Avodah Mailing List

Volume 36: Number 104

Fri, 14 Sep 2018

• 1. Eating on Yom Kippur (Ben Bradley)
• 2. hand washing (Rich, Joel)
• 3. Secular Ethics (Rich, Joel)
• 4. Paying for a common wall (Micha Berger)
• 5. Halachah and Palestinian Refugees (Micha Berger)
• 6. Re: Paying for a common wall (Zev Sero)
• 7. Re: Halachah and Palestinian Refugees (Zev Sero)
• 8. Re: Paying for a common wall (Micha Berger)
• 9. Re: Halachah and Palestinian Refugees (Micha Berger)
• 10. Breaking the Yom Kippur Fast Before Havdalah? (Professor L. Levine)
• 11. Re: Shulchan Aruch, Interpretation (Micha Berger)
• 12. Re: Eating on Yom Kippur (Micha Berger)

This question came up last year and I'm still puzzling over it. I had a
patient with quite severe anxiety disorder trying to get me to tell him he
could eat on Yom Kippur, because he was so anxious about fasting. I told
him he there was no medical reason for him not to fast, ie no sakana or
safek sakana, and that any further query should be addressed to his rav. He
persisted, and I stuck to my guns, because there wasn't any more I could
tell him. Except that I also then pointed out that in OC 518 the halacha is
that a choleh who he says he needs to eat is listened to over the contrary
advice of one hundred doctors, and ended the conversation.
I was troubled though so I asked a couple of talmidei chachamim who both
said that halacha doesn't apply to him, it only applies to someone whose
doctor says he's a choleh. In this case he didn't have that label applied
by a doctor. A person can't just decide he's ill and that he needs to eat,
and take that position against medical opinion.

Except I'm not convinced. There is no equivalent category of 'choleh' in
modern medical thinking. Each medical situation is individual and unique
depending on diagnoses, age, background conditions and so on. There is no
application of a label of 'ill' or 'not ill'. There is an objective
spectrum of illness from minimal to critical. It is possible to ascertain
presence and degree of risk of dehydration and complications thereof, but
if if someone has no discernable risk due to fasting beyond the healthy
baseline, then he could not be considered 'ill' in any objective manner.
That seems to means that the halacha in OC 518:1 is no longer applicable, if my interlocutors are correct.

Modern medical theory does however recognise that when someone says they
are ill, then that needs to be taken at face value. In short being ill is
at least as much subjective as objective, and there are a host of
recognised conditions which depend on symptoms alone without objective
findings and which can be disabling. And even when you can't fit a patient
into a diagnostic box, if they're ill they're ill.
Psychiatric conditions in particular depend largely on subjective symptomology but are certainly real and disabling.

Bottom line question: Is it really the case that someone is only a choleh in halacha when their doctor says so?

Gmar chasima tova
Ben

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From R' Aviner:
Netilat Yadayim by a guest
Q: Should a guest avoid using large quantities of water for Netilat Yadayim, since it is at the host's expense?
A: It is an insignificant amount of water and the host forgives the cost with all of his heart.
(me-paradigm shift due to indoor plumbing? See shabbat 62b and S"A O"C 158:10)

Has anyone seen poskim who reflect the ready availability of water as a
reason to differentiate from earlier authorities who focus on the amount of
water to be used?
GCT
Joel Rich

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As part of my continuing search for understanding why an atheist might
feel bound to ethics, I read an interesting book, "Finding Purpose
in a Godless World; Why We Care Even if the Universe Doesn't" (Ralph
Lewis, MD).

How can you not love a book that quotes Ozymandis, the introduction
to the Stone Chumash, R'W Goldstein and includes the quote, "We were
also members of a synagogue community at that time-and orthodox one
at that. (This seeming contradiction between non-belief and religious
community affiliation is not unusual among Jews)" ? Interestingly,
it was his wife's cancer (and recovery) which pushed the author from
agnosticism to atheism!

The book's thesis is

1.) Humans find patterns where they don't exist and this historically
caused people ("religious" or not) to believe in a purposeful universe,

2.) But now science can explain cosmology and how our brains (minds-it's
all bio) operate. (Fairly good summary of current thinking in these
areas).

3.) We now know (or at least can say it's likely) that all the perceived
directedness (our values and ethics) is not due to a prime mover but
are natural (evolution) development. It's all random!

4.) Science and religion are diametrically opposed and we can have
meaning without religion-we're significant to each other.

5.) Our evolution, quest for knowledge, and morality (very Pinkeresque)
will continue forward with some bumps in the road.

