Volume 31: Number 53
Fri, 29 Mar 2013
Subjects Discussed In This Issue:
Message: 1
From: Micha Berger <mi...@aishdas.org>
Date: Thu, 28 Mar 2013 14:03:41 -0400
Subject: Re: [Avodah] Kitniyot
On Sun, Mar 24, 2013 at 01:07:28PM -0500, Lisa Liel wrote:
> On 3/22/2013 2:57 PM, Micha Berger wrote:
>> On Fri, Mar 22, 2013 at 02:33:38PM -0500, Lisa Liel wrote:
>>> Certainly. But if he brings sources and they don't, it doesn't matter.
>>> A daat yachid with sources backing him is preferable to a rov that
>>> simply dismisses the issue.
>> I disagree. See my most recent blog post
>> <http://www.aishdas.org/asp/2013/03/tzav.shtml>.
>> The topic is the implications of the difference between a legislative
>> process and a fact-finding one, including the need to think in terms
>> of what gives a ruling authority, not what makes the most sense from
>> a historical or scientific perspective.
> With all due respect, mitzvah isn't passive. It's factitive, which is
> sometimes consider intensive. The opposite of passive.
This is tangential, since the notion of mitzvah as a means of becoming
a certain kind of person doesn't require analyzing the word. But even
on the diqduq level, what is important to my note was that it is a
circumlocution compared to the base "tzavah". A biblical mishmar is
a place of confinement or a guardpost, not the act of guarding or the
thing to guard. And that opens space for derashos as to why HQBH picked
this term.
(Blog post updated, in any case. Tnx.)
> And the reason we should correct the mistaken ("evolved") version of
> what a kezayit is is because the current measures lead to violations in
> other areas. Bal tashchit, for one. General gasut, for another...
This is a different procedure than the one I'm taking issue with. I have
no problem with the result of a small kezayis. I do have a problem with
conflating archeological data with halachic argument. The halakhah doesn't
have to stay still, so proof that it didn't doesn't mean much to me.
Here, you are making halachic argumment, with which I have no issue.
> But
> the biggest reason of all is that the inflated shiurim were obviously the
> best that the poskim could do, lacking the actual olives to compare them
> to. That being the case, the actual fact doesn't constitute a historical
> argument; it constitutes a reality-based argument.
Except that it presumes that halakhah is reality-based. It's not a
science, it's a legal system designed to change people. Who says it /should/
be reality based?
> I think this is a philosophical issue that has far wider implications. I
> see it as consonant with your argument that the Mabul could have been an
> event that never actually happened in the physical world...
This is a miunderstanding of my -- really the Maharal's and R' Dessler's
position (AIUI). I do not question whether the mabul happened in the
physical world. Rather, the question is how much of what we call "the
physical world" is really out there, and how much is a projection created
by human perception? The mabul really happened in the physical world,
as perceived by a different kind of consciousness than ours.
http://www.aishdas.org/asp/2006/02/rav-dessler-on-reality-and-pe
rception.shtml
This is a very Kantian perspective, and R' Aryeh Carmell (in his role
as meivi la'or) believes that REED makes an intentional reference to
Kant. But it's also the worldview of Ernst Mach, to which Einstein
voiced agreement. The reason why the world works in ways that we can
Understand through science and math is that both the observed reality
we are studying and the subsets of science and math we create are shaped
by our being humans. It's not a coincidence.
The two ideas are emotionally linked, but are very different. In both
cases I'm telling Adam I not to get carried away with recent successes
in science and technology and therefore assume that they explain domains
other than their own. Their only connection is that I think my position
would be easier to accept if we didn't live in a point in history where
the Man of Faith, Adam II, were less sociologically lonely. (Existential
loneliness is inherent in the archetype.) A world where people issues
aren't considered more derivative than matters of physical reality.
A third instance, which I think is more logically similar to our topic
of historical olive sizes is my advocacy and elaboration of the shitah
(held by my rebbe among others) that the reason why bugs you can't see
with your eye aren't a kashrus issue, and bugs born from microscopic
eggs might as well be created abiogenically is that halakhah only cares
about the world as directly experienced, not as we can indirectly (eg
through instruments or otherwise confirmed theory) know it to be.
Here I'm saying that our evolution as a community goes hand in hand with
the evolution of halakhah. An accepted practice that was created via
the legal process therefore has redemptive power even if the scientific
assumptions behind it don't match reality. Like the magnifying-glass
sized bugs, because it's not objective reality but subjective experience
that changes people.
Or, to put it another way, the "reality" halakhah exists to address aren't
biological, chemical or physical, they are psychological, existential
and spiritual. We care more about how humans are encountering the world
than how the world is.
