Avodah Mailing List

Volume 25: Number 64

Sat, 09 Feb 2008

• 1. ketoret klaf (L Reich)
• 2. From Today's WSJ - Paging R'YBS (Rich, Joel)
• 3. Shiluach Haken (Alan Rubin)
• 4. Re: Why Jewish Women should NOT wear a Burka (Micha Berger)
• 5. Re: "Borei nefashos rabbos VECHESRONAM" (Micha Berger)
• 6. Re: [Areivim] Polygamy (Micha Berger)
• 7. Re: Ramp On! (Micha Berger)
• 8. Hesped in Nisan (Michael Feldstein)
• 9. Re: Why Jewish Women should NOT wear a Burka (Rich, Joel)
• 10. on candle lighting (Saul.Z.Newman@kp.org)
• 11. Re: Why Jewish Women should NOT wear a Burka (Yosef Gavriel Bechhofer)

From: Elozor Reich

A friend of mine here in Manchester, a Talmid Chochom of substance, has expressed reservation about this Ketoros on Klaf Segulah.

This passage is a Bryso in the Talmud; by definition part of Torah Sh'Baal Peh. There exits an ancient dictum that TSB"P should remain and remembered in verbal form and not be put into writing.

This dictum was suspended in extremis to prevent Torah to be forgotten. To write down TSB"P for other purposes is less than otiose: hence to use it for a "Segulah" is pointless or worse.

My friend has discussed the matter with a number of Gedolim including R' Chaim Kanievsky, he tells me, and all concur.
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Please Don't Have a Nice Day

By COLIN MCGINN
February 8, 2008; Page W5


Utilitarianism is the philosophical doctrine according to which
happiness is the sole intrinsic value -- the only thing that is good in
itself. Although invented by 19th-century Britons, notably Jeremy
Bentham and J.S. Mill, utilitarianism has some claim to be the official
philosophy of the U.S.A. or, as a philosopher might have it, the
"Utilitarian States of America." In America, happiness is what makes
life good, and unhappiness is what makes it bad. We must therefore seize
the former and avoid the latter.

Eric G. Wilson, a professor of English at Wake Forest University,
disagrees, contending that utilitarianism has it the wrong way around.
The "happy types," as he calls them, are apt to be bland, superficial,
static, hollow, one-sided, bovine, acquisitive, deluded and foolish.
Sold on the ideal of the happy smile and the cheerful salutation, they
patrol the malls in dull uniformity, zombie-like, searching for
contentment and pleasure, locked inside their own dreams of a secure and
unblemished world, oblivious to objective reality, cocooned in a
protective layer of bemused well-being.

These are the positive thinkers, in Mr. Wilson's taxonomy, the
see-no-evil optimists, the consumers and users of a world conceived
instrumentally. Deep down they are hurting, like the rest of us, but the
ideology of constant happiness has them in its grip. They pop pills,
read self-help manuals, gorge themselves on feel-good TV and comfort
food -- all to avoid the blues that are an inevitable part of the human
condition.

On the opposite side, Mr. Wilson says, we have the natural sufferers,
their somber faces downcast. Their traits are these: sadness, dejection,
questioning, restlessness, honesty, depth, pessimism, tragedy,
complexity, vitality and a grasp of reality. Confessing his own
melancholic temperament, Mr. Wilson hymns the virtues of misery,
invoking such fellow sad sacks as Keats, Melville, Coleridge, van Gogh,
Beethoven, John Lennon, Rothko and Cary Grant (who would have guessed?).

In such figures he sees perceptiveness and creativity, nobility and
elevation. Mr. Wilson's basic thesis is that, without suffering, the
human soul becomes stagnant and empty. We can only reach our full
potential through pain -- not a pathological kind of pain but the kind
that comes from a recognition of death, decay and the bad day (or
decade). We must live between the poles of sadness and joy and not try
to expunge misery from our lives.

<SNIP>


KT
Joel Rich
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Moshe Shulman

> One was that the Zohar says that performing this mitzvah is
> makarav Moshiach. He said the explanation is that when a Jew
> performs the mitzvah The Satan comes and complains to HaShem that
> it is cruel. But rather then angering HaShem at the Yidden, he is angry
> at the Satan and complains that for this bird you have mercy but for my
> children who are in exile and suffer, you have no mercy?

Do you understand that explanation? This is a reason for us to be
cruel to birds?

Alan Rubin

I presume the original question was based on the observation that
before we realize we should assess the situation, we already have a
strong opinion. That makes our analysis suspect; would we agree
without such a predisposition, or are we post-facto justifying an
emotional response due to the associations we have with burqas.

Simply saying it's insane or absurd is insufficient.



I agree with RJJBaker's raising the issur of yuhara.

A chumrah that goes way overboard in terms of personal cost vs avoided
issur is likely to be yuhara.