So I didn't "like" the book primarily because he never answered the
question of why an individual who didn't "feel" hard wired by evolution
or any other internal drive would have any reason not to do whatever
they felt like no matter what the impact. Has anyone seen a good answer
to this question?

GCT
Joel

Trying to figure out the sevara behind AhS CM 158:5 left me confused.
And since I have no chavrusah, I'm yet again trying it out on you.

Reuvein ends up with a churvah completely surrounded by Shimon's churvos.
Shimon build fences around three sides, since the 4 side is still open
to reshus harabim, Reuvein gets no utility and doesn't have to chip in.
However, when Shimon puts up the fourth wall and Re'uvein uses them in
some way (demonstrating a desire to have walls), R has to pay his share
of all four walls.

The part I don't get is the definition of "his share".

If Shimon's borders are 10x10, and Re'uvein's are 5x5, they divide by
area. Re'uvein has 1/4 of the total area (25 sq amos out of 100), so
I would have thought his fair share would be 25% of the price. But the
AhS says 1/8 -- apparently splitting by area, and then again splitting
into two shares.

That's the real problem I had.

I was also wondering why they're splitting based on utility rather
than avoided cost. IOW, why is it based on area guarded? Wouldn't
it make at least as much sense to divide the cost that Shimon saved
Reu'vein?

After all, someone who benefits your field without being asked is
paid the lesser of either the costs they invested or the value they
added to you. And the value would be the price of the fence around
R's 5x5 field.

So why is it divided by the ratio of their areas (divided by 2), rather
than by the ratio of their perimeters?

GCT!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             The same boiling water
mi...@aishdas.org        that softens the potato, hardens the egg.
http://www.aishdas.org   It's not about the circumstance,
Fax: (270) 514-1507      but rather what you are made of.

CM 175 discusses the priority given when selling a field or part of a field
to the owner of an adjacent field (a bar matzra). After all, it is
worth more to someone to enlarge their existing field than to a 3rd
party getting a field.

This is a derabbanan, but based on the chiyuv deOraisa of ve'asisa
hayashar vehatov.

And if the owner does sell to a third party, the bar matzra can pay off
the third party and buy it at his price. Assuming he does so at first
opportunity, etc... The idea is that we treat the buyer as a shaliach.
In any case...

In se'if 23, the AhS says this does not hold when the buyer is a field's
previous owner, since "kol adam mis'aveh leshuv lenachalaso". So this
sale is no less hayashar vehatov.

And similarly the yorshim of the previous owner.

However, yeish mi shecholeiq, that the son does not have similar rights,
and the baal meitzar could claim the land from him.

There are interesting implications here. Would the first shitah, which
the AhS presents as the majority position, imply a justification for
UNWRA-style inherited refugee status?

I'm not getting into the politics of whether or not the father had
a right to consider the land his nachalah to begin with. We all have
passionate opinions on the subject, and I am betting nearly all of us
have the same passionate opinion. So why bother going there?

Just asking if you think halakhah supports the notion that if the father
is a refugee, so would be the son -- and if not, not.

What do y'all think?

GCT!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             Here is the test to find whether your mission
mi...@aishdas.org        on Earth is finished:
http://www.aishdas.org   if you're alive, it isn't.
Fax: (270) 514-1507                        - Richard Bach

On 13/09/18 16:14, Micha Berger via Avodah wrote:
> If Shimon's borders are 10x10, and Re'uvein's are 5x5, they divide by
> area. Re'uvein has 1/4 of the total area (25 sq amos out of 100), so
> I would have thought his fair share would be 25% of the price. But the
> AhS says 1/8 -- apparently splitting by area, and then again splitting
> into two shares.
> 
> That's the real problem I had.

3/4 of Shimon's fences benefit nobody but him, so he bears 100% of their 
cost.  1/4 of Shimon's fences benefit both of them equally, so they 
share that cost.

-- 
Zev Sero            A prosperous and healthy 5779 to all
z...@sero.name       Seek Jerusalem's peace; may all who love you prosper

On 13/09/18 17:35, Micha Berger via Avodah wrote:

> There are interesting implications here. Would the first shitah, which
> the AhS presents as the majority position, imply a justification for
> UNWRA-style inherited refugee status?
> 
> I'm not getting into the politics of whether or not the father had
> a right to consider the land his nachalah to begin with. We all have
> passionate opinions on the subject, and I am betting nearly all of us
> have the same passionate opinion. So why bother going there?
> 
> Just asking if you think halakhah supports the notion that if the father
> is a refugee, so would be the son -- and if not, not.

