Avodah Mailing List

Volume 28: Number 118

Wed, 29 Jun 2011

• 1. Re: R. Hirsch as a Modern Orthodox Leader (Prof. Levine)
• 2. R. Hirsch as a Modern Orthodox Leader (Prof. Levine)
• 3. Re: Four-Legged Chicken Sparks Debate over Kosher Status (Zev Sero)
• 4. Re: yovel (Lisa Liel)
• 5. Re: yovel (Hankman)
• 6. Re: Ten Tribes (was Yovel) (Lisa Liel)
• 7. Re: yovel (Eli Turkel)
• 8. Re: yovel (T6...@aol.com)
• 9. Re: R. Hirsch as a Modern Orthodox Leader (Micha Berger)
• 10. Re: Ten Tribes (was Yovel) (Zev Sero)
• 11. Re: Ten Tribes (was Yovel) (Micha Berger)
• 12. Re: Ten Tribes (was Yovel) (Allan Engel)
• 13. Re: yovel (kennethgmil...@juno.com)
• 14. yovel (Eli Turkel)
• 15. Re: Ten Tribes (was Yovel) (Lisa Liel)
• 16. Re: A Shabbos of months? OR Two parallel cycles of Jewish year (Micha Berger)
• 17. Re: Ten Tribes (was Yovel) (Micha Berger)
• 18. Re: Consumer Alert: Minhog Scams On The Rise! (Micha Berger)

At 10:35 AM 6/29/20  Rn T. Katz wrote:
>
>In a message dated 6/29/2011 8:01:56 A.M. Eastern Daylight Time, 
>llev...@stevens.edu writes:
>Please see http://vbm-torah.org/archive/modern/11modern.htm
>  >>>>>
>completely anachronistic to call him "modern Orthodox"
>
>he was Orthodox, a Torah Jew -- his enemy was Reform, not chareidim 
>(another term that would be anachronistic if applied to 19th century 
>Torah Jews)
>
>He is the father and exemplar of all modern Torah-observant Jews, MO 
>and chareidi, if by "modern" you mean currently alive.

IMO, neither of the terms MO and  Chareidi have precise definitions.

If so, then how meaningful is it to categorize this or that one as MO 
or Chareidi?  I do not consider myself MO or Chareidi and certainly 
not Chassidic.  So what am I?  A Jew who tries to be observant and 
who thinks for himself.

I often say cynically that my definition of MO is anyone who keeps 
Shabbos and has indoor plumbing! >:-}

Yitzchok Levine 
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Please see http://vbm-torah.org/archive/modern/11modern.htm

> kosher label, which can only be determined once it is slaughtered,
> [...]
> If the legs are tied together, according to local rabbis, the chicken
> is not kosher. This they said could only be determined by slaughtering
> the animal.

What does this mean?  Tied together with what?  String?

Perhaps someone can explain what is the shayla here.  I thought it was
black letter law that "kol yeter kenatul dami", and therefore this
chicken should be clearly treif.  What is the sevara to rule it kosher,
and what has it got to do with the legs being "tied together", whatever
that is supposed to mean?

BTW, this is far from unheard-of.  At this URL you can see a picture of
a (dead) four-legged chicken that was brought in to the Crown Heights
kollel ten years ago:  http://sero.name/4leggedchicken.jpg


-- 
Zev Sero        If they use these guns against us once, at that moment
z...@sero.name   the Oslo Accord will be annulled and the IDF will
                 return to all the places that have been given to them.
                                            - Yitzchak Rabin

                    
                

At 06:55 AM 6/29/2011, kennethgmil...@juno.com wrote:
>R' Eli Turkel wrote:
>
> > Why would one assume that there are any remnants left of the 10
> > tribes to bring back? By now they are intermarried over many
> > centuries.
>
>What does intermarriage prove? Half of all intermarriages result in 
>Jewish children.

<snip>

>If anyone sees an error in my math (or elsewhere), please correct me.

Yes, actually.  Bear in mind that tribe goes by the father.  So with 
intermarriage, it doesn't matter which spouse is Jewish: if it's the 
father, the children are non-Jews.  But if it's the mother, the 
Jewish children are tribeless.

Lisa 

RET wrote:

Why would one assume that there are any remnants left of  the 10 tribes
to bring back?
By now they are intermarried over many  centuries.


