Avodah Mailing List

Volume 22: Number 18

Mon, 25 Dec 2006

• 1. Re: Shitas R' Tam (D&E-H Bannett)
• 2. Re: [Areivim] URL: article about halachic (JRich@Segalco.com)
• 3. Re: Yetzer HoRa Issues - warning - - Long Post (David Riceman)
• 4. Rambam on Prophecy (dfinch847@aol.com)
• 5. Re: undeserved punishment? (Mordechai Torczyner)
• 6. Re: Keil melech neeman (D&E-H Bannett)
• 7. Re: Prophet - mashgiach or godol hador? (Daniel Eidensohn)
• 8. Re: Shitas R' Tam (Zev Sero)
• 9. Re: Why the woman is makneh herself (Chana Luntz)
• 10. Re: undeserved punishment? (Micha Berger)
• 11. Re: zman hadloko erev Shabbos and motzoei Shabbos (Micha Berger)
• 12. Re: [Areivim] URL: article about halachic (Micha Berger)
• 13. Re: Prophet - mashgiach or godol hador? (T613K@aol.com)
• 14. Re: Historu of Havarah (T613K@aol.com)

Re R'ZS comment<< It is simply not possible to ignore the 
latitude, and to pretend that X minutes after sunset it is 
just as dark at 52 degrees as it is at 32 degrees.  It's 
obvious that the farther you are from the equator, the 
longer it takes the sun to
sink a given number of degrees below the horizon, and 
therefore to reach a given degree of darkness.>>

Of  course it is possible and quite logical.  Your error is 
that you labor under the misconception so common today that 
the earth is a ball rotating around itself and also around 
the sun.  If you go back to our ancient and well proven 
tradition of a flat earth with the sun going around it, the 
light disappears all over at the same time.

It might still be nice to be able to decide if chakhmei 
Israel are correct that the sun goes above the raki'a at 
night or it goes under the earth as the chakhmei haumot 
believe.  Either way, however, the sun vanishes from all the 
earth at the same time.


bivrakha,

Claudius Ptolemaeus 

  If you holdthat IVF does not result in the fulfilment of the mitzvah of pru u'rvuthen you are on dubious halachic grounds for trying it in anycircumstance -.-''''''''''''''''''''''''''''not sure this is true. You iiuc could still being mkayem shevet .  One could argue similarly by adoptions - where just about no one iirc suggests you are being mkayem pru urvu and there are a number of halachik problems presented by adoption (granted there after the act)ktjoel rich

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From: "David Riceman" <driceman@worldnet.att.net>

> You might try the (fairly ancient) identification of the yetzer hatov with 
> the koah hasechel and the yetzer hara with the koah hadimyon.

I guess I was too cryptic.  I'll try to expand this.  Aristotle (N.E. 1095a) 
gives two reasons that only older people should study ethics.  First, 
because young people lack the necessay experience, and second, because young 
people are overly swayed by their passions.

To understand the first reason read Terence Irwin's book about Aristotle's 
ethics.  He argues that Aristotle's methodology (similar to Socrates as 
portrayed in Plato's early dialogues) is to start with commonly accepted 
preimises, and by subtle analysis get these to yield univeral truths.  It 
follows that before you study ethics you need to know the commonly accepted 
rules of popular ethics.

There are close parallels in Torah: "ligros inish breisha v'hadar l'misbar". 
Rashi's understanding of the difference between Mishna (applied halacha) and 
Talmud (general principles of halacha) and the saying in Avoth "ben 10 
l'mishna ben 15 l'Talmud" are relevant as well.  The difference between us 
and Aristotle is that we don't reject the original premises, we only try to 
understand them.  See my citation of Rabbi Dessler below.

Aristotle's second reason is the subject of the ma'amar Hazal we're talking 
about, and the subject of my comment above.  Of course we all know that 
"yetzer hara" means different things in different contexts.  It's not always 
something bad, e.g. "bchol l'vavcha: b'shnei yitrecha".  Sometimes people 
react with their mind, and sometimes with their "gut".  My claim is that in 
the ma'amar Hazal in question the yetzer hara is the gut, and the yetzer 
hatov is the mind.

The Rambam (Shmona Perakim 2; cf. MN III:8) says that almost all sin is due 
to the passions and not to the intellect (he doesn't use those terms).  The 
problem with children, as Aristotle says, is not that they're evil, its that 
they're impetuous.  They act before they think.  They haven't yet learned to 
control their passions with their intellect.