It's got nothing to do with refugee status.  Care for refugees is not 
based on their having been wronged, or about righting that wrong; it's 
entirely about helping them when they're in need.  Never mind 
descendants' even refugees themselves, if there is no prospect of their 
returning home any time soon, are supposed to be resettled as soon as 
possible, and then they're no longer refugees.  So no, their descendants 
many decades later, when there's been plenty of time to resettle them 
somewhere, are not refugees.

But *if* the land was theirs in the first place, and they maintained 
their claim against all squatters, then of course their children would 
inherit it.  This is precisely why it belongs to *us*, because we *have* 
maintained our claim, serving notice on the world three times a day of 
our intent to repossess it whenever convenient to us, and thus their 
grandparents remained squatters.

-- 
Zev Sero            A prosperous and healthy 5779 to all
z...@sero.name       Seek Jerusalem's peace; may all who love you prosper

On Thu, Sep 13, 2018 at 11:34:54PM -0400, Zev Sero via Avodah wrote:
: On 13/09/18 16:14, Micha Berger via Avodah wrote:
: >If Shimon's borders are 10x10, and Re'uvein's are 5x5, they divide by
: >area. Re'uvein has 1/4 of the total area (25 sq amos out of 100), so
: >I would have thought his fair share would be 25% of the price. But the
: >AhS says 1/8 -- apparently splitting by area, and then again splitting
: >into two shares.
: >
: >That's the real problem I had.

: 3/4 of Shimon's fences benefit nobody but him, so he bears 100% of
: their cost.  1/4 of Shimon's fences benefit both of them equally, so
: they share that cost.

This ties my questions together.

The proportion is by area. The amount of fence both are using would be
an issue of how much perimeter Re'uvein would have needed.

If we are measuring by area, we are presumably dividing by amount of
utility. Not splitting how much of the fence is sharing, but determining
how large is each party's share, where they share the full fence. Which is why I thought of halving
the ratio as a second accounting for the sharing.

Here's how I would have thought sharing the amount of fence both use /
need would go:
Shimon made 10 x 4 = 40 amos of fence of which Reuvein needed 5 x 2 = 20
amos. So, it would be 1/2 of the fence that both are benefiting equally,
and a 1/2, and not 1/4, that would therefore be shared equally. Making
Re'uven pay 1/2 of 1/2 = 1/4 of the cost.

(Not because of area; that's just a coincidence because in the example,
Re'uvein's property's length is 1/2 of Shimon's.)

Going on a tangent for a bit: And if we look at how much Re'uvein needed,
rather than how much he would have posted for just himself, we could say
that Reuvein is benefiting from 100% of the fence. He didn't have to pay
if Shimon's fence still left his property exposed to reshus harabim. And
the fence wouldn't be a closed loop if not for all 40 amos.


When a town is afraid of pillaging, the community can levee a tax to pay
for a wall. They bill the wealthy and those who live near the wall the
most, as they are the most likely targets and get the most benefit. (This
division is only if the threat is theft. If it were an army capable of
rape and murder too, then the cost is divided equally. As having more
money or being in a home closer to the edge of town doesn't make it
measurably more likely to be a victim if the army arrives.)

So, it seems that sharing is based on proportion of utility, not
proportion of service used. Justifying dividing by area. The person with
more square amos of wheat benefits more from the of the fence.

In total, there would be 10x10 = 100 sq amos
Reuvein has 5x5 = 25 sq amos = 1/4 of total
Shimon has 10x10 - 5x5 = 75 sq amos = 3/4 of total

Where do you get the 25% that both are sharing?

GCT and :-)@@ii!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             Nearly all men can stand adversity,
mi...@aishdas.org        but if you want to test a man's character,
http://www.aishdas.org   give him power.
Fax: (270) 514-1507                      -Abraham Lincoln

On Thu, Sep 13, 2018 at 11:44:20PM -0400, Zev Sero via Avodah wrote:
: >I'm not getting into the politics of whether or not the father had
: >a right to consider the land his nachalah to begin with...
: >Just asking if you think halakhah supports the notion that if the father
: >is a refugee, so would be the son -- and if not, not.
: 
: It's got nothing to do with refugee status.  Care for refugees is
: not based on their having been wronged...

This answers my question.

: But *if* the land was theirs in the first place, and they maintained
: their claim against all squatters...

And this is exactly the question I said I wasn't trying to ask. The
question of whether a PA had ownership of the land wasn't opened. It was,
whether this multigenerational attachment to a land that the majority
of posqim take for granted should be an argument for multi-generational
refugee status or not.