R'nTK wrote:

I agree that it is highly unlikely that pockets of the Ten Tribes are still 
 living somewhere -- I am quite certain the Sambatyon is not a real river 
-- but  at the same time, it is likely that Eliyahu Hanavi will be able to 
point to  specific Yehudim and say, "You are really from the tribe of 
Ephraim...or  Shimon....or Naftali....ben achar ben."  

CM responds:

I certainly do not question Eliyahu Hanavi's ability to identify someone al
pi nevuah. What I do question is the existence of someone from the 10
tribes BEN ACHAR BEN after all this time left to identify.  The galus of
the 10 tribes was c. 2600 years ago. Conservatively, at about 4 or more
generations per century this means the probability of anyone from an all
male line  is the inverse of  2 to the 104th power! This is so tiny that it
is a virtual impossibility without the intervention of nes. You remember
the story about the "mere" request from a king giving a reward for one
grain doubled on each square of the chessboard. This was only 2 to the 64th
power.

Kol Tuv

Chaim Manaster
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At 06:22 AM 6/29/2011, Zev Sero wrote:
>On 29/06/2011 1:22 AM, Eli Turkel wrote:
>>>
>>>There was a time when some believed that the American Indian was descended
>>>from the Ten Tribes.
>
>>Even if true why would they be Jewish anymore?.
>
>If they only married among themselves (or with other such tribes) then
>they'd still be Jewish, just like the Bene Israel of the Bombay area,
>who were kept from intermarrying by the Indian caste system.

True, but if they didn't have a history of hilchot gittin, the entire 
population might have a chazaka of being mamzerim.  Sometimes it's 
better for them to assume that they're non-Jews, as was done with the 
Ethiopians until too much political pressure was brought to bear on 
the Israeli rabbinate.

Lisa 

> CM responds:
>
> I certainly do not question Eliyahu Hanavi's ability to identify someone al
> pi nevuah. What I do question is the existence of?someone from the 10 tribes
> BEN ACHAR BEN after all this time left to identify.

To add to Chaim's statistics if along the line any mother is
non-Jewish then the child is not even Jewish
So we need ben-acher-ben from the tribe with no non-Jewish wives


-- 
Eli Turkel

 




I agree that it is highly unlikely that pockets of the Ten Tribes are  
still 
living somewhere -- I am quite certain the Sambatyon is not a  real river 
-- but  at the same time, it is likely that Eliyahu Hanavi  will be able to 
point to  specific Yehudim and say, "You are really  from the tribe of 
Ephraim...or  Shimon....or Naftali....ben achar  ben."  [--TK]

CM responds:
 
I certainly do not question Eliyahu Hanavi's ability to identify someone  
al pi nevuah. What I do question is the existence of someone from the 10  
tribes BEN ACHAR BEN after all this time left to identify.  The  galus of the 
10 tribes was c. 2600 years ago. ....
Kol Tuv
 
Chaim Manaster


 
 
>>>>>
 
You didn't read my post carefully. I wasn't talking about the Ten LOST  
Tribes, which are probably lost forever, long intermarried with other  nations. 
 I was talking about individuals from each of those tribes who  lived in 
the SOUTHERN kingdom, the kingdom of Yehuda, at the time the Bayis  Rishon was 
destroyed, and who have remained within the Jewish fold  throughout the 
centuries.  It is no more improbable that a man from Naftali  or Zevulun would 
today have thousands of male descendants than it is improbable  that a kohen 
alive three thousand years ago would today have thousands of kohen  
descendants, ben achar ben.  Every man alive today is the descendant, ben  achar 
ben, of a man who lived thousands of years ago.   (Maleness is  always 
transmitted in the male line.)  As long as this man from Shevet  X remained Jewish 
and remained within the fold all those years ago, there  is no reason he 
shouldn't today have many living descendants among the Jewish  people -- not 
far away in a distant land but right here in Miami or New York or  Tel Aviv.
 
--Toby  Katz
================






_____________________ 




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On Wed, Jun 29, 2011 at 10:35:40AM -0400, T6...@aol.com wrote:
: he was Orthodox, a Torah Jew -- his enemy was Reform, not chareidim  
...

I'm surprised I let this implication about who MO's enemies are through
to the list. My apologies.

In any case...

: He is the father and exemplar of all modern Torah-observant Jews,  MO and 
: chareidi, if by "modern" you mean currently alive.

