Avodah Mailing List

Volume 38: Number 109

Sun, 20 Dec 2020

• 1. Le'ilui Nishmas an Infant (Micha Berger)
• 2. Re: Le'ilui Nishmas an Infant (Rich, Joel)
• 3. RSRH (Joseph Kaplan)
• 4. Re: RSRH (Prof. Levine)
• 5. Re: Chocolate Production (Akiva Miller)
• 6. on the obligation (or not) to vaccinate for covid (mco...@touchlogic.com)
• 7. Vizhnitz Rebbe Asks Chasidim To Make Kiddush This Shabbos Between 6 And 7 (Prof. L. Levine)
• 8. Re: im lo nevi'im, bnei nevi'im (Jay F. Shachter)
• 9. Fear of G-d Leads to a Change of Heart (Prof. L. Levine)

In a couple of hours is my daughter's yahrzeit. So, I thought it would be
an appropriate day to sponsor RYGB's AhS Yomi shiur. I wrote or intended
to write him that the donation was lezeikher nishmas. Lemaaseh on the
dedication RYGB wrote le'ilui nishmas.

I really don't know what le'ilui nishmas means when speaking of a nifteres
who only lived 11 weeks, and therefore didn't become old enough for the
concept of cheit to have meaning.

Would such a neshamah have descended at all, to have a place to rise
back up to?

Of course, if you assume every crib death is a gilgul who had other lives,
the question has an answer. But what if one doesn't believe that? (What
would R Saadia Ga'on say? <grin>)

:-)BBii!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger                 You are not a human being in search
http://www.aishdas.org/asp   of a spiritual experience. You are a
Author: Widen Your Tent      spiritual being immersed in a human
- https://amzn.to/2JRxnDF    experience. - Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

> Of course, if you assume every crib death is a gilgul who had other lives,
> the question has an answer. But what if one doesn't believe that? (What
> would R Saadia Ga'on say? <grin>)
...
> -Micha

When asked, I've said that maybe that baby's tafkid was simply to
influence others and to the extent that influence continues, the neshama
intrinsically has an aliyah

KT
Joel Rich

RYL reiterates (38/208):

? I maintain that if one truly wants to understand 
Judaism,  then one has to be familiar with the 
writings of Rabbiner Hirsch.?

You mean no one truly understood Judaism before the 19th century?

Joseph

Sent from my iPhone

At 08:02 AM 12/20/2020, Joseph Kaplan wrote:
>RYL reiterates (38/208):
>
>??? I maintain that if one truly wants to understand
>Judaism,  then one has to be familiar with the
>writings of Rabbiner Hirsch.???
>
>You mean no one truly understood Judaism before the 19th century?
You left out the part where I said that R.. 
Shraga Feivel Mendelovitz told a yeshiva bachur the same thing.

To gain a true understanding of Yahadus one needs 
the ability to comprehend the entire body of 
Torah knowledge.  The vast majority of Jews 
cannot do this and never did or will do this..
RSRH does this for us in his writings.

An important point. Is Judaism a religion?  RSRH 
says it is not.  Do you know why Yahadus is not a 
religion? Rabbiner Hirsch explains why it is not.

If one does not know why Judaism is not a 
religion,  then one most certainly does not truly understand Judaism.

YL

.
R' Micha Berger wrote:

> The OU does not raise questions of child slavery and the
> cruelty routinely imposed on the slaves who pick our chocolate.

If I understand correctly, that's because those questions are not their
field of expertise. They don't support slavery, chalila, but the
enforcement of such issues are better left to the government and/or "fair
trade" organizations. That approach is very reasonable to me. This
paragraph wouldn't justify a post to Avodah, but it does segue into RMB's
second comment:

> And whether it's mutar to support the industry, if our trade
> is so small as to have no measurable effect so it isn't even
> mesayeia, etc...

Is it really that small? Hashgachos routinely advertise that shomrei
mitzvos constitute only a fraction of the consumers who look for a hechsher
when shopping. Manufacturers pay lots of money to get a hechsher on their
label, and for good reason. The policies set by the hashgachos may be more
powerful than we realize. Perhaps mesayeia *IS* (or should be) a relevant
factor.

For example, for those who don't remember the incident 18 years ago, read
here about when Stella D'Oro cancelled their plans to switch from OU Pareve
to OUD:
https://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/12/nyregion/of-milk-and-cookies-or-how-orthodox-jews-saved-an-italian-recipe.html?auth=login-email&;login=email

Akiva Miller
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https://www.jewishpress.com/blogs/felafel-on-rye/rabbi-avraham-steinberg-no-
halachic-obligation-for-now-to-be-vaccinated-against-covid-19/2020/12/10/

