Avodah Mailing List

Volume 28: Number 131

Sun, 10 Jul 2011

• 1. Re: Can [sic] a woman wear a wig if her mother did not? (T613K@aol.com)
• 2. lighting candles (Eli Turkel)
• 3. Childbirth (was Can a woman wear a wig if her mother did not?) (Prof. Levine)
• 4. Number of Candles Lit (Prof. Levine)
• 5. FRUITFUL QUESTION (Alan Rubin)
• 6. apple (Simi Peters)
• 7. Re: apple (Micha Berger)
• 8. Re: FRUITFUL QUESTION (Micha Berger)
• 9. Re: FRUITFUL QUESTION (Zev Sero)
• 10. Re: FRUITFUL QUESTION (Micha Berger)
• 11. Re: lighting candles (Micha Berger)
• 12. Re: Can [sic] a woman wear a wig if her mother did not? (Zev Sero)
• 13. Re: apple (Simon Montagu)
• 14. Re: soup (David Riceman)
• 15. Women and Tefillin (Richard Wolberg)
• 16. Re: Can [sic] a woman wear a wig if her mother did not? (Rich, Joel)
• 17. Parshas Balak and the root "Kuf Beis" (kennethgmil...@juno.com)
• 18. Re: soup (kennethgmil...@juno.com)
• 19. spiritual forces/mezuzos?video games, etc . (Harvey Benton)

 
From: David Riceman _driceman@optimum.net_ (mailto:drice...@optimum.net) 


<<There is no issue of hataras nedarim nor do we have  matrilineal 
minhagim -- not patrilineal minhagim either, for that matter, in  the 
case of a married woman.>> [--TK]

Isn't this a circular  argument? Something becomes an implicit neder if 
you intend to do it  forever; it's not a neder if you intend to change it 
when you marry (YD  214:1).

OTOH it certainly is possible for a woman who has made nedarim to  marry, 
and the nedarim don't disappear by the act of marriage (EH  39:1-2).

David Riceman

 
 
 
>>>>>
 
 
The original question that started this thread was whether, if the girl's  
mother had never worn a sheitel, that fact somehow constituted an implicit 
neder  on the part of the girl never to wear a sheitel herself, either.  My 
answer  was no, it did not.
 
To be clear, I was not talking about hataras nedarim in general but in that 
 specific case -- if her mother did not wear a sheitel, did a daughter need 
to do  hataras nedarim before she could wear a sheitel?  In that specific 
context  I wrote, "There is no issue of hataras nedarim" (nor of mother's 
minhag,  either). 
 
The fact that her mother never wore a sheitel in no way indicates that the  
daughter "never intended to wear a sheitel."
 

--Toby Katz
================




_____________________

 





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<<  Today we are accustomed to thinking of childbirth as nothing too
serious as far as the mother's physical condition is concerned.  Until
the fairly recent past, however, it was treated much more seriously --
it's not so long ago that the normal post-partum hospital stay was two
weeks.  It would not surprise me if failing to light candles the first
Shabbos after giving birth was not a rarity, and the din mentions that
missing a week calls for lighting an extra candle for life.  Is it too
far a stretch to assume that those places which adopted the hanhaga of
an extra candle per child did so k'de lo l'vayeish those who missed,
by making it the practice of everyone?>>

I also heard this reason many years ago.

What happens with the birth of twins or triplets? Did the mother stay
in the hospital that much longer?

Which leads to my question: Do we say "lo plug" on minhagim especially
those that seems to have arisen by themselves.
I was wondering if this had anything to do we the arguments of
kitniyot. Here too there doesnt seem to have been any formal gezerah
as Rabbenu Yechiel didn't know of anything. Thus, it would seem that
kitniyot also "arose" from unofficial minhagim. Many modern poskim
therefore say it doesnt apply whenever the reasons dont apply or to
new products (eg cottenseed and canola oil etc.). Other poskim seem to
apply "lo pkug" that it applies to anything within the category of
kitniyot on matter what.

-- 
Eli Turkel

At 11:51 PM 7/9/2011, REMT wrote:
>Today we are accustomed to thinking of childbirth as nothing too 
>serious as far as the mother's physical condition is 
>concerned.  Until the fairly recent past, however, it was treated 
>much more seriously -- it's not so long ago that the normal 
>post-partum hospital stay was two weeks.  It would not surprise me 
>if failing to light candles the first Shabbos after giving birth was 
>not a rarity, and the din mentions that missing a week calls for 
>lighting an extra candle for life.  Is it too far a stretch to 
>assume that those places which adopted the hanhaga of an extra 
>candle per child did so k'de lo l'vayeish those who missed, by 
>making it the practice of everyone?