The Rambam (SP 4 and H. Deoth 1:7) says that the way to control the passions 
is by practice.  There is, however, another approach.  Modern exponents 
include Rabbi Ziv(in Kithei HaSaba v'Talmidav MiKelm vol. 1 pp. 108-170 esp. 
p.158) and Rabbi Shapira (in Hachsharath HaAvreichim).  That is by imagining 
scences which impel one to the correct behavior, so that one is trained 
before one encounters the actual experience.

A classic case is the gemara in Berachos as understood by R. Zalman of 
Volozhin (in Toldoth Adam).  When Rabbi Akiva was being tortured to death he 
recited Krias Shma.  His students asked him how he could do it.  His reply 
was "miyamay nitzta'arti al mitzva zo".  R. Zalman understood that to mean 
that he imagined himself being tortured so often that when it happened he 
knew instinctively what to do.  His intellect had trained his passions by 
using the koah hatziyur.

Rabbi Dessler in one of his essays explains that a tzaddik cannot be someone 
who acts instinctively or by rote.  He has to have thought through his 
behavior before he does it (very Kelmian and also very Aristotelian).  The 
reason tzaddik ben tzaddik is greater than a tzaddik ben rasha is because 
its harder for him to become a tzaddik.  Someone growing up in the house of 
a rasha suffers cognitive dissonance, and feels impelled to find a better 
way of living.   Someone who grows up in the house of a tzaddik, however, 
has no real reason not just to imitate his parents thoughtlessly.  But 
thoughtless action is not tzidkus.

What Hazal were saying is that children, whether they act well or poorly, do 
so out of imitation and passion.  It's only around adolescence that they 
start analyzing why they do things and start to act in ways initiated by 
their intellect.

David Riceman 

I wrote:

 "Rambam was a rationalist who, according to one commentator,
 viewed prophecy as a projection of the human intellect. Yehudah ha-Levi
 and others saw prophecy as a supernatural gift. By Rambam, the prophet
 is a prescient intellectual who would know when to invoke G-d's command
 and when to invoke the lesser province of reason and argument. By
 ha-Levi, the prophet may be a charismatic tzaddik who speaks for HaShem
 automatically."

Micha Berger replies:

"Not at all! . . . . The Rambam holds that a navi is someone who lifted 
his consciousness to the
point of being able to see what's going on in higher planes. Note that 
this is
even *more* mystical than the other position; rather than speaking about
Hashem creating dreamlike images, the Rambam (again, as understood by 
the
Abarbanel) invokes the idea of being aware of the processes shamayim and
(except for Moshe Rabbeinu) his mind forcing incomprehensible 
experience into
familiar sights and sounds. And in fact, the Rambam believes that when a
prophet tries for prophecy and doesn't get nevu'ah, it's because Hashem
chooses to withhold it."

I guess I hold to my position. Ramban's discussion of prophecy (other 
than Moishe Rabbeinu's) in MN II (ch. 32-84, esp. 41-44) emphasizes 
rationalistic joinder of Active (Human) and Divine intellect, sometimes 
impelled through dreams and visions. A raised "consciousness" was not a 
part of this system, although it was for Abravanel, who saw prophecy as 
inherently miraculous and believed that prophets acquired Divine powers 
through their consciousness of the higher plane. (There's a good 
discussion of this in Benzion Netanyahu's biography of Abravanel.) For 
Abravanel, this consciousness did not involve the exercise of 
rationalistic powers. For Ramban, it did.

In any event, it's often dangerous to interpret Ramban through the eyes 
of Abravanel, who distrusted his teachings and his intellectual method.

David S. Finch
dfinch847@aol.com


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Shlomo Weidberg wrote:
"I think according to the strictest sense of midas hadin and kol
yisroel arevim zeh lazeh, then we are all deserving of misah if anyone
in klal yisroel does an aveirah. Like we find with Achan and Ai."

Ralbag says this explicitly on Achan and Ai, as part of his discussion of the apparent collective punishment. Note that this is not the same as the Shabbos 55a concept of shelo michu b'yadan; that indicts the tzibbur as assisting the ra, whereas Ralbag's concept is of a mystical union of the tzibbur, binding even those who in no way permitted or abetted the sin.

One problem, though: In Berachos 3b or so we have a discussion of what a Jew should do if he is suffering and he cannot find personal guilt. The gemara suggests that he blame bitul torah or yisurin shel ahavah - but it does not mention anything about looking at the chesronos of the tzibbur. Or is that included in yefashfesh b'maasav?