From

https://vosizneias.com/2020/12/20/vizhnitz-rebbe-asks-chasidim-to-make-kiddush-this-shabbos-between-6-and-7/?utm_source=feedburner&;utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+vin+%28Vos+Iz+Neias%29
[https://vosizneias.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/Vizhnitzer-Rebbe.png]<;https://vosizneias.com/2020/12/20/vizhnitz-rebbe-asks-chasidim-to-make-kiddush-this-shabbos-between-6-and-7/?utm_source=feedburner&;utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+vin+%28Vos+Iz+Neias%29>
Vizhnitz Rebbe Asks Chasidim To Make Kiddush This Shabbos Between 6 And 7 -
Vos Iz Neias<https://vosizneias.com/2020/12/20/vizhnitz-rebbe-asks-chasidim-to-make-kiddush-this-shabbos-between-6-and-7/?utm_source=feedburner&;utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+vin+%28Vos+Iz+Neias%29>
BNEI BRAK (VINnews) ? The Vizhnitz Rebbe, Rabbi Yisrael Hager, presented an
unusual request to his chasidim during a sermon he gave during the final
Shabbos meal. It is the custom in many chasidic groups not to make Kiddush
on Friday nights during the winter between 6 PM and 7 PM. Others try not to
[?]
vosizneias.com

The Vizhnitz Rebbe, Rabbi Yisrael Hager, presented an unusual request to
his chasidim during a sermon he gave during the final Shabbos meal. It is
the custom in many chasidic groups not to make Kiddush on Friday nights
during the winter between 6 PM and 7 PM. Others try not to make Kiddush
during the first hour of the night. The reason for this is that this is a
time when Mars is the astrological sign controlling the world and this is
not an auspicious time to be making Kiddush.


The rebbe however requested that on the forthcoming Shabbos, Parshas
Vayigash, people should not maintain this stringency and should make
Kiddush between 6 and 7. The reason for this is that this coming Friday
marks the fast of the Tenth of Teves, which is the only fast which can fall
on a Friday and even this is a very unusual occurrence (the last time was
in 2013). The rebbe was concerned that women and children will be fasting
and tired after the Shabbos enters and will not be able to wait until 7 PM
before they eat.


The rebbe said that people should ?have mercy on their household and not maintain this stringency while the rest of the household is famished from the fast.

See the above URL for more.

I have never understood this custom.  The hours between 6 and 7 PM differ
depending upon where one is in the world, so if Mars is controlling the
world between 6 and 7 pm in EY, it seems to me that it is not controlling
the world in Brooklyn between 6 and 7 pm where I live.

Can anyone explain this?

YL
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> 
> There's a recurring discussion on the list about the mechanism for
> existing Jewish practice being a source for ongoing psak halacha. In
> view of which I thought it useful to share an essay by R Hutner in
> Pachad Yitzchak on Chanuka, maamar 14. He posits that there are two
> distinct drivers of the obligation to maintain any given takana -
> the status of the beis din concerned and the extent to which Klal
> Yisrael accepts and keeps the takana. Each works independently.
>
> However there's an important distinction in the mechanism by which
> each works. The beis din's takana works through da'as, ie the
> conscious decision to enact a practice. In contradistinction,
> acceptance of any given practice by klal yisrael works specifically
> without da'as, meaning that there has to be no conscious decision to
> change or institute a practice. Only when a practice [] becomes
> widespread without any conscious decision by the community do we
> invoke 'im lo nevi'im, bnei nevi'im heim' to say the practice in
> question has obligatory force as a minhag....
>

I do not know the sense in which you, or R' Hutner, intent to apply
that quote.  I do know that whenever I hear that quote, I never hear
it used to justify practices that merely seem to have no basis in
halakha; it is used only to justify widespread practices that clearly
violate undisputed halakhoth, such as learning Mishnayyoth in a house
of mourning (with the mourner present), or wearing your wedding ring
outdoors on Shabbath, or allowing people who mispronounce the `ayin to
recite the priestly blessing (an interesting halakhah, since there is
no `ayin in the priestly blessing, but an undisputed halakha
nevertheless).  Hillel, however, only used those words when he did not
know the halakha; he never used those words when he knew the halakha.
If you want to justify widespread practices that clearly violate
undisputed halakhoth, gei gezinteheit, but I hope that you will not
misapply Hillel's words when you do.

                        Jay F. ("Yaakov") Shachter
                        6424 North Whipple Street
                        Chicago IL  60645-4111
                                (1-773)7613784   landline
                                (1-410)9964737   GoogleVoice
                                j...@m5.chicago.il.us
                                http://m5.chicago.il.us

                        "Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum videtur"

The following is from the sefer Rav Schwab On Chumash:

Bereshis 42:20-21

And bring your youngest brother to me, so that your words may be verified, and you will not die." And they did so.
And they said to one another, "Indeed, we are guilty for our brother, that
we witnessed the distress of his soul when he begged us, and we did not
listen. That is why this trouble has come upon us."

A G-d-fearing Jew needs to constantly examine his attitudes, positions,
and deeds to determine whether they are in line with the truth of the
Torah. One should never hold on to old policies, old behaviors, or even
old traditions just because, "This is what we decided in the past," or,
"This is the way we have always done it."

The Rav was always re-examining his positions and hashkafos, to be
certain that they were consistent with the emes. In February of 1990, the
Rav delivered an address to his congregation. At that time, he admitted
to having changed his mind regarding conclusions that he had arrived at
as a young man, when he advocated the total severance from his "Torah
im Derech Eretz" heritage. He openly declared that he had re-examined
Rav Samson Raphael Hirsch's philosophy of Torah education, and now
believed it to be not just an emergency measure, but as applicable today
as it was in the years before the Holocaust.

See TIDE - A Second View<https://web.stevens.edu/golem/llevine/rsrh/tide_second_view.pdf>

YL
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