I was born in 1941, and my mother told me more than once that she was 
confined to bed for a week after my birth. IIRC she said that she 
spent another week after she was allowed to get out of bed in the 
hospital.  My bris was in the hospital.

We tend to ignore the fact that there can be serious consequences for 
a woman during and after childbirth, since we do not see this, B"H, 
very often today. However,  a neighbor of mine told me that his 
friend's wife gave birth about 3 years ago and went into in 
coma.  She is still in a coma!  She is a young woman, not more than 
30 I believe, and this was her second child.  Her first delivery went 
well.  I have no more details.

  With this in mind and what happened after my youngest grandson was 
born (See 
"<http://personal.stevens.edu/%7Ellevine/aaron_vunderkind.pdf>Medical 
Drama: Why We Call Aaron a 
<http://personal.stevens.edu/%7Ellevine/aaron_vunderkind.pdf>Vunderkind" 
Inyan: Hamodia Weekly Magazine, June 15, 2011, pages 28 - 29.)  we 
should all be cognizant of how thankful we should be when we hear 
about a normal delivery of a healthy baby.

Yitzchok Levine 
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At 11:51 PM 7/9/2011, R. Micha wrote:

>I heard RARakeffetR suggest this line of reasoning, and seeing my own
>wife light that candle (or ask if one needs to when there is a "yahrzeit
>candle" for the same child underneath the Shabbos licht), it resonates.

As has been said, the custom in many homes is to lite two candles and 
then to add one for each child the family is blessed with.

What happens in the case of divorce?  Does the women reduce the 
number of candles by one after she is divorced? If not, then if she 
remarries, does she add another candle or leave the number the same 
as before?  If her  new husband has children, does she add candles 
for each one of them?

YL
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> It's peculiar
>to the English-speaking world, and arises from the fact that "apple" used
>to be a generic term for all fruit

The idea that the fruit of the tree in Gan Eden was an apple is not
confined to the English speaking world.. The fruit is often shown as
an apple in European art. My understanding is that the idea comes from
the similarity of the Latin word for  apple malum to the word for
evil.

Alan Rubin

If I am not mistaken, the apple is not native to the Middle East and
'tapuah' refers to another fruit.  I'm sure Yehuda Felix or Noga Hareuveni
would have something on this.

Kol tuv,
Simi Peters
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On Sun, Jul 10, 2011 at 09:18:07AM +0300, Simi Peters wrote:
: If I am not mistaken, the apple is not native to the Middle East and
: 'tapuah' refers to another fruit. I'm sure Yehuda Felix or Noga Hareuveni
: would have something on this.

Or Rabbeinu Tam. (Something I already mentioned on list, so I'm
replying privately.)

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

On Sun, Jul 10, 2011 at 05:29:58PM +0100, Alan Rubin wrote:
: The idea that the fruit of the tree in Gan Eden was an apple is not
: confined to the English speaking world.. The fruit is often shown as
: an apple in European art. My understanding is that the idea comes from
: the similarity of the Latin word for  apple malum to the word for
: evil.

Brilliant!

But the sounds don't exactly match. "Malum" from "malus" means evil,
but both vowels are short. "Malum" with a long /A/ from the Ancient Greek
"melon" means apple and sometimes fruit in general.

It is likely that the people who produced the Vulgate chose "malus" over
the synonym "fructus" because they were consciously or unconsciously 
motivated by the pun.

(I am not sure, had someone else written this post, if I would have told
them to redirect it to Areivim. If I made the wrong decision, I apologize.)

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             With the "Echad" of the Shema, the Jew crowns
mi...@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

On 10/07/2011 12:29 PM, Alan Rubin wrote:
>> It's peculiar
>> to the English-speaking world, and arises from the fact that "apple" used
>> to be a generic term for all fruit
>
> The idea that the fruit of the tree in Gan Eden was an apple is not
> confined to the English speaking world.. The fruit is often shown as
> an apple in European art. My understanding is that the idea comes from
> the similarity of the Latin word for  apple malum to the word for
> evil.

AIUI the Latin word "malus" is a generic term for "fruit", just as the
English word "apple" used to be.

-- 
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

                    
                

About apples and the Middle East, wikipedia says the center of diversity
of the genus Malus is in eastern Turkey. Alexander the Great found dwarf
apples in Kazakhstan, and winter apples have been an in important foor in
Europe and Asia. Interesting also was the line, "The apple tree was perhaps
the earliest tree to be cultivated", although the source wiki points to
didn't strike me as particularly authoritative.

In any case, we have a mesorah with a list of logical candidates, and
as RZS already pointed out, the apple has nothing to recommend it other
than an accident in Latin.