Not because of a deprecation of science, but because the harder sciences
a simply exploring a topic less related to changing people into more
extact images of the Divine.
And so halachic authority and communal continuity have the power to
refine the soul. Even if they don't match the old physical basis for the
prior law. A "kezayis" is what halachic process decides is a quantum
of food. Nothing directly to do with olives.
On Mon, Mar 25, 2013 at 02:30:00PM +0200, Ben Waxman wrote:
> On 3/25/2013 3:54 AM, Zev Sero wrote:
>> Really?! The Rambam didn't have olives?! All the geonim and rishonim
>> that give shiurim (and there are many listed in RACN's Shiurei Torah and
>> Shiurei Mikveh) didn't have olives?! How can that be?
> And then if you take this idea to its logical conclusion (Rishonim got a
> measurement wrong because they didn't have X) you would have to cast
> doubt on every single explanation that Rashi and Tosophot give when
> explaining some word, food, structure, etc from the Middle East. In
> short, you'd have to rewrite the Halacha as we know it.
What scares me about R' Moshe ben Haim's approach is that what you're
proposing (IIUC) as an ad absurdum, an impossibility, he would actually
posit is the right way to go.
I posted a short while ago my opinion of his Nusach EY, which ignores
the weight Seder R' Amram Gaon gets by being the ancestor of the nusach
used by everyone else in the shomer shabbos world.
:-)||ii!
-Micha
--
Micha Berger Today is the 2nd day
mi...@aishdas.org in/toward the omer.
http://www.aishdas.org Gevurah sheb'Chesed: What is constricted
Fax: (270) 514-1507 Chesed?
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Message: 2
From: Micha Berger <mi...@aishdas.org>
Date: Thu, 28 Mar 2013 15:34:07 -0400
Subject: Re: [Avodah] Kitniyot
On Thu, Mar 28, 2013 at 01:48:19PM -0500, Lisa Liel wrote:
>> (Blog post updated, in any case. Tnx.)
> I don't actually see that. But mishmar is a good example. It is far
> from passive. It denotes an intensive guarding. Not merely an
> incidental one, but one for which the mishmar was created.
I'm deleting the bit about the page being changed from the list. It is
changed. I'm not going to bother discussing page caching on list.
:-)||ii!
-Micha
--
Micha Berger Today is the 2nd day
mi...@aishdas.org in/toward the omer.
http://www.aishdas.org Gevurah sheb'Chesed: What is constricted
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Message: 3
From: Lisa Liel <l...@starways.net>
Date: Thu, 28 Mar 2013 13:48:19 -0500
Subject: Re: [Avodah] Kitniyot
On 3/28/2013 1:03 PM, Micha Berger wrote:
>>> I disagree. See my most recent blog post
>>> <http://www.aishdas.org/asp/2013/03/tzav.shtml>.
>>> The topic is the implications of the difference between a legislative
>>> process and a fact-finding one, including the need to think in terms
>>> of what gives a ruling authority, not what makes the most sense from
>>> a historical or scientific perspective.
>> With all due respect, mitzvah isn't passive. It's factitive, which is
>> sometimes consider intensive. The opposite of passive.
> This is tangential, since the notion of mitzvah as a means of becoming
> a certain kind of person doesn't require analyzing the word. But even
> on the diqduq level, what is important to my note was that it is a
> circumlocution compared to the base "tzavah". A biblical mishmar is
> a place of confinement or a guardpost, not the act of guarding or the
> thing to guard. And that opens space for derashos as to why HQBH picked
> this term.
...
Mishmar is a good example. It is far from passive. It denotes an
intensive guarding. Not merely an incidental one, but one for which
the mishmar was created.
>> But
>> the biggest reason of all is that the inflated shiurim were obviously the
>> best that the poskim could do, lacking the actual olives to compare them
>> to. That being the case, the actual fact doesn't constitute a historical
>> argument; it constitutes a reality-based argument.
> Except that it presumes that halakhah is reality-based. It's not a
> science, it's a legal system designed to change people. Who says it /should/
> be reality based?
We aren't Christians. We insist on the reality that Hashem gave us the
Torah at Sinai and that what we have now is that Torah. A legal system
designed to change people is all well and good, though it's much more
something you'd hear in a shul sermon than in any actual mar'ei mekomot,
but there's no way the k'zayit was inflated in order to change people.
It was an incidental thing, done without any intent of changing reality,
but rather of best approximating the reality given what was known.
In fact, the very fact that so much energy was spent trying to determine
what a k'zayit was demonstrates that reality is what it was about.