Well, Neo-Orthodoxy is "Chadash", so depending upon how much a given
community follows the Chasam Sofer's motto, that is more or less true.

The whole discussion revolves more around how each of us defines the
idiom MO than what RSRH stood for or anything else of real meaning.

RSRH was like today's MO in his embracing high culture. But unlike it
in how he fused secular and sacred knowledge. His promotion of Austritt
is entirely like Mod-O, which even in its more RW forms limits Austritt
to kelapei-fnim. RYBS actually prohibited tearing the Jewish community
asunder on inyanim kelapei chutz.

Yes, the realia were different. Perhaps RYBS would have considered
Austritt mandatory at a time when R was gaining strength and numbers
so rapidly. Pesaqim differ when applied to different situations.
The difference between RSRH and RYBS on this point appears more in their
justifying rhetoric than in their conclusions.

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             None of us will leave this place alive.
mi...@aishdas.org        All that is left to us is
http://www.aishdas.org   to be as human as possible while we are here.
Fax: (270) 514-1507            - Anonymous MD, while a Nazi prisoner

On 29/06/2011 7:55 AM, kennethgmil...@juno.com wrote:
> What does intermarriage prove? Half of all intermarriages result in
> Jewish children.

> Let's take a population of 100 Jews and 100 non-Jews, all of whom
> intermarried. So we have 100 families, half of whose children are
> Jewish, and half are not.

Though there is the gemara that says that among those Jews who were exiled
and didn't return soon after, all of the women were miraculously childless,
so that we needn't worry about their descendants being Jewish.  Otherwise
we'd have a problem in the countries where the Tanach tells us they were
exiled to, because kol kavua kemechtza al mechtza, so any person in that
country would have a 50% chance of being Jewish, and thus a safek mamzer.

On 29/06/2011 11:06 AM, Micha Berger wrote:
> But whether it was a one-time gezeirah or a general rule, the gemara
> itself tells us that the 10 shevatim either no longer exist (no Jewish
> descendents) or are no longer Jewish.

Or Yirmiyahu brought them back.  In any event, it's impossible that
the tribes themselves were completely extirpated, because the nevi'im
tell us that they'll be there when Moshiach comes.  If necessary, I
suppose some of them can just be brought back to life, just as we know
that some of the tzadikim will come to life early, before the general
techiyas hameisim.


On 29/06/2011 11:16 AM, Lisa Liel wrote:
> At 06:22 AM 6/29/2011, Zev Sero wrote:

>> If they only married among themselves (or with other such tribes) then
>> they'd still be Jewish, just like the Bene Israel of the Bombay area,
>> who were kept from intermarrying by the Indian caste system.

> True, but if they didn't have a history of hilchot gittin, the entire
> population might have a chazaka of being mamzerim.

In the case of the Bene Israel, they had a history of not allowing
divorcees to remarry.  Effectively, they had no divorce, just permanent
separation.  Thus no likelihood of mamzerus.  

-- 
Zev Sero
z...@sero.name

On Wed, Jun 29, 2011 at 01:10:26PM -0400, Zev Sero wrote:
> On 29/06/2011 11:06 AM, Micha Berger wrote:
>> But whether it was a one-time gezeirah or a general rule, the gemara
>> itself tells us that the 10 shevatim either no longer exist (no Jewish
>> descendents) or are no longer Jewish.
>
> Or Yirmiyahu brought them back.  In any event, it's impossible that
> the tribes themselves were completely extirpated, because the nevi'im
> tell us that they'll be there when Moshiach comes.  If necessary, I
> suppose some of them can just be brought back to life, just as we know
> that some of the tzadikim will come to life early, before the general
> techiyas hameisim.

We "know" this?

In any case, there were refugees of Malkhus Yisrael who lived within
Malkhus Yehudah. Once Eliyahu identifies them, they could make up the
remaining shevatim.

(I posted this idea twice already, but the possibility isn't reflected
in your post.)

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

A sofek mamzer is muttar to marry mideoraysa.

