Avodah Mailing List

Volume 39: Number 48

Wed, 26 May 2021

• 1. Re: The Axaronim (Micha Berger)
• 2. Re: Karaites Mesora (Micha Berger)
• 3. Re: Sanhedrin votes (Micha Berger)
• 4. Re: Where on the Mount of Olives would the Para Aduma be prepared? (Micha Berger)
• 5. Re: Gelatin (Micha Berger)
• 6. Re: Gelatin (Meir Shinnar)
• 7. Re: Gelatin (Zev Sero)
• 8. Re: Karaites Mesora (Akiva Miller)
• 9. Do as I Do - Not Just as I Say (Prof. L. Levine)
• 10. Re: Can One Take In Shavuot Early? (Isaac Balbin)
• 11. Re: Gelatin (Micha Berger)
• 12. Rambam Prophesy (Rich, Joel)

On Fri, May 14, 2021 at 03:23:16PM -0500, Jay F. Shachter via Avodah wrote:
> The transition from the period of the Rishonim, to the period of the
> Axaronim, is when we began saying that to scholars of the Talmud.
> Rishonim were allowed to propose interpretations of the Talmud that no
> one else had previously thought of ("were allowed to" means "were
> taken seriously when they did").  Axaronim are not.  You can still be
> `oqer a din in the Shulxan `Arukh, but only if you find a Rishon on
> whom to base your psaq.

I have said here something similar. Except I looked at the acceptance
of the SA as the dividing line Not when we stopped studying Chazal
without the lens of rishonim, but when we accepted the SA to the point
when a poseiq needs to explain when they diverge from it, but not
when they conform.

And since anyone else since the acceptance of the SA would equally require
such justification, that support must come from someone prior to it.

And the same thing happened when the Mishna was accepted, dividing
tannaim and amor'aim, when Talmud Bavli was declared "sof hora'ah".

... And possibly is happening now.

The thing is, there is no such book now. And so, our grandchildren will
be able to determine which of use are correct.

R Moshe Lichtenstein argued as much in Tvunot #16, but my link to an
online copy of the article is now dead.

Poseqim today feel a need to justify from one pre-WWII acharon when
disagreeing with another from that period. So, it seems like we are
reading halakhah lemaaseh from the rishonim through the lens of pre-War
acharonim.

But, there is no such accepted book to parallel the Mishnah, Shas, or
the Greater SA. The Arukh haShulchan is losing the dominance it looked
like it would have for the first few decades. But, the MB only covers
a small subset of halakhah, OC.

So, if the rav born after WWII does end up being considered another
category of poseiq, it would mean you are correct. If not, I could be
right, or, there could be some other reason why the current convention of
holding pre-War posqim as having qualitatively higher authority doesn't
really last.

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger                 It's nice to be smart,
http://www.aishdas.org/asp   but it's smarter to be nice.
Author: Widen Your Tent                      - R' Lazer Brody
- https://amzn.to/2JRxnDF

On Thu, May 20, 2021 at 02:52:19AM +0000, Rich, Joel via Avodah wrote:
> This makes a lot more sense than what I was taught (that the Karaites
> had no mesorah):

>> There are, however, other ordinances in the observance of which we have
>> been raised since the days of our fathers, and their fathers before them,
>> and which are a matter of custom with us, which are not recorded in
>> the Torah but have become as second nature; . . . (Karaite) tradition,
>> however, is not like the tradition in which the Rabbanites believe...

> What were you taught about this?

Not much. Tzeduqim come up in the gemara, so I was taught something
about them.

Qaraim believe they are a continuation of the Tzeduqi tradition. But
historically, that claim is hard to defend. They differ from Tzeduqim
and from Philo, and nearly all known fundamentalist Judaisms. It seems
more likely Anan ben Shafat (or ben David, but our tradition is he was
Shafat's son, a remote descendent of David haMelekh;(715-795 or 811)
likely build his own recreation of something that didn't really exist.

Most things that surprise me of Qaraism come from my assuming it is more
similar to Tzeduqi-keit than it really is.