Rabbis weren't trying to figure out what size k'zayit would change people
in a certain way. They were trying to figure out what the reality was
that Chazal were talking about.
But this is sort of a recapitulation of the Beit Hillel / Beit Shammai
dispute. Beit Hillel dealt with reality. Real humans, with real heights
and real abilities. Beit Shammai taught about Adam HaRishon standing as
a giant, and Moshe Rabbenu leaping ridiculous distances into the air.
Not out of fancy, but out of a sense of theology. Out of an idea
that reality wasn't the critical thing; how the Torah affects people
is the critical thing. The same split exists between Hassidic thought
and non-Hassidic thought, with the Hassidim weighing in on the side of
Beit Shammai, ironically enough. And that's how we get meshichistim
and the like. When reality isn't the basis, there aren't a whole lot
of limits out there.
>> I think this is a philosophical issue that has far wider implications. I
>> see it as consonant with your argument that the Mabul could have been an
>> event that never actually happened in the physical world...
> This is a miunderstanding of my -- really the Maharal's and R' Dessler's
> position (AIUI). I do not question whether the mabul happened in the
> physical world. Rather, the question is how much of what we call "the
> physical world" is really out there, and how much is a projection created
> by human perception? The mabul really happened in the physical world,
> as perceived by a different kind of consciousness than ours.
Honestly... that's a lot of words. It's the kind of thing I'd expect to
see in a philosophy course in a university. It's theology. But Judaism
isn't a religion of theology, IMO. Phrases like "how much of what we
call the physical world is a projection created by human perception" make
me cringe. Yes, there are parts of the world that we can't perceive,
but that's why they're considered other worlds. Other domains.
To suggest that the Mabul didn't take place in the real, concrete,
physical, objective, still-there-when-no-one-is-looking world is the
same as saying that it never actually happened in the physical world.
> http://www.aishdas.org/asp/2006/02/rav-dessler-on-real
> ity-and-perception.shtml
I disagree with your reading of REED, and lacking the text of the
Maharal that you're referring to, I can't comment on it.
> This is a very Kantian perspective, and R' Aryeh Carmell (in his role
> as meivi la'or) believes that REED makes an intentional reference to
> Kant. But it's also the worldview of Ernst Mach, to which Einstein
> voiced agreement.
I doubt that. Einstein couldn't even accept quantum mechanics, since it
didn't comform to his understanding of concrete reality.
> A third instance, which I think is more logically similar to our topic
> of historical olive sizes is my advocacy and elaboration of the shitah
> (held by my rebbe among others) that the reason why bugs you can't see
> with your eye aren't a kashrus issue, and bugs born from microscopic
> eggs might as well be created abiogenically is that halakhah only cares
> about the world as directly experienced, not as we can indirectly (eg
> through instruments or otherwise confirmed theory) know it to be.
As R' Chaim Zimmerman put it, halakha exists for a "man-sized" world. I
don't see how that supports your view; nor how it lends support to your
view (I'm not sure which was supposed to be happening). Halakha doesn't
deny the microscopic reality. It simply doesn't consider it relevant to
halakhic determinations. Chazaka is another instance where process
results in halakhic rulings, but it doesn't result in fact. It can be
altered when fact comes along.
> Here I'm saying that our evolution as a community goes hand in hand with
> the evolution of halakhah. An accepted practice that was created via
> the legal process therefore has redemptive power even if the scientific
> assumptions behind it don't match reality. Like the magnifying-glass
> sized bugs, because it's not objective reality but subjective experience
> that changes people.
It's legitimate to say that there's a chazaka of k'zayit being thus and
such a size. But when reality is determined, the chazaka no longer
applies. If a Kohen is muchzak a Kohen, which is a chezkat ha-guf, all
the halakhot of a Kohen apply to him. If he makes the mistake of doing
a family tree project and finds that he is not a Kohen, or worse, that
he is a Halal, we don't maintain the chazaka and say that reality isn't
the issue. Rather, we accept the reality, and it changes the halakhic
determination. I know of such cases.
> Or, to put it another way, the "reality" halakhah exists to address aren't
> biological, chemical or physical, they are psychological, existential
> and spiritual. We care more about how humans are encountering the world
> than how the world is.
That's a false dichotomy. Prior to the arrival of a fact, the halakha
can be x, due to chazaka or approximation or error. Subsequent to the
arrival of that fact, maintaining the halakha to be x in the face of the
contradictory fact is contrary to sense, and is bad halakha.
> Not because of a deprecation of science, but because the harder sciences
> a simply exploring a topic less related to changing people into more
> extact images of the Divine.