On Wed, Jun 29, 2011 at 6:10 PM, Zev Sero <z...@sero.name> wrote:

>   Otherwise we'd have a problem in the countries where the Tanach tells us
> they were
> exiled to, because kol kavua kemechtza al mechtza, so any person in that
> country would have a 50% chance of being Jewish, and thus a safek mamzer.
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R' Micha Berger cited R' Zev Sero, who in turn referred us to "Leaves of
Faith: The World of Jewish Learning" by Rav Aharon Lichtenstein, which can
be read on Google Books at http://tinyurl.com/3mvv9cl

Some of the questions I was going to ask RMB and RSZ were anticipated by RAL himself, who writes, on page 66-67 there:

> If we ask, in purely descriptive terms, whether anyone born of
> Jewish parents is a Jew, the answer must be yes. As an epithet, the
> terms "Jew" remains applicabe to any individual who was ever endowed
> with Jewish status - even to a meshumad. Hence, he is obligated to
> pursue a Torah life, and should he decide to return, he would
> perhaps require no new conversion.(38) However, if we ask whether a
> meshumad has anything of a Jewish personality and character, and
> whether therefore, he continues to be endowed with the personal
> status of a Jew, the answer is a ringing no. He remains a Jew
> without Jewishness. What he retain is simply the descriptive
> epithet: shem Yisrael. Of kedushat Yisrael, however - of the
> sacredness of the Jewish personality, that which essentially
> constitutes being a Jew - he is bereft. And let us remember that
> kedushat Yisrael is not simply a psychological condition or even a
> legal status. It is also a metaphysical state. Of this, the meshumad
> is divested completely. As he has renounced Jewry, so Jewishness is
> divorced from him.
>
>...
> Footnote 38: The first point, that the obligation remains, is
> certain. The second, that reentry would not necessitate gerut, is
> open to question. One might argue that even for one who is endowed
> with shem Yisrael, the recovery of kedushat Yisrael requires full
> gerut. It may also be contended that gerut would not be required,
> but only because the return to the fold would retroactively cancel
> the earlier renunciation.

To me this sounds like a contradiction. Clearly, RAL is trying to describe a very subtle point, but I am lost on it. I hope someone can explain it to me.

If RAL had said that this person is legally and technically a Jew, but
socially and psychologically a non-Jew, then I would understand completely.
But that is not what he said. He said that this person "is obligated to
pursue a Torah life", yet at the same time, "of kedushat Yisrael, however -
of the sacredness of the Jewish personality, that which essentially
constitutes being a Jew - he is bereft."

I do not understand. Aren't obligation in mitzvos and kedushas Yisrael the exact same thing? Isn't this what we mean by "Asher kid'shanu b'mitzvosav"?

How can a person be chayav in mitzvos, yet bereft of kedusha? Perhaps the
kedusha is too small to perceive, but is this not what is meant by the
Pintele Yid? And is this not the exact situation where we look for that
Pintele Yid?

Akiva Miller

____________________________________________________________
57 Year Old Mom Looks 27!
Mom Reveals $5 Wrinkle Trick That Has Angered Doctors!
http://thirdpartyoffers.juno.com/TGL3131/4e0b7bc0b3f9a1225a5st04vuc

I was completely lost by the argument below. The original discussion
was the 10 lost tribes.
For definteless lets take the tribe of ephraim.
If someone intermarries we  have 2 possibilities. If an ephraim man
marries a nonJew then the child is not Jewish. If a non-Jewish man
marries an ephraim woman then the child is Jewish but not from Ephrain
since the tribe follows the father. Hence, in any case of
intermarriage the child is lost to the tribe.
Hence, in the case given with 100 Jews from Ephraim and 100 nonJews
and assuming equal men and women and complete randomness then after
one generation 25 of the Jewish men marry 25 Jewish women and have N
children for a total of 25N children belong to the tribe of Ephraim.
For simplicity assume N=2 and so the population stays stable. Thus we
now have 50 children in the tribe of Ephraim.
There will be another 50 children who are Jewish but not part of any
tribe and another 100 nonJews.
Of course in real life many of the 50 children with a Jewish mother
and NonJewish father who are technically Jewish will in fact be lost
to the Jewish people.

kol tuv

Eli


<<What does intermarriage prove? Half of all intermarriages result in
Jewish children.

Let's take a population of 100 Jews and 100 non-Jews, all of whom
intermarried. So we have 100 families, half of whose children are
Jewish, and half are not.

Let's use "N" as the average number of children per family. So in this
first generation of kids who have intermarried parents, there are a
total of 100*N children, of whom 50*N are Jewish, and 50*N are not.

