com/yugh47  and http://tinyurl.com/9rb7r . Thus, if
> doing this is to make sense, the hour should be Shaos Z'manios, not
> (gentile) hours.
>
> Are you implying that there is something inherently true, from a
> halachic standpoint, about using base 60?

No -- I'm saying that there might have been something assumed to be true,
in an astronomical sense, that corresponded to approx 1/24 of a full
(sideral) day.

-- Sholom

Someone wrote me privately that they didn't follow my post on this
subject. So, I'll try to summarize
<http://www.aishdas.org/avodah/vol25/v25n026.shtml#04>.

Al pi qabalah, the Or Ein Sof flows downward from His non-contingent
Existence all the way down to physicality. There are layers, veils,
which groups this route down into olamos.

The NhC writes that of all of creation, only the human neshamah is a
combination of forces from all the olamos. A mal'akh may be on this
plane or that, rocks are on their plane of domemim in the olam
ha'asiyah. However, a neshamah (really the full Nara"n concept) is the
entire beam, cutting through all the olamos. This is how the NhC
explains a person's ability to have metaphysical consequences by
performing physical actions.

The Rambam is no mequbal, obviously, but he also writes of a chain of
beri'ah from the non-contingent existence of the Mamtzi down to the
phsycial world. But his is not in terms of olamos, but rather in the
form of the different levels of mal'akhim.

Also according to the Yad, mal'akhim are tzurah beli chomer. And
according to the Moreh they are sichliyim nivdalim. Suggesting that
seichel is pure tzurah. Not surprising, we don't usually consider
thought as having substance like a physical object.

However, what all of the above does is identify thought with
spirituality.

I therefore suggested that the difference between speaking of the
Torah's symbols and speaking of spiritual forces is one of perspective
and terminology, not substance.

Add to that the fact that REED and the Alter of Slabodka each (in
different ways) say the difference between olamos is in the eyes of
the one doing the perceiving. The Tanya even says that ein od milvado
means that the existence of anything other than Hashem to perceive is
in the eyes of the one doing the perceiving -- even those "eyes"
themselves!

This again is suggestive (although far from proof) that higher
realities and true thoughts are identical concepts.

I hope with this explanation of what I was trying to do, someone might
be motivated to revisit
<http://www.aishdas.org/avodah/vol25/v25n026.shtml#04> and see if it
holds water.

SheTir'u baTov!
-micha

-- 
Micha Berger             "Man wants to achieve greatness overnight,
micha@aishdas.org        and he wants to sleep well that night too."
http://www.aishdas.org     - Rav Yosef Yozel Horwitz, Alter of Novarodok
Fax: (270) 514-1507

At 02:47 PM 2/6/2008, Micha wrote:
>Not sure of the point of RYL's last sentence, since the Babylonian
>minute was 1/60 of a sha'ah zemanis, not a standard hour.

I have to admit that until I read what you wrote and did some 
checking that I was under the impression the Babylonian hour was a 
fixed hour of 60 minutes like the one we have today.

The following is from http://tinyurl.com/ywswom

Once both the light and dark hours were divided into 12 parts, the 
concept of a 24-hour day was in place. The concept of fixed-length 
hours, however, did not originate until the Hellenistic period, when 
Greek astronomers began using such a system for their theoretical 
calculations. Hipparchus, whose work primarily took place between 147 
and 127 B.C., proposed dividing the day into 24 equinoctial hours, 
based on the 12 hours of daylight and 12 hours of darkness observed 
on equinox days. Despite this suggestion, lay people continued to use 
seasonally varying hours for many centuries. (Hours of fixed length 
became commonplace only after mechanical clocks first appeared in 
Europe during the 14th century.)

thank you for making me aware of this.

YL



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On Wed, February 6, 2008 4:19 pm, Prof. Levine wrote:
: I have to admit that until I read what you wrote and did some
: checking that I was under the impression the Babylonian hour was a
: fixed hour of 60 minutes like the one we have today.

There is a claim that the cheileq was something we picked up during
galus Bavel. In general, there are claims about information flowing
from Bavel to us. The cheileq is nothing compared to the claim that
messianism was their invention.

However, look at the composition of their royal court. If the king's
advisors were nevi'im and other talmidei chakhamim, a fact that not
every minimalist denies, wouldn't it be more plausible that the
Bavliim learned these notions from us?