Be well,
Mordechai

--
Congregation Sons of Israel, 
Allentown, PA 
http://www.sonsofisrael.net 
HaMakor! 
http://www.hamakor.org 
Mareh Mekomos Reference Library 
Webshas! 
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For a few days. I've been more or less following the 
discussion on the added words to kri'at sh'ma'. I didn't add 
my two cents because I had a 102 degree temperature so I 
just waited to see if some Yekke from KAJ would finally 
mention that at KAJ the chazan says only the single word 
Emes out loud and they always say El melekh ne'eman.  Just 
61 years ago I heard the chazan and when I asked I was shown 
the chazan's siddur which had written in the margin "nur 
emes laut".

Today, with only 100 degrees, I gave in to the urge to post 
to the list a letter from Ptolemy. If Ptolemy had known, he 
would have added that Copernicus wrote his theory only in 
the early 1500's, a few hundred years after R"T.

I also want to point out that the best detailed explanation 
of the many shitot on added words in sh'ma is that of R' 
Hamburger in the second volume of Minhag Ashkenaz.  Believe 
it or not, he has 120 pages on this "little" subject. One 
thing I remember is his quote from one of the geonim who 
didn't think much of the magic protective power of having 
248 words to match the number of "eivarim" and didn't think 
it proper to add sheimot for that purpose.

Yes, I had the flu shots. If I get a sufficiently strong 
urge, I might write sometime soon about the mixing up by 
ashkenazim of not saying amen to someone else's b'rakha and 
not saying amen to you own b'rakha and the connection with 
El melekh ne'eman, saying ga'al yisrael in shaharit and even 
birkat ahava before sh'ma silently. 

R' David Riceman wrote:
>
>> While you can point to the fact that Shmuel was apparently a king and 
>> judge in addition to being a prophet - I don't know of any other 
>> prophet aside from Moshe serving these multiple roles.
>
> Read the Rambam's list of rashei sanhedrin in the introduction to the 
> Mishneh Torah.   The prophets I see there include Yehoshua, Shmuel, 
> Eliyahu, Elisha, Zechariah, Hoshea, Amos, Yeshayahu, Micha, Yoel, 
> Nahum, Havakuk, Tzefania, Yirmiah.  You can disagree with the 
> historicity of the account, as you do below, but if you're trying to 
> understand the Rambam's opinion that disagreeement is irrelevant.
>
>>  The possible sole exception is that the Anshei Knesses HaGedolah had 
>> prophets as members. However we really don't know what this body was 
>> and what role these prophets served. I am not aware of any sources 
>> which state they served as judges or poskim. If you have such sources 
>> have I would appreciate hearing about them.
>
> See the source cited above.
>
At first glance the Rambam's introduction does seem to support your 
point. However, beis din here is not necessarily Sanhedrin. For example 
Dovid can not be head of Sanhedrin because he was king. The prophets 
listed were part of the mesorah of the Oral Law. Thus these are the 
links of receiving and teaching the Oral Law. It is not referring to a 
judiciary or legislative body. I am not familiar with any source that 
the Sanhedrin job was to receive and then teach the Oral Law to the next 
generation. This particular part of the Rambam's list corresponds to 
Pirkei Avos which said that "the Elders gave it to the Prophets and the 
Prophets to the Men of the Great Assembly" That is why Dovid's position 
in this list is questioned since it is not clear whether he was a 
prophet. The Rambam states later "In each generation the head of the 
then existing court or the prophet wrote down for his private use a 
memorandum of the traditions which he had heard from his teachers and 
which he taught orally in public."  It would seem from this that there 
was a special body in each generation to preserve and teach the Oral 
Law. When there were prophets - they were assigned this task. At the end 
he says "All the sages here mentioned were the great men of the 
successive generations: some of them were presidents of colleges, some 
exilarchs and some were members of the great Sanhedria... According to 
your reading he should have said they were all heads of Sanhedrin - when 
there was a Sanhedrin.

Daniel Eidensohn

D&E-H Bannett wrote:
> Re R'ZS comment<< It is simply not possible to ignore the 
> latitude, and to pretend that X minutes after sunset it is 
> just as dark at 52 degrees as it is at 32 degrees.  It's 
> obvious that the farther you are from the equator, the 
> longer it takes the sun to
> sink a given number of degrees below the horizon, and 
> therefore to reach a given degree of darkness.>>
> 
> Of  course it is possible and quite logical.  Your error is 
> that you labor under the misconception so common today that 
> the earth is a ball rotating around itself and also around 
> the sun.  If you go back to our ancient and well proven 
> tradition of a flat earth with the sun going around it, the 
> light disappears all over at the same time.