The Torah isn't *merely* about determining reality. Nor is it *merely*
interested in "changing people into more exact images of the Divine".
To say that it must be one or the other defines Judaism as a religion.
A superstition. Something which can never be trusted to reflect reality.
> And so halachic authority and communal continuity have the power to
> refine the soul. Even if they don't match the old physical basis for the
> prior law. A "kezayis" is what halachic process decides is a quantum
> of food. Nothing directly to do with olives.
I don't think any of the rabbanim who established inflated views of what
a k'zayit was would have agreed with you.
Lisa
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Message: 4
From: "Prof. Levine" <llev...@stevens.edu>
Date: Thu, 28 Mar 2013 14:27:06 -0400
Subject: [Avodah] "everything was kosher"
At 01:18 PM 3/28/2013, R. Akiva Miller wrote:
>I have long since stopped laughing at previous generations who
>thought that "everything was kosher". Maybe they were right.
Did they really *think* that everything was kosher and investigate or
simply use things without looking into the kashrus of what they were
using? Did they rely upon Rav Alle, "Alle essen dos" and not go any
further? My understanding is that food technology today is much more
complicated than it was in the past, but this does not mean that
there were no problems in the past.
Years ago a rebbitzen told me that only the chocolate flavor of a
certain brand of pudding was kosher, despite the fact that the other
flavors manufactured by this company also had a K on it. This seemed
strange to me, so I wrote to the company. They sent me information
about the rabbi who was behind the K. This rabbi's supervisions were
not considered reliable by most observant Jews. I wrote to him and
asked him detailed questions about the kashrus of the puddings he
supervised. His reply was, "All of the flavors may be considered
acceptable." He supplied no specifics regarding his basis for this
statement and did not answer one of my questions. Based on this, I
decided that the rebbitzen really did not have any basis for saying
the only the chocolate flavor was OK. Based on what I had heard
about this rabbi's supervisions, I did not use any of these puddings.
YL
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Message: 5
From: Micha Berger <mi...@aishdas.org>
Date: Thu, 28 Mar 2013 16:06:47 -0400
Subject: Re: [Avodah] "everything was kosher"
On Thu, Mar 28, 2013 at 02:27:06PM -0400, Prof. Levine wrote:
> Did they really *think* that everything was kosher and investigate or
> simply use things without looking into the kashrus of what they were
> using? Did they rely upon Rav Alle, "Alle essen dos" and not go any
> further? My understanding is that food technology today is much more
> complicated than it was in the past, but this does not mean that there
> were no problems in the past.
Didn't we discuss this in Fall 2011 in the thread you started titled
"Halachic Policy Guidelines of the Kashrus Authority of Australia"?
There is a reason why more countries (albeit far fewer observant Jews)
rely on kashrus approval lists rather than full hekhsheirim. It's not
ignorance.
:-)||ii!
-Micha
--
Micha Berger Today is the 2nd day
mi...@aishdas.org in/toward the omer.
http://www.aishdas.org Gevurah sheb'Chesed: What is constricted
Fax: (270) 514-1507 Chesed?
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Message: 6
From: Micha Berger <mi...@aishdas.org>
Date: Thu, 28 Mar 2013 17:03:41 -0400
Subject: Re: [Avodah] Kitniyot
On Thu, Mar 28, 2013 at 01:48:19PM -0500, Lisa Liel wrote:
> Mishmar is a good example. It is far from passive. It denotes an
> intensive guarding. Not merely an incidental one, but one for which
> the mishmar was created.
It denotes something one guards with, not the thing being guarded or
the act of guarding.
E.g.
DhY I 26: Mishmaros are people doing guarding
Nechemia 4:3: The mishmar is the cohort guarding the breaches in the wall
Nechemia 12: Mishmaros are storehouses.
If mitzvah were exactly parallel, it would refer to Moshe Rabbeinu.
But in either case, it's not tzavah, something defined by its being
commanded.
>>> But
>>> the biggest reason of all is that the inflated shiurim were obviously the
>>> best that the poskim could do, lacking the actual olives to compare them
>>> to. That being the case, the actual fact doesn't constitute a historical
>>> argument; it constitutes a reality-based argument.
>> Except that it presumes that halakhah is reality-based. It's not a
>> science, it's a legal system designed to change people. Who says it /should/
>> be reality based?
> We aren't Christians. We insist on the reality that Hashem gave us the
> Torah at Sinai and that what we have now is that Torah. A legal system
> designed to change people is all well and good, though it's much more
> something you'd hear in a shul sermon than in any actual mar'ei mekomot,
> but there's no way the k'zayit was inflated in order to change people...