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             We are great, and our foibles are great,
mi...@aishdas.org        and therefore our troubles are great --
http://www.aishdas.org   but our consolations will also be great.
Fax: (270) 514-1507                        - Rabbi AY Kook

On Sun, Jul 10, 2011 at 09:20:57AM +0300, Eli Turkel wrote:
: Which leads to my question: Do we say "lo plug" on minhagim especially
: those that seems to have arisen by themselves.

Are there any other kind?

If the minhag didn't arise on its own, wouldn't it be a taqanah?

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

On 10/07/2011 1:14 AM, T6...@aol.com wrote:
> The original question that started this thread was whether, if the girl's
> mother had never worn a sheitel, that fact somehow constituted an implicit
> neder on the part of the girl never to wear a sheitel herself, either.
> My answer was no, it did not.
> To be clear, I was not talking about hataras nedarim in general but in
> that specific case -- if her mother did not wear a sheitel, did a daughter
> need to do hataras nedarim before she could wear a sheitel?  In that
> specific context I wrote, "There is no issue of hataras nedarim" (nor
> of mother's minhag, either).
> The fact that her mother never wore a sheitel in no way indicates that
> the daughter "never intended to wear a sheitel."

Well, parents can in fact bind their descendants with nedarim.  So it's
not completely obvious, without at least a little bit of thought, that
this is not such a neder.  The question, I suppose, was worth asking, if
only barely.

Of course one must distinguish between those who didn't wear wigs when
it wasn't the general custom, and those who refrain today.  The latter
don't just happen not to wear wigs; they're deliberately deciding not to
wear them, because they believe them to be inadequate.  And within that
latter set we must distinguish between those who actually believe wigs
to be forbidden by halacha, and those who understand that they are
permitted, but see their abstention as a laudable chumra.  It's this
latter subset that might perhaps be seen as taking a neder.  If it's
determined that they did so, only then does the original question begin:
did they intend to bind their daughters with this neder?  And if so do
they have that power?


-- 
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

                    
                

On Sun, Jul 10, 2011 at 9:18 AM, Simi Peters <famil...@actcom.net.il> wrote:

> **
> If I am not mistaken, the apple is not native to the Middle East
> and 'tapuah' refers to another fruit.  I'm sure Yehuda Felix or Noga
> Hareuveni would have something on this.
>
>
I have heard that "tapuah" may have been the quince. On RH our minhag is to
be yotze shtei hade`ot and eat both apples with honey and meat stew with
quinces.
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RAM:

<<If soup is not a meal-food, and it's not a drink for washing down the 
solids, then what sort of food *is* it? Would you consider it to be a 
snack food, like apples and cookies? Is it a whole new category? >>

I don't know.

David Riceman

The gemara reports that Michal, wife of Dovid Hamelech, wore tefillin. 
Sources: Eruvin 96a-b and 10:1 Yerushalmi, Berachos 2:3.
Tosafos, Rosh Hashanah 33a, s.v. haRebbi.
What is also fascinating is an explanation made out of the discomfort
the m'forshim had regarding women wearing tefillin. The Kaf HaChayim 
(OC 38:9) quotes a suggestion by the Yafe l'lev. He writes that Michal
"knew" that she possessed a reincarnated "male soul." He continues
that this also explains her being a barren woman. 

[What I find fascinating is the idea of Reincarnation being endorsed by
some Sages while being denounced by others). I recall a shiur in where 
the Rebbe believed in Reincarnation and said that you can only come 
back as a Jew. When I was a teenager I learned with a Rabbi Katz z"l 
in Hartford, Ct. He said that if you don't wash prior to making the motzi,
you will come back as a dog (transmigration of the souls). That's pretty
scary, unless, of course, you come back as Lassie]. Personally, I feel
that gilgul hanefesh is plausible. (Interestingly, the Greek philosophical 
term for transmigration of the soul is "Metempsychosis." What I find 
intriguing is the implementation of the word 'Psychosis' which is a 
pathological psychiatric condition involving a loss of contact with reality).

There is also documentation that Hannah Rachel Verbermacher, 
"Lumirer Moyd," [19th c. Polish Chassidic leader] wore tefillin. 

Rabbi Avigdor Tzarfati, one of the ba'alei Tosafot, in his Sefer Perushim 
Upesakim al haTorah leRabbeinu Avigdor Tzarfati, states that some of
the righteous women in his time put tefillin on with a b'racha.

Of course, women can't pick and choose. If they decide to m'kayem the
mitzvos she-ha-z'man g'rama, they must fulfill all of them (perhaps with
some necessary exceptions). 

 Well, parents can in fact bind their descendants with nedarim. 
-- 
Zev Sero      

Source?
KT
Joel Rich
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Thank you.

The unusual root "kuf beis" (or some 3-letter variation of it) appears
several times in Parshas Balak, and I'm curious if there is some kind of
connection or lesson in this.