It doesn't matter what's rotating or orbiting around what.  All that
matters is that the earth is in fact a globe.  Which was known in
Chazal's time, and certainly in that of the rishonim.  Indeed, by
Chazal's day Erastothenes had already correctly estimated its size,
which appears in the gemara (can't find it at the moment) as 6000
parsa, not too far from the correct size.  


> bivrakha,
> Claudius Ptolemaeus 

Who knew perfectly well that the earth is a globe, and could easily
have made the necessary calculation to apply the various shitot of
bein hashmashot to any place and date.


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

RMB writes:
> [I assume this is a quote, even though it's not indicated in 
> RSW's original. Otherwise he would be contradicting himself.]

No I don't think it is a quote, nor that he is contradicting himself
(not that I agree though).

> 
> >: I think the reason that the Torah required that a woman give up her
> >: right to exit a marriage of her own free will is because nashim 
> >daatan
> >: kalos...
> 
> : The gemara gives this reason for the takana that the husband has to
> : write a kesuba.
> 

I think what RSW is saying is that - on a rabbinic level, the takana of
the kesuba was made by chazal so that marriage should not be light in a
man's eyes, and he should not be tempted to cut and run too easily.  

RSW is postulating that the reason given by chazal for instituting the
kebuba is the reason of the Torah why women are locked into a marriage
and further that the reason that women and not men are locked in
according to the Torah is nashim daatan kalos - which I suspect RSW is
tranlating as "women are fickle".

As I have mentioned when the use of this phrase came up previously, it
is very rash to take a rabbinic concept which has a particular
application, and apply it more generally, especially in a Torah
shebiktav context in situations where chazal and the rishonim/achronim
never applied the concept.

As mentioned previously, the concept of nashim daatan kalos is used
specifically in relation to yichud situations (ie why a man can not
seclude himself with two women).  Note however that, at least according
to tosphos and the way we posken, this applies less to a married woman
whose husband is in the city than to anybody else (ie a man can seclude
himself with a married woman so long as her husband is in the city
because it can be assumed that the fear of her husband is upon her).

Of course RYBS famously did just this (ie take a rabbinic concept and
apply it to understand Torah situations) in the cas of tav lmeisiv tan
du.  But at least there he darshaned the posuk in Breishis which is
clearly stating something about women's general nature to arrive at this
result (not, as I have also said before, that that understanding of
Breshis seems to me to accord with the way the gemora uses the concept
of tan du).  But as a consequence, RYBS's understanding of the reason
for the situation that is puzzling RSW is that marriage is by definition
a benefit for a woman, not a chov - which seems to be where you are
coming from too - although I am not quite sure on what basis.


> Even without this, the fiscal system is biased in her favor. 

Can you explain this?

> Halakhah prevents the dishonest woman from collecting her 
> support and running.
> 
> Gut Voch!
> -mi
Regards 

Chana

On Sun, Dec 24, 2006 at 09:44:22PM +0000, Mordechai Torczyner wrote:
: Ralbag says this explicitly on Achan and Ai, as part of his discussion
: of the apparent collective punishment. Note that this is not the same as
: the Shabbos 55a concept of shelo michu b'yadan; that indicts the tzibbur
: as assisting the ra...

: One problem, though: In Berachos 3b or so we have a discussion of
: what a Jew should do if he is suffering and he cannot find personal
: guilt. The gemara suggests that he blame bitul torah or yisurin shel
: ahavah - but it does not mention anything about looking at the chesronos
: of the tzibbur. Or is that included in yefashfesh b'maasav?

Obviously not, since he can't do teshuvah for something the tzibur does
and he isn't capable of changing. If he were capable, than he would
be culpable for "shelo michu beyadan", and that's not the case we're
asking about.

If this were an inyan halakhah, we would simply conclude it must be a
machloqes. For some reason we don't naturally go there when it comes to
aggadita. I noticed this particularly in MmE, REED works very hard to
make two shitos different aspects/descriptions of the same thing.

In this case, I would go further and invoke RYBS's advice in Qol Dodi
Dofeiq -- any attempt to explain tragedy will be emotionally sterile or
intellectually simplistic, and quite probably both.