I'm saying it's a legal process because it evolves as our culture does.
You're saying that the historical size of an olive 2000 years ago helps
"ha'adam nif'al lefi pe'ulaso" more than that continuity. Or than giving
people the power to partner with G-d to find a means of redemption.
And as for mar'eh meqomos... I made a more rigorous argtument at
<http://www.aishdas.org/asp/2013/03/tzav.shtml> than I did here. To quote:
... When the Radziner Rebbe concluded that the chilazon, the source of
the blue tekheiles dye, was the cuttlefish, R' Chaim Brisker wouldn't
even weigh the quality of his arguments. Rav Chaim would not accept
external evidence to reestablish the identity of the chilazon in the
face of halachic silence. I found that a chiddush, but I find the
overturning of halakhah when it was not silent to be a greater one.
The Torah Temimah (Maqor Barukh 583) repeats a tradition he received
from a Rav Eliyahu Goldberg about Rav Chaim Volozhiner. A knife
takes on the meatiness (or milkiness) of the food it cut in two
cases: if the food is physically hot, or if the food a davar charif,
something with a sharp or hot taste. The Shulchan Arukh's examples
are garlic, onion or leek (YD 96:1). Later on (96:5), the Shulchan
Arukh discusses turnips among other things.
But when a woman came to Rav Chaim asking about just such a case --
she cut meat and turnips with a dairy knife, Rav Chaim didn't simply
tell her the food wasn't kosher. He instead asked he the color of
the turnip. She said it was a white turnip. Rav Chaim allowed her
to eat the food. Why? Because while the Shulchan Arukh said that
turnips were a davar charif, Rav Chaim didn't believe this to be
true experientially. Still, R' Chaim wouldn't overturn an accepted
halakhah in the Shulchan Arukh! So, he drew a distinction between
the dark skinned turnips the SA's author would have encountered
in the middle east, with the white skinned ones more common in
Lithuania, and thereby felt comfortable ruling. In other words, R'
Chaim Volozhiner was willing to give some authority (at least in the
case he was undeniably speaking of) to the Shulchan Arukh even when
it was based on a reality that ran counter to his senses.
Not in that post, but should be... The Rambam, Hil Shemitah veYovel
10:5-6. He reports that the geonim had a mesorah that between the two
batei miqdash and since churban bayis sheini, they only counted shemitah
without counting yovel. And the Rambam said it is incorrect -- that one
can't count the yovel year toward the shemitah cycle, so that counting
one without the other gets you to the theoretically wrong year. Still,
the Rambam says "shehaqabalah vehama'aseh amudim gedolim behora'ah,
uvahen ra'ui lehitalos."
> It was an incidental thing, done without any intent of changing reality,
> but rather of best approximating the reality given what was known.
But once it was rules and followed, it has legal import. The argument
against it should also be legal in form.
...
> But this is sort of a recapitulation of the Beit Hillel / Beit Shammai
> dispute. Beit Hillel dealt with reality. Real humans, with real heights
> and real abilities. Beit Shammai taught about Adam HaRishon standing as
> a giant, and Moshe Rabbenu leaping ridiculous distances into the air.
> Not out of fancy, but out of a sense of theology. Out of an idea
> that reality wasn't the critical thing; how the Torah affects people
> is the critical thing.
This is more conjectural than our original topic. Nor does the last
sentence follow from what you wrote before. You surmize that Beis Hillel
dealt with real people and real abilities. But then you describe Beis
Shammai dealt with what they believed were the objective realities both
physical and metaphysical.
>> This is a miunderstanding of my -- really the Maharal's and R' Dessler's
>> position (AIUI). I do not question whether the mabul happened in the
>> physical world. Rather, the question is how much of what we call "the
>> physical world" is really out there, and how much is a projection created
>> by human perception? The mabul really happened in the physical world,
>> as perceived by a different kind of consciousness than ours.
> Honestly... that's a lot of words. It's the kind of thing I'd expect to
> see in a philosophy course in a university. It's theology...
Mach was a theologian? This is handwaving past something you won't bother
to follow. Your argument is an appeal to personal taste:
> Phrases like "how much of what we
> call the physical world is a projection created by human perception" make
> me cringe...
To which there is no response.
> I disagree with your reading of REED, and lacking the text of the
> Maharal that you're referring to, I can't comment on it.
>> This is a very Kantian perspective, and R' Aryeh Carmell (in his role
>> as meivi la'or) believes that REED makes an intentional reference to
>> Kant. But it's also the worldview of Ernst Mach, to which Einstein
>> voiced agreement.
> I doubt that. Einstein couldn't even accept quantum mechanics, since it
> didn't comform to his understanding of concrete reality.