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger                 You want to know how to paint a perfect
http://www.aishdas.org/asp   painting?  It's easy.
Author: Widen Your Tent      Make yourself perfect and then just paint
- https://amzn.to/2JRxnDF    naturally.              -Robert Pirsig

On Wed, Apr 21, 2021 at 05:06:35AM +0000, Rich, Joel via Avodah wrote:
> Blog Commenter: At the time when we had a Sanhedrin, there were no
> disputes (at least ideally). The Sanhedrin votes and that's it

I don't think this is true. Questions only went to Sanhedrin when they
couldn't be resolved by lower courts. So, if a question was local to a
city of a sheivet, their beis din pasqened. And in the next sheivet,
their high court would well have ruled differently.

The only way the Sanhedrin vote (or that of the Sanhedrin Qetana in Y-m)
could end a plurarity is if:

1- the question was too complex for all lower courts, or
2- argument broke out on a level beyond a single sheivet, so that no one
   lower court had full jusrisdiction over the sho'alim.

>                             did they vote on specific cases or general
> rules? how strong was their sense of Stare Decisis? What was the role
> of the sanhedrin of the shevet and which cases went where?

Good questions. Didn't want to bury them under my tangent, so I am
quoting in full.

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger                 Here is the test to find whether your mission
http://www.aishdas.org/asp   on Earth is finished:
Author: Widen Your Tent      if you're alive, it isn't.
- https://amzn.to/2JRxnDF                      - Richard Bach

On Wed, Apr 28, 2021 at 12:22:36AM -0400, Zev Sero via Avodah wrote:
> But there is no din that you must eat kodshim from where you can see the
> mikdash.  Kodoshim kalim can be eaten throughout Machane Yisrael. Both in
> the Midbar and in Yerushalayim you could not see the mikdash from most of
> Machane Yisrael....

Because Yerushalahim *was* the Miqdash. As per the language of the
Mishnah. (Or Arabic -- al-Quds.) You can spend heqdesh money on city
maintenance. You can't reverse that back to Shilo, which wasn't muqdash
as a city.

> Therefore I don't think the findings at Shilo can shed any light on the Para
> Aduma site's location.

Accepted.

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger                 A person must be very patient
http://www.aishdas.org/asp   even with himself.
Author: Widen Your Tent            - attributed to R' Nachman of Breslov
- https://amzn.to/2JRxnDF

On Wed, May 19, 2021 at 07:52:35PM -0400, Meir Shinnar via Avodah wrote:
> I am more concerned about the Ehrlichkeit of the mashgiach than which
> chumrot are followed ...

Aside from derekh eretz qodmah laTorah, ehrlechkeit will produce more
reliably kosher food. You need someone who is less likely to fool
himself about what's "good enough" on the basics before worrying about
what chumeros he aims for.

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

On 23 May 2021, at 15:32, Micha Berger wrote:

> On Wed, May 19, 2021 at 07:52:35PM -0400, Meir Shinnar via Avodah wrote:
>> I am more concerned about the Ehrlichkeit of the mashgiach than which
>> chumrot are followed ...
>
> Aside from derekh eretz qodmah laTorah, ehrlechkeit will produce more
> reliably kosher food. You need someone who is less likely to fool
> himself about what's "good enough" on the basics before worrying about
> what chumeros he aims for.
>
> Tir'u baTov!
> -Micha
Unfortunately, it seems that many people  believe that

Derek eretz kodmah laTorah - and was superseded by it?..



Meir Shinnar

On 23/5/21 3:32 pm, Micha Berger via Avodah wrote:
> On Wed, May 19, 2021 at 07:52:35PM -0400, Meir Shinnar via Avodah wrote:
>> I am more concerned about the Ehrlichkeit of the mashgiach than which
>> chumrot are followed ...
> 
> Aside from derekh eretz qodmah laTorah, ehrlechkeit will produce more
> reliably kosher food. You need someone who is less likely to fool
> himself about what's "good enough" on the basics before worrying about
> what chumeros he aims for.

All the erlichkeit in the world won't help, though, when the mashgiach 
holds that something (whether it's gelatin, or the belly fat under the 
membrane, or vegetarian cheese made by a nochri, etc.) is kosher and I 
hold otherwise.


-- 
Zev Sero            Wishing everyone a healthy summer
z...@sero.name

.
R' Joel Rich quoted an unnamed source, and then commented:

> This makes a lot more sense than what I was taught (that the
> Karaites had no mesorah):
> ...
> What were you taught about this?

I too was taught that the Karaites had no mesorah, but that never made
sense to me. Even when I was young and there was no internet, I saw some
articles speaking about Karaite traditions. They seemed to have some sort
of mesorah, even if it wasn't ours.