I would suggest that the story highlights the fact that the word
tzeni'us has two meanings. Originally, it referred to not calling
undue attention to oneself, trying to avoid the spotlight. Because sex
is such an attention getter, that grew to include covering ervah. But
whether or not my suggestion that covering ervah is a derived, non
primary meaning of the word, the basic point stands: not drawing
attention to oneself and covering ervah are distinct ideas, both
called tzeni'us.

Here is a case where people go to such extent to cover ervah that they
do draw undue attention to themselves. Ironically, by being tzanu'os,
they are violating tzeni'us (switching meanings of the word
midsentence).

Which is why it qualifies as yuhara rather than permissable chumrah.
Because it is so attention getting, one has to wonder if the intention
is "holier than thou".

In the Rambam's era, where a rav has to tell his followers not to
follow cultural norm and allow their wives out of the home to see
their followers occasionally, perhaps the answer would be different.
For all I know, a burqa was already common-place, and wouldn't draw
attention.

IIRC, yuhara is not based on personal attitude. IOW, that it's yuhara
to do something that others will assess as trying to be "holier than
thou" even if your motives are otherwise. So the question of whether
their motivation is lishmah, or some anorexic-like need for control of
one's body image really shouldn't impact the above.


As for the quote that a woman's entire body is ervah, once you remove
the reporter's insertion, I can't know if she is simply wrong, or
exagerating men's sexual responses.

If the latter... Taqanos aren't made to address miutim. (And we must
admit that hirhurim problems caused by the seeing a woman's ear would
only be for a mi'ut of men.) That limitation could well not be true of
chumros. But there is no cost:benefit analysis here -- to change one's
whole life over avoiding that miut?

If the former, I'm reminded of the pasuq "lo am haaretz chassid".

BTW, the sakanas nefashos aspect of wearing a burqa anywhere near an
Israeli street (or most streets) or staircase (Israeli stone
staircases, to boot) is not to be minimized.

SheTir'u baTov!
-micha

-- 
Micha Berger             "Man wants to achieve greatness overnight,
micha@aishdas.org        and he wants to sleep well that night too."
http://www.aishdas.org     - Rav Yosef Yozel Horwitz, Alter of Novarodok
Fax: (270) 514-1507

On Tue, January 29, 2008 6:26 am, R Michael Makovi wrote:
: Even if we are wrong about the pasuk speaking of moral evil, we have
: learned more about the Apocryphal origins of Christianity however - it
: didn't grow out of a vacuum, not by a long shot.

I do not think "oseh shalom uvorei ra" refers to moral evil.

Ra is being posed as the antonym to shalom, not tov.

shalom = shelemus
ra, from /r``/= shattered (from RSRH)

Tov is not only a moral term, it is also a functional term. Hatavas
haneiros is getting the lamps to function, not making them more moral.
"Good" works the same way:
A good boy -- morally good
A good razor -- one that functions well

The two can be brought in line if we consider morality to be
humanity's function. A morally good person is thus one who functions
well.

(On my blog, I suggest that equality in the reverse: We can avoid
Euthyphro's Dilemma if we define morality as "operating in concert
with the function for which one was created".)

HQBH has no function, He wasn't made, never mind made for a particular
purpose. Thus, WRT Hashem, we say "hatov *shimkha*", but the Aibishter
Himself performs "shalom".


We already discussed the Ri ben Yaqar and the Avudraham's position
that "uvorei ra" is like "uvorei choshekh". A vacuum. Space created
that wasn't filled. The Gra says lehefech. It's choshekh in the sense
of the created substance of makas choshekh.

SheTir'u baTov!
-micha

PS: I deleted all the Apocrypha discussion because without Chazal
telling me which pesuqim are in line with Yahadus, and which got the
book excluded from Tanakh, it's not a source.

-- 
Micha Berger             "Man wants to achieve greatness overnight,
micha@aishdas.org        and he wants to sleep well that night too."
http://www.aishdas.org     - Rav Yosef Yozel Horwitz, Alter of Novarodok
Fax: (270) 514-1507

On Wed, February 6, 2008 9:26 am, Michael Makovi wrote:
:> I just heard RARakeffet discuss that talk by RYBS. He found a maqor
:> from the Dor Revii (R' Moshe Shmuel Glasner, the Klausenburger Rav,
:> greatgrandfather of our chaver, R' David Glasner) that explicitly
:> said that chazaqos need to be reexamined as the realia change.

: Where is this?

Going back to the earlier conversation I pointed you to, see
<http://www.aishdas.org/avodah/vol18/v18n002.shtml#05> by the "Dor
Shevi'i" <g>.

The teshuvah originally appeared in Tel Talpiot, and then was
collected for publication in Haqeir Davar (which wasn't published yet
in Aug '06.

SheTir'u baTov!
-micha

I called the problem of why kohanim can't serve non-obvious. That
wasn't intended to mean that I didn't know and was fishing for
answers, but it generated conversation...