First, we find the relatively common "aleph resh" -- meaning "curse" --
three times in pasuk 22:6, and elsewhere in the parsha as well., although
the even more common "kuf lamed lamed" does not appear at all. But in 22:11
we find a different word, "kavah" (kuf beis heh), which Rashi says is a
stronger term than "arah". This form occurs elsewhere in the parsha too.

Now, one could analyze the places in the parsha where the "aleph resh" sort
of cursing is mentioned, and compare them to places which refer to the "kuf
beis" sort of cursing. And if anyone is interested in that question, I
welcome them to start a new thread on that topic. But what I'm curious
about it something else entirely.

At the end of the parsha, pasuk 25:8 tells us that Pinchas followed Zimri
into "the kubah" (heh kuf beis heh), which Rashi explains to be a tent.
That same pasuk tells us that the spear pierced Kozbi's "kavasah" (kuf beis
sav heh), which Rashi explains to mean "belly" literally, but actually
refers to her female organs.

Rav SR Hirsch on these pesukim supports these translations, explaining that
the rook "kuf beis" refers to a hollow emptiness -- the void of a curse,
the space in a tent, and the abdominal cavity.

So I have no objection or argument on the meanings and translations of
these words. But I am struck by how odd it was for these three terms to be
used in this single parsha. Perhaps "kavah" is indeed more a severe curse
than "arah", but why couldn't 25:8 have used the words "ohel" and "beten"?

Pasuk 25:8 seems to be crying out for a connection to Bilaam's attempted curses. Any idea what that connection is?

Akiva Miller

____________________________________________________________
57 Year Old Mom Looks 27!
Mom Reveals $5 Wrinkle Trick That Has Angered Doctors!
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R' David Riceman wrote:

> Soup (especially clear soup) does not generally constitute a meal,
> so I don't see that this halacha is relevant to it.

Okay, I'll take two more stabs at it.

(1) I propose that <<< soup (especially clear soup) >>>
is a "liptan" - the prime example of a food which is eaten together with
bread so very frequently that the bread will exempt it even when eaten
separately from the bread. Consider: croutons, mandlen, matza farfel, bits
of challah. All these items are routinely eaten with soup; boxes are even
labeled by the manufacturer as "soup croutons" and "soup mandlen". It may
be noteworthy that while these items can be added to any soup, they are
most often added to *clear* soups!

[Now, if someone wants to argue that the challah is enhancing the soup
rather than the other way around, then I will concede that point, but I'll
chalk it up to crazy moderns who eat without understanding what they're
doing. (I did not understand the word "appetizer" until I learned Kaytzad
Mevarchim.) But if we go strictly by the practices described by the Gemara
and Shulchan Aruch, then soup sure seems like a liptan to me.]

(2) Perhaps Hamotzi covers soup because soup is an appetizer? (I am
speaking of cultures where soup is served before the main course. In
cultures where soup is served after the main course, it would obviously
follow the halachos of dessert, whatever they might be.)

(Personally, though, I still consider soup to be like orange juice
(mentioned by R' Zev Sero in Avodah 28:127). To me, orange juice is a
syrupy beverage which I would use to wash solids down only if there was no
alternative. L'chatchilah, I drink orange juice purely for its nutritional
value. And this places soup and orange juice in the same category, that of
being a meal item which Hamotzi *does* exempt.)

Akiva Miller

____________________________________________________________
57 Year Old Mom Looks 27!
Mom Reveals $5 Wrinkle Trick That Has Angered Doctors!
http://thirdpartyoffers.juno.com/TGL3131/4e1a2a83e55de2eeee4st04vuc

Avodah/Areivim
the saying goes, that what comes in, must eventually come or go-out. 
we all take in things through our bodies, be it food (physically (healthy or 
not??) 
and spiritual foods, (eg torah, or sfarim chitzonius/negative one's) like 
violent video games (which the supreme court just allowed children as 
allowable constitutionally.  
My question is, if we take things in through our ears (loshon hora, etc) it must 
go out somewhere, 
and it usually does, either through our eyes (viewing someone/some thing/some 
family) in a nega-
tive light, or 
if we view something through our eyes (pritzut) then it also has sspiritual 
manifestations
eg, (we dont' view our wives as attractively as we could, or resent our children 
as being in the way
of us being able to run away someone elses' wive/s.

It is therefore that I ask Areivim 1. do people who do not allow t.v., 
newspapers, etc, 
into their homes, as have more "shalom bayis" and emunas hashem, and personal 
happiness and fullfillment in thier lives as ovdei Hashem (HKBHu)?? and for 
Avodah: 
do things that were never really clarified in the "alte heim" as being real (eg 
whistlling
as attracting sheidim/tarot cards and whichcraft as being a "relic" but still 
halachically
forbidden to us, etc,. as still being real forces in the world today. 
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