Let's say they all randomly marry each other, either because they
consider themselves to be non-Jewish, or because they don't care. So
we now have 50*N couples, and they will have 50*N*N children. Of those
children, half will have a Jewish mother and half will not, so the
next generation has 25*N*N Jews, and 25*N*N non-Jews.>>

-- 
Eli Turkel

At 12:21 PM 6/29/2011, Micha Berger wrote:
>In any case, there were refugees of Malkhus Yisrael who lived within
>Malkhus Yehudah. Once Eliyahu identifies them, they could make up the
>remaining shevatim.

It's been a while since I learned the fourth perek of Kiddushin, but 
I thought it was Mashiach who was going to identify tribes by Ruach 
HaKodesh.  Am I mistaken?

Lisa 

On Sat, Jun 25, 2011 at 09:19:15PM -0700, Michael ORR wrote:
: And then if we can understand the 12 month-year as a composite of
: overlapping 7 month cycles, then it seems natural to try to extend this
: logic to a 24 hour day...

I find the notion of taking a year that is 12 months 11/19 of the time
and 13 months the other 7/19 and shoehorning it into the concept of cycles
of 7 to be too far of a stretch.

Shabbos is on day 7, 14, 21 -- no overlap.
Shavuos has a day 50 as a special case, one that may or may not be shared
by Yovel. Depending upon whether shemittah de'oraisa excludes the yovel
year (always on years 7, 14, 21, ... 42 and 49 on the yovel cycle)
or is an independent cycle.

But there is no maqor for overlapping cycles, particularly of inconsistent
length.

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             Man is equipped with such far-reaching vision,
mi...@aishdas.org        yet the smallest coin can obstruct his view.
http://www.aishdas.org                         - Rav Yisrael Salanter
Fax: (270) 514-1507

On Wed, Jun 29, 2011 at 03:02:36PM -0500, Lisa Liel wrote:
> It's been a while since I learned the fourth perek of Kiddushin, but I 
> thought it was Mashiach who was going to identify tribes by Ruach  
> HaKodesh.  Am I mistaken?

As I recently commented upon, the mishnah (end of Edios) and gemara
(Qiddishin 71a) say it's Eliyahu, the Rambam (Melakhim 12:3) says it
will be mashiach. I suggested based on this that maybe the Rambam
considers the "Eliyahu" whose arrival is foretold is a symbol for a
navi, and not the person who ascended alive in particular. In which
case, he could hold that the Eliyahu who comes before Yom Hashem is a
prophetic melekh.

See the discussion at
<http://www.aishdas.org/avodah/getindex.cgi?section=R#RAMBA
M%20AND%20ELIYAHU%20HANAVI>
(or <http://bit.ly/mr4srs>), I'm referring to the opening post.

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             The mind is a wonderful organ
mi...@aishdas.org        for justifying decisions
http://www.aishdas.org   the heart already reached.
Fax: (270) 514-1507

To answer RZS in an email I misplaced, near the beginning of his
haqdamah to Pereq Cheileq, the Rambam discusses three katim of people
WRT believing aggadic stories: The first think that all these stories
are meant literally, believe them, and thereby belittle the Torah. The
second kat think that all these stories are meant literally, find them
absurd and therefore ridicule the Torah. The third kat understand that
the rabbis were speaking in parable.

He has very harsh words for those who assume the historicity of these
stories. Other risnonim and acharonim also tell you not to -- for that
I again refer you to RDE's sefer and the excerpt at
<http://www.aishdas.org/avodah/vol16/v16n052.shtml#13>. R' Mechy Frankel
<http://www.aishdas.org/avodah/vol03/v03n152.shtml#06> quotes R' Sheirah
Gaon, R' Shemuael ben Chofni Gaon, R' Hai Gaon, and R' Shemuel
haNagid. You'll also find on list similar quotes from RSRH
<http://www.aishdas.org/avodah/faxes/hirschAgadaHebrew.pdf> and RYSalanter
<http://www.aishdas.org/avodah/vol15/v15n003.shtml#03>. But the Rambam
actually berates people who believe these fantastic stories.

This notion that no O Jew would question these stories is the effect
of O counter-reaction after R and C minimalism. It is still not an
impression you would get in some O communities, and in any case, not
the historically dominant position.

Much like the young universe... (Sorry RZL, I couldn't help myself!)

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             When one truly looks at everyone's good side,
mi...@aishdas.org        others come to love him very naturally, and
http://www.aishdas.org   he does not need even a speck of flattery.
Fax: (270) 514-1507                        - Rabbi AY Kook


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