Avodah Mailing List

Volume 23: Number 134

Fri, 08 Jun 2007

• 1. Figs and Wasps (Micha Berger)
• 2. Re: Har Habayit (Elazar M. Teitz)
• 3. Har Habayit (Yisrael Medad)
• 4. FW: [Areivim] Chicago Rabbinical Council on Strawberries (Chana Luntz)
• 5. Re: "Yeshivishe Payes" (mkopinsky@gmail.com)
• 6. wearing tzizit outside (Eli Turkel)
• 7. Re: Figs and Wasps (Micha Berger)
• 8. Re: Figs (D&E-H Bannett)
• 9. Re: Yeshivishe Payes (reuven koss)
• 10. Re: zeicher/zecher (reuven koss)
• 11. Re: "Yeshivishe Payes" (saul mashbaum)
• 12. birchot kriat shma for sefardi women (Eli Turkel)

On Wed, June 6, 2007 9:16 pm, R Zev Sero wrote to Areivim:
: ira rosen wrote:
:> I had the same question when I learned about fig pollination in grad
:> school (someone has to study plant biology). In Vayikra 11 p. 41, the
:> halacha in question is stated: "V'chol hasheretz hashoretz ahl
:> ha'aretz sheketz hu, lo ye'achel", "Every creeping creature which
:> crawls on the ground is repulsive, it may not be eaten." Rashi
:> comments that this phrasing "hashoretz ahl ha'aretz" (which crawls on
:> the ground) excludes certain insects (in English - "[This comes] to
:> exclude the gnats in peas and beans and the mites in lentils, for
:> [these] do not creep on the earth but within the food, but when they
:> emerge into the air and swarm, they become forbidden. -Sifra Shemini,
:> per. 12, 1, Chullin 67a).  This described the life of the fig wasp -
:> they don't swarm and spen nearly their entire life inside/on figs
:> (http://www.answers.com/topic/fig-wasp)

:> In following this up (with the professor and a Rav), I was told that
:> the wasps that live (and die) inside figs, are not an issue.

: Unfortunately, that doesn't apply at all to fig wasps.  The wasps are
: born inside a male fig, which is inedible.  The male wasps never leave
: the fig in which they were born, so if male figs were edible this
: heter would permit us to eat them, wasps and all.  But the female
: wasps leave their birthfig after mating, and fly to other figs to lay
: their eggs.
: Once they've emerged into the air, they become treif forever more.
: They don't become kosher again by entering a new fig, or even by
: crawling back into the womb, so to speak.

: The reason we don't need to worry about any of this is that by the
: time their new fig is ripe their remains are no longer.

Why wouldn't the fig wasp qualify in the same class as darna (Chullin
67a, a bug found in the bellies of fish) or tola'as hanimtza'eis
besoch habasar (Yad, Ma'achalos Asuros 2:17)?

Tir'u baTov!
-mi

-- 
Micha Berger             Spirituality is like a bird: if you tighten
micha@aishdas.org        your grip on it, it chokes; slacken your grip,
http://www.aishdas.org   and it flies away.
Fax: (270) 514-1507                            - Rav Yisrael Salanter

RYMedad: ><The main opposition from a Halachic point of view is the 
possibility of karet in entering certain areas within the present-day 
compound.  If karet is the threat, RYA said, and we shouldn't do 
anything to investigate, to review the literature, discuss with 
arceologists, etc., according to this approach, then what are we do 
about getting married?  There are so many karet issues, down to a 
mustard-colored drop of blood (or not as the case may be), that this 
should put us off from getting entangled in the possibility of 
violating a lo ta'aseh which carries the karet weight of punishment 
not to mention other issues which marriage presents troubles for.  
But no one says 'don't get into any doubt'.  But with Har Habayit, 
they all do say that.>>

RDM Israel: <Three responses.

1) With TM we have a continuous mesorah on how to handle these 
issues.  WRT Har Habayis we do not.