From the Stanford Encyc of Philosophy
<http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/einstein-philscience>:
This does not, at first, preclude one's holding at least to the
Kantian problematic, as, e.g., Cassirer has done. I am even of
the opinion that this standpoint can be rigorously refuted by no
development of natural science. For one will always be able to say
that critical philosophers have until now erred in the establishment
of the a priori elements, and one will always be able to establish a
system of a priori elements that does not contradict a given physical
system. Let me briefly indicate why I do not find this standpoint
natural. A physical theory consists of the parts (elements) A, B, C,
D, that together constitute a logical whole which correctly connects
the pertinent experiments (sense experiences). Then it tends to be
the case that the aggregate of fewer than all four elements, e.g.,
A, B, D, without C, no longer says anything about these experiences,
and just as well A, B, C without D. One is then free to regard the
aggregate of three of these elements, e.g., A, B, C as a priori, and
only D as empirically conditioned. But what remains unsatisfactory
in this is always the arbitrariness in the choice of those elements
that one designates as a priori, entirely apart from the fact that the
theory could one day be replaced by another that replaces certain of
these elements (or all four) by others.
(Einstein 1924, 1688 -- 1689)
It appears to me that the word "real" is taken in different senses,
according to whether impressions or events, that is to say, states
of affairs in the physical sense, are spoken of.
If two different peoples pursue physics independently of
one another, they will create systems that certainly agree as
regards the impressions ("elements" in Mach's sense). The mental
constructions that the two devise for connecting these "elements"
can be vastly different. And the two constructions need not agree
as regards the "events"; for these surely belong to the conceptual
constructions. Certainly on the "elements," but not the "events,"
are real in the sense of being "given unavoidably in experience."
But if we designate as "real" that which we arrange in the
space-time-schema, as you have done in the theory of knowledge, then
without doubt the "events," above all, are real.... I would like to
recommend a clean conceptual distinction here.
(Einstein to Schlick, 21 May 1917, EA 21-618, ECP 8-343)
>> Or, to put it another way, the "reality" halakhah exists to address aren't
>> biological, chemical or physical, they are psychological, existential
>> and spiritual. We care more about how humans are encountering the world
>> than how the world is.
> That's a false dichotomy. Prior to the arrival of a fact, the halakha
> can be x, due to chazaka or approximation or error. Subsequent to the
> arrival of that fact, maintaining the halakha to be x in the face of the
> contradictory fact is contrary to sense, and is bad halakha.
Halakhah has rules of legislation. Apparently it is not a given that
"corrected to match intended reality" is one of them.
:-)||ii!
-Micha
--
Micha Berger Today is the 2nd day
mi...@aishdas.org in/toward the omer.
http://www.aishdas.org Gevurah sheb'Chesed: What is constricted
Fax: (270) 514-1507 Chesed?
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Message: 7
From: "Kenneth Miller" <kennethgmil...@juno.com>
Date: Thu, 28 Mar 2013 21:01:22 GMT
Subject: Re: [Avodah] Minhagim for Baalei Teshuva
R' Micha Berger wrote:
> Minhag is supposed to be by location. It's only because the
> norm has become that few locations have a minhag hamaqom
> that our ancestors' location became determinant -- we have
> no local custom to switch to, so we stick with the one we
> came from.
Maybe. Let me offer a different idea, for which I have little or no evidence:
"Al titosh Toras imecha." (Mishlei 1:8) I've heard this often as the source
for not deviating from minhagim. (For example, Chochmas Adam 40:13.) This
is clearly a family-oriented pasuk (though I concede that it seems to be
matriarchal, and not the patriarchal that I might expect).
The issue is complicated, though, because for millenia, the average family
stayed in the same area for many generations. There was very little
practical difference to the question of whether minhagim are by family or
by location, except for the unusual case of someone who moved far away.
This *did* happen on occasion, and the halacha *did* discuss what to do,
and the answer was that if the move was to be permanent, then the minhagim
would change to the ones of the new location.
This SEEMS to fit what R' Micha is saying, that "Minhag is supposed to be
by location." But is that really the ideal, or is it merely a concession to
practicality? I would like to suggest that minhagim really ought to be by
family, but if that means that you'll be a small minority, then -- as R"n
Chana Luntz so eloquently explained in another thread -- the situation is
not easily tolerable.
According to this idea, it would be quite reasonable for minhagim to
ideally follow the family, yet follow the location in practice for
millenia, until recent centuries, when large-scale immigration allowed
communities to reconstitute themselves in new locations, so that the family
minhag could continue. But I concede that I have absolutely no evidence for
this, other than the pasuk in Mishlei. Perhaps someone can offer other
ideas pro or con?