No one claims to really know tzadiq vera lo, rasha vetov lo. That's also
a maamar Chazal.

I posted here in the past (way back) an idea from R' Jack Love (a
rebbe in a yeshivah gedolah and a local dayan). Why are there so many
reasons given for the death of Nadav vaAvihu, or for what Moshe did
that warranted not entering EY, or for churban bayis rishon, or sheini?
Because they realized the problem is unsolvable, but against that still
needed to fight to find meaning.

In our case, that translates to: Chazal were grappling with an insolvable
problem, not providing answers. And therefore machloqesin should be rife;
and not really machloqesin.

I think asserting these maamarei Chazal as though they provided
definitive ways of understanding tragic events does come across as RYBS
describes.

Tir'u baTov!
-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

On Sun, Dec 24, 2006 at 12:00:42PM -0500, Zev Sero wrote:
: They might have thought that perhaps all of those stars were "kochavim
: gedolim", and not the three "kochavim beinunim" that are required.

Define "gadol" and "beinoni" such that "beinoni" refers to the larger
of the 3% (or 5% or 10%) smallest stars. It's weird to have "beinoni"
not mean middling (near the mean or median) size...

Tir'u baTov!
-mi

On Sun, Dec 24, 2006 at 09:42:37AM -0600, JRich@Segalco.com wrote:
: not sure this is true. You iiuc could still being mkayem shevet
: [through IVF -mi]. One could argue similarly by adoptions - where
: just about no one iirc suggests you are being mkayem pru urvu...

Actually, RYBS says there are tvei dinim to piryah verivyah, procreation,
and insuring there are Jews in the next generation. For people incapable
of procreating, adoption does allow one to at least suffer through tza'ar
gidul banim like the rest of us; a qiyum of the one din of PvR they can
do. (Of course, lefum tza'arah agra in this case doesn't only refer to
sechar in olam haba... <g>)

Tir'u baTov!
-mi

-- 
Micha Berger             It is a glorious thing to be indifferent to
micha@aishdas.org        suffering, but only to one's own suffering.
http://www.aishdas.org                 -Robert Lynd, writer (1879-1949)
Fax: (270) 514-1507      

 
 
RDE writes:

>>The Rambam prohibits any involvement of  heavenly inspiration in the 
halachic  process. If a prophet proclaimed  that he had poskened based  
on Divine inspiration - and not on legal  reasoning - Rambam would have 
him executed. <<
 
 
>>>>>
.
What would the Rambam have thought of Rav Yosef Caro's  Magid?  That Magid is 
something mysterious that has long  intrigued me.  Maybe you (or others on 
Avodah) can tell me something about  who or what the Magid was and why it was an 
acceptable source of  information?  Or did the Magid not convey any halachic 
material but only  hashkafic, mystical or...what?





--Toby  Katz
=============
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TK:  >>: Some people say it was not a different accent but a  speech defect  
that was 
: common among the people of  Ephraim.<<

RMB:  >>I'm not sure if it's possible for it  to be a physical speech defect. 
The
sounds /s/ vs /sh/ differ only by tongue  placement. You can turn an /s/
into a /sh/ making approximately the same  sound (same to my ear) by
constricting the air flow pretty much anywhere  along the tongue. (I'll
pause while the reader inevitably experiments...) If  they really lacked
the mobility for any of those placements to be possible,  they would have
lost half the alphabet, not to mention having a hard time  drinking.<<
 
>>>>>
.
I don't know why you would say that a speech defect must be either learned  
(like an accent) OR the result of a physical malformation.  My son  could never 
pronounce "s" correctly -- he had a lisp -- until he had a few  months of 
speech therapy when he was six.   He heard everyone around  him pronouncing the 
"s" correctly but for some reason couldn't reproduce the  sound.  The fact that 
the speech therapist was able to correct the lisp  meant that he did have the 
necessary physical equipment to pronounce it  correctly. 
 
Absent an obvious physical abnormality I don't know what causes speech  
defects but they are pretty common.  Possibly they are indeed caused by a  subtle 
physical abnormality which makes it a bit harder to pronounce certain  sounds 
correctly.  Another cause of speech defects might be subtle hearing  problems 
and/or some subtle brain defect causing it to register sounds  incorrectly.  My 
daughter confused "w" and "r" until she too had several  months of speech 
therapy -- not only did she pronounce words wrong, she spelled  them wrong too, 
swapping "r"s for "w"s!  I can only conclude that somehow,  "r" and "w" sounded 
alike to her.

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


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