2) The investigation he is talking about all involves non-halachic 
sources.  There does not appear to be any way to figure out the 
metzius of the various parts of Har Habayis from looking at our 
mesorah, one has to use non-halachic sources like archeology.  
True, in TM we sometimes rely on doctors, but we have clear 
halachic sources to tell us what we can and cannot rely on doctors 
for.  I don't think we have any clear mesorah to tell us what we 
can rely on archeologists for.

3) If marriage would cease, so would the Jewish people.  Perhaps if 
the issue at hand was geulah shleimah and rebuilding the Bh"M, one 
might argue that this is the same as marriage, because in either 
case we are talking about stopping klal Yisrael from fulfilling 
it's ultimate purpose.  But in that case we would have a Sanhedrin 
and a Moshiach to help answer the questions.  Here we are talking 
about walking around up there and davening.  Not even korbonos 
according to almost everyone.>

     I think the main difference is that not getting married is bitul 
of a mitzvah.  Not going on the Har Habayis when one has no korban to 
bring is not.

EMT
 

Daniel Israel's three responses:

*1) With TM we have a continuous mesorah on how to handle these
issues.  WRT Har Habayis we do not.*

Actually, we do, to a certain extent.  We know the Rambam ascended.  We know
the Ridbaz expressed
his opinion.  We know the Ravad disallowed any k'dushah.  We know Rav YM
Tucachinky's opinion about
there being loads of room for a bet knesset there.  So it seems that we only
need to apply ourselves and
with the new-fangled technologies like thermal photographing, etc. it would
seem to be no problem.

*2) The investigation he is talking about all involves non-halachic
sources.  There does not appear to be any way to figure out the
metzius of the various parts of Har Habayis from looking at our
mesorah, one has to use non-halachic sources like archeology.
True, in TM we sometimes rely on doctors, but we have clear
halachic sources to tell us what we can and cannot rely on doctors
for.  I don't think we have any clear mesorah to tell us what we
can rely on archeologists for.*

As Rav Getz once told me, it's easier to figure out Halachically how to
enter the Har Habayit
than to be matir milking a cow on Shabbat.  It's just that people want to
drink milk, but they
are doubtful whether they want to enter Har Habayit or consider that over
one-third of all
Torah mitzvot are Mikdash-related.

*3) If marriage would cease, so would the Jewish people.  Perhaps if
the issue at hand was geulah shleimah and rebuilding the Bh"M, one
might argue that this is the same as marriage, because in either
case we are talking about stopping klal Yisrael from fulfilling
it's ultimate purpose.  But in that case we would have a Sanhedrin
and a Moshiach to help answer the questions.  Here we are talking
about walking around up there and davening.  Not even korbonos
according to almost everyone.*

But the ascent is the beginning of that process.  And how does one know that
Geulah Shleima is
at hand if one doesn't do anything about it?  Or do we all accept the Satmar
position that until
Mashiach comes, we don't do a thing?  Anyone who has studied the literature,
from the Chatam
Sofer and until today, knows that it is not a Halachic problem.  It's a
mindset.  As the Hareidi
world has said, "thank G-d the Ishmaelim are holding on to the place".

-- 
Yisrael Medad
Shiloh
Mobile Post Efraim 44830
Israel
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If we are bouncing this to avodah, this post seems to me to more
logically go across there:

RZS writes:

> In products containing strawberries any insects that were
> present have been smashed up and are therefore batel in 
> much-more-than-60.  The problem with fresh fruit is that the 
> insects are complete creatures, and therefore not batel.

I would have said the same (it is the standard halachic answer), except,
except ...  The insects that they seem to be talking about are so small,
I confess I am sceptical that indeed they would be smashed up in a
normal (ie household) juicing process, not to mention the kind of mixing
used for jam making.  There is, of course, a limit to how fine things
can be chopped using even modern electrical equipment (even though this
must surely be a lot finer than our foremothers were able to achieve
without the aid of electricity).  Has anybody done any studies that
show, definitively, that a insect as small as the one coming out of the
strawberry in the video that was linked to areivim does indeed get
smashed up and is not a complete creature in any strawberry liquid or
jam?  Or are we just relying on some sort of chazaka?