The question didn't have to be about Palestinian refugees, if it weren't
for the historical accident that they're the only ones people are trying
to apply a multi-generational definition to.

Meanwhile, I think the chiluq between helping people get on their feet
vs who oens the land that you opened with does defuse the connection
I was basing my question on. And makes it one totally unrelated to the
halakhah I learned -- how much help is one owed because their parents
couldn't get back on their feet after being disposessed of their homes.

I don't think we figure cause in when doing chessed triage. We account for
level of need, closeness to us (aniyei irekha qodmin, family before aniyei
irekha, etc...)

I assume halakhah would validate assessing who is a worse risk of wasting
the help I am giving them, for which cause would help in that assessment.
But I haven't actually seen that calculus discussed anywhere.


On a totally different note, now that I learned further.... It is likely
that the prior owner of the land only gets precedence over the matzran if
it was already sold to him. Unlike other buyers, you do not allow the
matzran to pay him for it and take the land. However, lekhatchilah, the
Rama would have you give priority to selling to the matzran.

GCT and :-)@@ii!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             The greatest discovery of all time is that
mi...@aishdas.org        a person can change their future
http://www.aishdas.org   by merely changing their attitude.
Fax: (270) 514-1507                   - Oprah Winfrey

An annual question arises this time of year, usually from a woman who will
be waiting for her husband to come home and make Havdalah after Maariv on
Motzai Yom Kippur, when the fast was already over a few minutes after
nightfall. Is she required to wait for Havdalah to break her fast by taking
a drink of water?
The question that lies behind the question is whether the five restrictions
of affliction obligated on Yom Kippur, are considered part and parcel of
its inherent Kedushas HaYom, holiness, or are they regarded as separate,
yet synchronized, halachic mandates?

To find out, read the full article "Insights Into Halacha: Breaking the Yom
Kippur Fast Before Havdalah?<https://na01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fsable.madmimi.com%2Fc%2F10500%3Fid%3D215323.1071.1.e517009f51f831c44214cbf0347dc876&;data=02%7C01%7Cllevine%40stevens.edu%7C8f37e37b73e849847a3708d61a2c0713%7C8d1a69ec03b54345ae21dad112f5fb4f%7C0%7C0%7C636725173743803984&sdata=9p6A7KSul1cjcOZzG6nVYgVP%2Bi6WDjJprQ6rhm5V9zs%3D&reserved=0>".

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On Thu, Aug 30, 2018 at 12:59:52PM +0000, Rich, Joel via Avodah wrote:
: The phrase "Yeish me shenireh mdvarav" appears 3 times in Shulchan Aruch,
: twice in O"C 158 (hand washing) and once in E'H 141. Any thoughts on the
: meaning of this? Any good sources on unpacking the S"A's authorial keys
: shorter than Ein Yitzchak Volume 3 (like this one, or stam and yesh omrim,
: or why certain unusual cases are included?)

See Yad Malakhi, Kepalei haPosqim cheileq 1, Kelalei haSA vehaRama (pp
196a-199b, 21 se'ifim, only a couple of lines on each of first and last
pages):
<http://www.hebrewbooks.org/pdfpager.aspx?req=14122&;pgnum=412>

The prior section is Kelalei Moreinu haRav Yoseif Caro -- covering
the Beis Yoseif. But obviously very relevant.

GCT and :-)@@ii!
-Micha

On Wed, Sep 12, 2018 at 09:03:45PM +0000, Ben Bradley via Avodah wrote:
: That seems to means that the halacha in OC [6]18:1 is no longer applicable,
: if my interlocutors are correct.
: 
: Modern medical theory does however recognise that when someone says they
: are ill, then that needs to be taken at face value...

Halakhah too. We require the choleh eat if the choleh OR the doctor
say he needs to, even when they disagree. "And if the choleh says,
'I must', even when 100 doctors say he doesn't have to, we listen
to the choleh."

The Kaf haChaim 618:1 says that only where the was a cheshash to
begin with, we can use the choleh's determination which way to go on
the cheshash.

: Bottom line question: Is it really the case that someone is only a choleh
: in halacha when their doctor says so?

As you see, no. But again, the KhC would say you need the doctor to say
the guy isn't just being a hypocondriac, that there is /some/ cheshash
he is basing his fear on. Even if the fear isn't realistic.

GCT and :-)@@ii!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             Life is a stage and we are the actors,
mi...@aishdas.org        but only some of us have the script.
http://www.aishdas.org               - Rav Menachem Nissel
Fax: (270) 514-1507


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