Any group who has possessed a given text for several generations *must*
have some sort of tradition about the meaning of that text. R' Jay Shachter
recently used Shakespeare's "bodkin" as an example of this. I often use the
Bill of Rights as an example. (Does it include a right to privacy? Can I
scream "Fire!" in a crowded theater? Exactly why does the 2nd Amendment
refer to a militia? And so on.)

It is simply not possible that the Karaites wouldn't have their own
traditions about the meaning of various things. If they didn't have such
traditions, they would have splintered away long ago. (They *are* still
around even today.)

Furthermore, RJR's quote is accurate (from their own perspective!) when
they wrote:

> (Karaite) tradition, however, is not like the tradition in
> which the Rabbanites believe, since they add to and subtract
> from Scripture and say that tradition overcomes (the biblical
> text). . . .(Karaite) tradition, on the other hand, is what is
> acknowledged by all Israel, and it does not go against that
> which is recorded in the Writ of divine truth; ...

From our perspective, of course, there are many many places where our Torah
Sheb'al Peh DOES seem to "go against that which is recorded in the Writ of
divine truth."

The critical word, though, is "seems". We accept the idea that whenever
there's a difference between what the Torah Sheb'al Peh (seems to) say and
when the Torah Sheb'ksav (seems to) say, authority rests with the Torah
Sheb'al Peh. No contest.  (Yes, there are cases where we are unsure of
exactly what the Torah Sheb'al Peh is saying, but Torah Sheb'ksav doesn't
enter into that decision.)

Someone once asked me which of the two is the "real" Torah. I answered that
there aren't two, there's only one. They are the same. They are the same in
kedusha, and they are the same in meaning. There are cases where they do
*seem* to say different things, but that's merely a failure of
comprehension on our part. In every single case, the Torah Sheb'al Peh
explains the true meaning of the Torah Sheb'ksav.

Unfortunately for the Karaites, who rejected the mesorah that Hashem gave
to Moshe Rabenu, they had no recourse but to invent their own.

Akiva Miller
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Rav Shimon Schwab, ZT"L, has what I consider most interesting insights into
 Chinuch in his commentary on the pasukim in  Shoftim 13:7-8. I have posted
his remarks at

https://web.stevens.edu/golem/llevine/rsrh/do_as_i_do.pdf

YL
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[On Fri, 21 May 2021 6:36am EDT, R Akiva Miller <akivagmil...@gmail.com> wrote:]
> I'm confused, mostly because I don't know of the Netziv's view on this
> matter. You SEEM to be saying that the practice of waiting on Shavuos night
> is an example of a new interpretation, and that the Chafetz Chaim was
> critical of him for it.

I wasn't clear. This was a comment the CC made on other issues where
he disagreed with the Netziv and for which the Netziv's support was his
own new interpretation of a passuk. R Schachter often mentions this in
his Shiurim. I wasn't commenting on this specific instance.

On Mon, May 24, 2021 at 10:05:35AM -0400, Zev Sero via Avodah wrote:
>> Aside from derekh eretz qodmah laTorah, ehrlechkeit will produce more
>> reliably kosher food. You need someone who is less likely to fool
>> himself about what's "good enough" on the basics before worrying about
>> what chumeros he aims for.

> All the erlichkeit in the world won't help, though, when the mashgiach holds
> that something (whether it's gelatin,... etc.) is kosher and I hold otherwise.

But that's not in contradiction to what I said.

Put it this way...

Would you prefer to rely on a hekhsher that follows a meiqil pesaq
about gelatin?

Or one that lacks the integrity to actually inspect the butcher they
claim to, who then puts plumbas on treif chickens?

Of course, stories like the Monsey chicken man are a rarity. But there
are plenty of places one can cut corners and all the chumeros one takes
in theoretical halachic issues won't matter.

Ehrlachkeit will indeed produce more reliably kosher food.

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger                 None of us will leave this place alive.
http://www.aishdas.org/asp   All that is left to us is
Author: Widen Your Tent      to be as human as possible while we are here.
- https://amzn.to/2JRxnDF          - Anonymous MD, while a Nazi prisoner

The Rambam discusses prophecy  "Prophecy is bestowed only upon a very wise
sage of a strong character"  When one looks as Tanach, one doesn't get the
sense that this was always clearly the case.  Anyone have any sources that
deal with this?
KT
Joel Rich

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