I later clarified that my question is whether in fact *most* insects
this small get smashed up in the processing?  ie

My, perhaps na?ve, assumption would be that if the totality of the bug
is smaller than the average grain size of the food once processed, then
the majority would in fact not get smashed up in processing, and at best
only a minority would.  Obviously if the total size of the bug is
greater than the average grain size of the food once processed, it is
reasonable to assume that any bug would get smashed up sufficiently so
its size is, at maximum, the size of the food particles, and therefore
we do no longer need to worry about such bugs.  But why does this logic
work when the bug size is smaller than the grain size?

Anybody looked at this question?

Shabbat Shalom

Chana

RMB:
> What about noi mitzvah, which is a qiyum of zeh Keili ve'anveihu?
> People spend money on esrog boxes, and invest time decorating their
> Sukkos -- even though it doesn't make the esrog or Sukkah superior.

Is there an idea of noi on lavim?  We use a silver seder plate, but for
bedikas chametz, the old dustbuster works just fine.

KT,
Michael

We have discussed in the past of the position of the Mishnah Berurah on
wearing tzizit outside of the clothing. In a shiur I went today on hilchot
Tzizit (parshat hashavua) the rabbi noted that if one's tallit get torn
on shabbat so that the tzizit are not valid then one need not remove
it in shul because of kavod habriot. The MB notes that for a tallit katan
this does not hold because that is private and not public.
The implication being that not everyone wore the tzizit of the talit katan
outside!
(As a side issue he said that today the halacha of Tallit might be changed
because of the availability of a shul tallit)

-- 
Eli Turkel
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On Thu, Jun 07, 2007 at 11:01:40PM +0100, Chana Luntz wrote:
: To what extent does flurescent and other modern forms of lighting
: provide better abilities to see such bugs that sunlight (which
: presumably our ancestors used)?  Is it just that it is more
: comfortable to use such light, or is there a real difference between
: the size of bugs that can be seen by the (average?) naked eye in
: sunlight and under modern lighting?

Before moving the conversation here, I explored some possibilities on
Areivim:

1- We're wrong to assume the additional bugs found are assur, since our
ancestors couldn't have found them. I do not mean to guess about what
they did do, I'm simply talking about eliminating what they lacked the
technology to try. They didn't have water under pressure, magnifying
lenses (up to the task, available to the common person), lighting, eye
glasses, the nutrition, etc...

Can we actually be banning insects that Rachav could never have gotten
rid of before serving Yehoshua a fig, strawberry, or salad?

2- The metzi'us changed: there are more bugs.

a- As RZSero pointed out, in the case of strawberries, the modern
berry is a hybrid that didn't exist until the 19th cent. In general,
breeding changed to make our fruit sweeter, and thus a better source
of simple carbohydrates accessible to bugs.

b- I also repeated an idea from an LOR that the improvement of
insecticides actually *increased* the number of tiny bugs. For most of
Jewish history, large bugs ate the smaller bugs, keeping the number of
really tiny ones low. Then they came out with harsh insecticides, that
weren't picky about what they killed. Now insecticides are more
focused, which means they kill the larger bugs that even non-kashrus
observant people would avoid, leaving more of these hard-to-see bugs.

3- The metzi'us changed in a way that formerly kosher bugs are now traif.

Invisible bugs have no halachic metzi'us. Perhaps as technology and
eyesight improve (all the things RnCL raises) this actually shifts the
line between kosher and treif bugs.

: Even RSB writes "Hilchot bugs used to be much simpler:
: Soak the vegetable in salt/vinegar water., "

: Is it necesssarily true that vinegar was so easily available that it
: could be used for soaking vegetables in days gone by?

Probably. Before refrigeration, the trick was keeping wine from going
bad. It would make sense to make sure much of it became vinegar rather
than garbage.

But I don't think this is true, because it fails the Kuzari Test. I
asked around, and no one around here heard of their grandmothers
soaking their vegetables in vinegar. With the exception of the romaine
lettuce used for maror. (Which was possibly the only time Ashkenazi
grandparents ate romaine...) So at most I would think it is possible
some qehillos did soak in salt or vinegar water, but it definitely was
not universal.