> I would therefore think that someone who has to adopt
> minhagim needs to pick a community to affiliate with, and
> follow theirs consistently. Since the idea of minhag is
> to belong to something.
> I am not as sure as RAM that this is usually the BD who
> was megayeir him.
Sorry, I never intended to give the impression that I was "sure" about this
at all. I don't even remember where it was that I heard about a ger
following those who were megayer him.
[begin rant] But I do have what to say about baalei teshuva: I have too
many memories of being frustrated by seforim and rabbis who told me to find
out what my father's and grandfather's customs were. (For some reason,
tefilin on Chol Hamoed sticks in my mind. Did they really think my
grandfather would remember such an obscure practice?) After learning for
some years, that frustration turned to anger and resentment when I realized
how easily they could have said that people from these areas tended to do
this, while people from those areas tended to do that. [end rant]
Akiva Miller
____________________________________________________________
How to Sleep Like a Rock
Obey this one natural trick to fall asleep and stay asleep all night.
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Message: 8
From: Micha Berger <mi...@aishdas.org>
Date: Thu, 28 Mar 2013 17:27:21 -0400
Subject: Re: [Avodah] Minhagim for Baalei Teshuva
On Thu, Mar 28, 2013 at 09:01:22PM +0000, Kenneth Miller wrote:
: This SEEMS to fit what R' Micha is saying, that "Minhag is supposed
: to be by location." But is that really the ideal...
See my reply to a similar question of yours asked last Nov
<http://www.aishdas.org/avodah/vol30/v30n158.shtml#02>:
I think that's the implication from the sugyos in Maqom sheNahagu
(Pesachim pereq 4). Minhag primarily means minhag hamaqom. One keeps
one's minhag hamaqom until one is in a maqom that has a different
minhag. (What it takes to be in a new place is one of the key open
questions behind the question of whether a tourist observes YT sheini
shel goliyos.)
Which, ironically, is the canonical source of the phrase "minhag avoseihem
beyadeihem".
The shifting of populations has taken on a new speed, so that people
are moving around at rates that few communities stay still long
enough to develop minhagim. Y-m has a few minhagim particular to
itself, but there aren't that many other such examples.
Which has created a situation in which people hold on to their old
minhagim for generations. Minhag avos, what was once a stopgap for
people moving to places that have no real community, has ended up
dominating. Not because we changed the rules of minhag, but because
we live in a very different world.
I thought RnCL corrected some ideas in this theory but I can't find
her post now.
See also the threads in vol 23 and vol 26 at the subject lines starting
with <h
ttp://www.aishdas.org/avodah/getindex.cgi?section=M#MINHAG%20AVOS>.
:-)||ii!
-Micha
--
Micha Berger Today is the 2nd day
mi...@aishdas.org in/toward the omer.
http://www.aishdas.org Gevurah sheb'Chesed: What is constricted
Fax: (270) 514-1507 Chesed?
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Message: 9
From: "Rich, Joel" <JR...@sibson.com>
Date: Thu, 28 Mar 2013 17:07:21 -0400
Subject: [Avodah] Dates
Just looking at a container of Medjool Dates -ok pareve plus a small print hechsher. It also says rauy lvdok metolaim.
So what exactly is the hechsher certifying?
C k v s
Joel rich
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Message: 10
From: Zev Sero <z...@sero.name>
Date: Thu, 28 Mar 2013 21:40:27 -0400
Subject: Re: [Avodah] "everything was kosher"
On 28/03/2013 2:27 PM, Prof. Levine wrote:
>
> Years ago a rebbitzen told me that only the chocolate flavor of a certain
> brand of pudding was kosher, despite the fact that the other flavors
> manufactured by this company also had a K on it. This seemed strange to
> me, so I wrote to the company. They sent me information about the rabbi
> who was behind the K. This rabbi's supervisions were not considered
> reliable by most observant Jews. I wrote to him and asked him detailed
> questions about the kashrus of the puddings he supervised. His reply was,
> "All of the flavors may be considered acceptable." He supplied no specifics
> regarding his basis for this statement and did not answer one of my questions.
> Based on this, I decided that the rebbitzen really did not have any basis
> for saying the only the chocolate flavor was OK.
The facts as you have presented them are insufficient to support that
conclusion. You presumed that the rebbetzin, or her informant (or his
informant, etc.), could not have had information that you didn't.
--
Zev Sero A citizen may not be required to offer a 'good and
z...@sero.name substantial reason' why he should be permitted to
exercise his rights. The right's existence is all
the reason he needs.