On Wed, February 6, 2008 5:28 pm, Richard Wolberg wrote:
: With all the different responses regarding a Mum, did the following
: occur to anyone? ... Just as it is incomprehensible why God created the
: mum to begin with, it is also incomprehensible (although in a lesser
: degree) why God prohibited the mum (Kohen) to serve.

Which fits the general issue, as in why the caste system altogether,
and why different roles for genders.

As I recently posted on my blog: It's not that I have more chiyuvim
than my wife because I'm a man. Rather, it's because my soul needed
those chiyuvim that Hashem made me a man.

Similarly, someone with a handicap has a different life story than I
do. Even the "blotch on the face" means they had to deal with issues
of people staring and subsequent impact on self-image. That soul, it
seems, needed that experience more than mine.

And somehow Hashem insures that kohanim who are baalei mum are
perfectly suited to also have to deal with not having the obligations
their fathers and brothers do. In addition to the more fundamental
challenges faced.

On Wed, February 6, 2008 5:42 am, Michael Makovi wrote:
: Perhaps Hashem wants to be sure that at least a few mitzvot train us
: to follow "naaseh v'nishmah", do the mitzvah just because it's
: commanded, to train us in obedience pure and simple.

: But even with the chukim, people try to find rationales....

And as RYBS notes, even within mishpatim, no rationale is fully
sufficient. Even lo sirtzach... Reason alone can not tell you whether
retzichah includes euthanasia, abortion, people with no brain
activity, milchemes reshus, etc...

Which is why I am dissatisfied with Cantor Wolberg's approach, even as
I acknowledge its truth. We're supposed to try to understand things,
and only assume divine mystery when that fails.

(One of the many recurring topics on Avodah is defining "failure", the
flipside of asking about the malleability of aggadita. If it is okay
to find a new peshat in parashas Noach, then this drive would have us
minimize the number of nissim presumes. How much are we to make
comprehensible?)

Choq vs mishpat are extremes on a scale. No mitzvah is purely one or
the other.

: Now, one may interpret "chok" here to mean the mitzvah has no
: rationale. But to do so, one must ignore the next clause of the
: midrash: Rabbi Abuia (or something like that) says that the parah
: adumah symbolizes the golden calf.

: So we see, a "chok" here does NOT mean it has no rationale. Rather, it
: means that the mitzvah is ein elah NOTHING BUT a symbolic rationale!

Azoi zogt RSRH, but his is a daas yachid. Look at the Rambam's similar
but non-identical distinction of mitzvos sichlios vs shim'ios.

The association between parah adumah and the eigel (quoted by Rashi on
the chumash) simply justifies too little to make the mitzvah a
mishpat. Again, using the idea that they are extremes of a scale, and
no mitzvah is exclusively one or the other.

For that matter, while parah adumah is called a choq, within parah
adumah, the fact that it is metaheir es hatemei'im while also metamei
es hatehorim is pointed to as a choq within that choq. There are
grades of incomprehensibility.


My own take on the question is similar to one suggested by RMM:
Every mitzvah is an educational experience, but if you try to teach
too many different topics at once, things get lost. The avodah is too
central to BALM to be leveraged for BALC too. It is not an appropriate
time for stretching limits in that direction, and so existing
limitations in the observer are accomodated.

SheTir'u baTov!
-micha

-- 
Micha Berger             "Man wants to achieve greatness overnight,
micha@aishdas.org        and he wants to sleep well that night too."
http://www.aishdas.org     - Rav Yosef Yozel Horwitz, Alter of Novarodok
Fax: (270) 514-1507

I can remember countless funerals that?I have attended where the rabbi begins his remarks by saying, "I know it's Nisan and we are not supposed to be giving hespedim, but..." -- and then proceeds to give what any person in the?room would perceive as a hesped.



Michael Feldstein
Stamford, CT 

________________________________________________________________________
More new features than ever.  Check out the new AOL Mail ! - http://webmail.aol.com
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In the Rambam's era, where a rav has to tell his followers not to follow
cultural norm and allow their wives out of the home to see their
followers occasionally, perhaps the answer would be different.
For all I know, a burqa was already common-place, and wouldn't draw
attention.



SheTir'u baTov!
-micha

===================================================

Herein lies the rub.  The slippery slope of this approach to "tzniut" is
completely separate male and female societies within Judaism with the
exception of husband/wife and even then al tarbeh sicha.  Is this the
aspirational vision of Judaism or did statements like this (and the
Rambam above) reflect a cultural norm of the time or is the truth
somewhere in between? 

Question - how many of the chevrah invite shabbos company which includes
husbands and wives not related to the hosts?  If you do, how many allow
or discourage inter-gender non-marrieds conversations?

KT
Joel Rich
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http://agmk.blogspot.com/2008/02/how-18th-c-jewish-women-knew-when-to.html 
 how it was in those  days,   it terms of candle lighting precision....

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I don't know if someone made this point already or not: Chumros of this 
extreme magnitude are symptomatic of OCD, Obsessive Compulsive Disorder.

KT,
YGB


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