:-)BBii!
-mi

-- 
Micha Berger             Spirituality is like a bird: if you tighten
micha@aishdas.org        your grip on it, it chokes; slacken your
grip,
http://www.aishdas.org   and it flies away.
Fax: (270) 514-1507                            - Rav Yisrael Salanter

Re RnCL's <<I never heard tell of taking one's fruit and 
vegetables to
the bodek of the town with the good eyesight.  Or can a 
household where
the wife is myopic be permitted larger bugs than those where 
her
eyesight is better?  Can we assume that 20/20 is the norm or
exceptionally good? ...>>

Sorry Chana, you got the story reversed.

Hyperopia, a.k.a. as far-sighted, makes it difficult to see 
things close to the eyes. Myopia, near-sighted, makes it 
difficult to see things far away.  The near-sighted person 
holds the object close to his eye which is the equivalent of 
using a magnifying glass.  So the myopic person would see 
smaller bugs not identified by the far-sighted.   the 
far-sighted have to hold things further away in order to 
focus and so cannot identify small objects.  After age 45 or 
so, if one doesn't get reading glasses we need longer and 
longer arms and so would be allowed larger and larger bugs.

BTW, I remember reading that the dead bug in figs is not 
completely disintegrated and can be seen but, except to the 
myopic or the knowledgeable person, would appear to be a 
black spot.


Shabbat Shalom,

David

The Netzi"v was not Hungarian.  I have gerrer friends that have long peyos 
tied under their yarmulka.  We have Moroccan friends that have a picture of 
the Grandfather still in Morocco with peyos looking teimani!!
good shabbos
reuven

>
> Hungarians, not East Europeans in general.  Most non-Hungarian Chasidim
> (Polish, Volhynia, Lithuania, Galicia/Podolia) have little strings of
> payess tucked behind the ear.
>
> 

 >
> reuven koss wrote:
>>
>>> It's older than the MB.  Lubavitchers say both, and even have a specific
>>> minhag as to the order (in Ki Teitzei zeicher is first, in Beshalach
>>> zecher is first), and they're unlikely to have got the minhag from the 
>>> MB.
>>>
>>> -- 
>>> Zev Sero
>>
>> There is no "zecher" in parshas amalek in beshalach.
>
> Yes, there is.  "Ki macho emcheh et zecher amalek mitachat hashamayim."
>
 Sorry- that was meant to have read there is no zecher in Beshalach on which 
there is a machlokes how it is read.

Regarding the Gra in M"R, Rav Chaim Volozhner is a daas yachid that the Gra 
read it with a tzere- most talmidim of the Gra say that he read it with a 
segol.

good shabbos
reuven 

The following comment of RSRH in his commentary on Vyaikra 19,27 is of interest in the framework of our discussion of the prohibition of bal takif:
This prohibition clearly forbids the removal of the externally visible division between the frontal part of the head and the rear part of it, coinciding with the cerebrum and the cerebellum respectively. This division is in a fissure which runs vertically between the forehead and the parietal bone, above the temples in front of the ears. The hair at the temples is accordingly a natural veiling which hides the back of the head in the human countenance. But the relation of the frontal part of the skull containing the cerebrum to the back part containing the cerebellum is that of the human element to the animal element in human beings; and so here again we meet with the importance and weight which the teaching of the sanctifying of our lives lays on keeping vividly in our minds the existence of these two specifically different elements in man's nature, and of the higher dignity of the intellectual, moral and spiritual factors in man, to which the animal factor has to subordinate inself. It is in the former alone that Man is to recognize his appearance as Man. The hair down the temples is an admonition to a man to be a man.
Saul Mashbaum 
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Back to my topic of piskei of ROY. I recently learned that ROY paskens
that sefardi women are not allowed to say birchot of kriat shema. He holds
that these are birkhat hamitzva. Since women are not obligated in saying
Shema they need not say the berachot associated with kriat shema
and so according to the Mechaber they can not say them.
Others disagree since these berachot do not use the word "ve-tzivanu".

Again I would be interested if most sefardi women really skip this whole
section of schararit (or maaariv for that matter) and what sefardi schools
for women do.

-- 
Eli Turkel
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