- Judge Benson E. Legg, Woollard v. Sheridan
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Message: 11
From: Meir Rabi <meir...@gmail.com>
Date: Fri, 29 Mar 2013 15:23:52 +1100
Subject: [Avodah] Rice and Corn May be Eaten for the Entire Day of
I wrote:
: Rabbi K also quotes a number of Acharonim. For the time being I will not
: comment on these, other than saying that to the best of my knowledge they
: do not offer any proofs to support their suggestions.
Reb Micha however, proposes that
this is the core of the dispute! RMK is arguing that a precedent has been
well set. The grounds to dismiss the pesaq of the Choq Yaaqov, Maharsham,
Peri Megadim, and Chasam Sofer and the discussion in the Shitah Mequbetzes
(none small names), would make or break grounds to hold otherwise.
I disagree. [BTW the PeRi MeGadim is on the other side] But before I
explain - let me add to this R Zev's observation, which although from a
different thread is essentially of the same ilk:
I wrote:
> It leads almost irrefutably to the conclusion that there is no good
> Halachic reason to support the ruling, of the DC based on undisclosed
> arguments, banning machine Matza. So, if misguided means not
properly guided, then is it not possible that this ruling of the DC is
> not properly directed?
>
Reb Zev responds"
That is a chutzpah against one of the great poskim of the 19th century.
If he said it, then by definition it is not misguided, and you have no right
to call it that.
Reb Zevs argument is of course circular, it is so because Reb Zev and his
mates, say it is so. Equally, it runs contrary to the Torah's instruction
Lo SaChaNiFu Es HaArets - Show no fear nor favour - We are instructed to
Pasken as WE see and understand, not to shut down our minds and sublimate
ourselves to what we deem to be a holier superior Neshama that has its
origins in the Head of Adam HaRishon.
Notwithstanding AleHu Lo YiVol - that even the idle chatter of TChaChaMim
requires close analysis - nevertheless their opinions do not constitute
Halacha. To mention a famous but poorly understood episode, which day was
Yom Kippur? and he appeared as ordered, with his walking stick and money
belt. So let us ask, why did they not sit together and make a LeChaim?
Would that not be the best way to PROVE today is NOT YKippur?
The answer - it was not a Pesak. There was no suggestion that Yom Kippur
MUST be kept according to the BD calculation - as per our other discussion
about Who Brings the Chatos. Such a demand CANNOT be issues by BD.
Therefore it was merely a request to prevent a major split amongst the
community but was not a demand that one's opinion be quashed by the ruling
of the BD. Therefore, the program was to make a SHOW as though it was not
YK - those activities can readily be sidestepped so as not to desecrate YK.
Like putting his walking stick down on a Makom Petur.
And so the DC is not offering a Pesak - he is simply offering an opinion,
the DC prefers that machine Matza not be eaten during Pesach
So too, opinions about not consuming Kitniyos EPesach, are just assertions
and opinions and preferences which are not based an any Halachic
foundation. Put simply, if the ReMa does not mention it then it is not part
of the Minhag of Ashkenasz.
Some may have a practice of not sleeping in the Sukah, that does not make
it a Halachic custom or a Minhag, it is just a counter Halachic practice of
a splinter group, that serves to illustrate how easy it is to create a
conflicting sub-culture within Judaism. And the insistence of not eating
Gebrochts for example, has nothing to do with Halacha, Halacha is just the
fall-guy in the political-tribal-feud-power-seeking-shuffle where everyone
is racing to get to the top of the MizbeAch - which ought to be an activity
that is dedicated and that highlights our desire to honour Gd, but
somewhere in the mix, we get refocussed on other things and end up pushing
others off or stabbing them, with words of course.
And so too the declaration, the cry to battle, HaChadash Assur Min HaTorah
- is not and was never intended to be, and cannot be, a Halachic ruling
beyond the discussion of new years crops outside EY. Just as Reb Moshe's
ruling about having a single curtain for a Paroches, rather than a double
centre opening Paroches. It is maintenance of tradition, which is important
but not Halachic. It's about respecting our traditions and not just
changing things due to a whim. But where good reason and practicalities
direct change to non Halachic and I do not include in this Minhag such as
Kitniyos, then of course Reb Moshe would permit using a central opening
Paroches.
In this discussion, I am reminded of the RaMBaM weeping in frustration over
those who insist on explaining Aggadata at its literal level - and priding
themselves thereby on honouring our Sages OBM, when in fact they are making
a mockery and bringing HKBH and our Sages' genius and integrity, to
disrepute.
Best,
Meir G. Rabi
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