The Bavliim didn't use fractions, so they tended toward numbers with
lots of divisors. It may be more fair to say they didn't reduce
fractions, so to do math they needed denominators that could express
many of the common fractions. 60 was a favorite, as you can make 1/2
(30), 1/3 (20), 1/4 (15), 1/5 (12), 1/6 (10), 1/10 (6), 1/12 (5),
etc... without playing with the denominator. This is why there are 60
min in an hour or degree, 60 sec in a min, 60 moments in a sec. For
similar reasons, there are 360 deg in a circle, and 12 hours in a day,
or night. Which were originally of different length. If an hour during
the day is 1/12 of the time from sunrise to sunset and an hour at
night is 1/12 of the time from sunset until the next morning's
sunrise, they'll differ.

Anyway, along these lines... The cheileq is 1/1080 hours. Or, 1/18 *
1/60... Looks like a Bablynonian taste in denominator, no?

Except that a cheileq is 1/1080 of a STANDARD hour. The Bavliim only
used sha'os zemaniyos. Thus, it is implausible that they came up with
a cheileq.

I researched all the above to rebut a non-O rabbi who made the "got it
from the Bavliim" claim in response to my posting my liking the shitah
that says that our knowledge of the cheileq dates back to "hachodesh
hazeh lakhem".

SheTir'u baTov!
-micha

-- 
Micha Berger             "Man wants to achieve greatness overnight,
micha@aishdas.org        and he wants to sleep well that night too."
http://www.aishdas.org     - Rav Yosef Yozel Horwitz, Alter of Novarodok
Fax: (270) 514-1507

Prof. Levine wrote:

> Are you implying that there is something inherently true, from a 
> halachic standpoint, about using base 60?

Dividing by 12 is no less Babylonian than dividing by 60.
In any case, 60 has nothing to do with this.

-- 
Zev Sero               Something has gone seriously awry with this Court's
zev@sero.name          interpretation of the Constitution.
                       	                          - Clarence Thomas

> To the best of my knowledge,
> the 60 minute hour is not "generic" to Halacha.

It is, e.g., in kiddush hachodesh.  And RMF holds that mean noon is the
halachic noon for all purposes, including the calculation of "sha'ot
z'maniyot", which are therefore different in the morning than in the
afternoon.


=======================================

True, but iirc other than a kabbalah from his father, no one knows why.

KT 
Joel Rich
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Micha Berger wrote:
> The NhC writes that of all of creation, only the human neshamah is a
> combination of forces from all the olamos.
See RYL Bloch, Shiurei Daath, vol. 1, chapters 1-2 (Ki kol bashamayim 
uva'aretz).

David Riceman

"Rabbi Melamed expressed pride in his students, "who made theirdecision on their own, without consulting me. I think they did theright thing, and they built themselves in the process, and theydeserve much credit..."*/**/////////////

makes me think about the machloket tsfot/rambam on whether one can give up one's life when it's not required by halacha.  I would've thought before taking an action with strong  possible negative personal and communal  implications, a shaila or at least eitzah tova would be appropriate.

But then again I'm a hard core daas torah kind of guy :-)

KTJoel Rich

THIS MESSAGE IS INTENDED ONLY FOR THE USE OF THE 
ADDRESSEE.  IT MAY CONTAIN PRIVILEGED OR CONFIDENTIAL 
INFORMATION THAT IS EXEMPT FROM DISCLOSURE.  Dissemination, 
distribution or copying of this message by anyone other than the addressee is 
strictly prohibited.  If you received this message in error, please notify us 
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Thank you.

R' Alan Rubin

>  Now I am aware of the promised rewards for shiluach hakan but I cannot
> believe we are supposed to be tramping through woods frightening birds
> to secure long life.
>
>   

Actually there is a critical split between kabbalist and chasidm on the 
one hand - based on the Zohar that upsetting the birds arouses rachamim 
and thus there is an absolute obligation to do it and one should search 
for birds to do the mitzva  - and non kabblistic litvaks on the other. 
The more litvische hold that the mitzva is only if you really want the 
young  - if you don't want the young there is no reason to do it and it 
is prohibited because of tzaar baalei chaim. Thus there is no reason to 
search out birds to do the mitzva. See Ran (Chullin 140) 

Chasam Sofer O.H. #100 and
Chavis Ya'ir #66 deals with this issue.

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