Avodah Mailing List

Volume 43: Number 25

Tue, 22 Apr 2025

• 1. Re: violation results (Micha Berger)
• 2. Re: bitachon (Micha Berger)
• 3. Re: ?????????????????? ???????????? ?????????????????????????? ?????????????? ???????????????????? ?????????????????????????????? ???????????????? ?????????????????? (Micha Berger)

On Wed, Apr 02, 2025 at 10:24:41AM +0300, Joel Rich via Avodah wrote:
> When the gemara correlates certain violations with certain results, other
> than just saying it's a violation (eg not washing ntilat yadaim resulting
> in poverty), is it positing a value judgement on a level of the violation,
> existential cause and effect, a rational cause and effect (eg personality
> proclivities) or something else?

Why need it be the same thing each time?

And are these necessarily different things? If something has negative
consequences, then it would make sense for us to be told not to do
them, and both of those factors -- that (1) the act is damaging and (2)
to do it is also to ignore the Manufacturer's intructions -- impart a
negative value.

--


were built into the system, like getting burned by touching a stove,
or a Divine response to the act. The different boils down to a Divine
"When"; was the onesh decided upon during Bereishis or just now after you
acted? And since He is "lemaalah min hateva" there is no Divine "When".

So, how you view it may boil down to strategic concerns. Which perspective
fits one's motive for teshuvah. If it's about my fixing the personal
flaw that caused my to act that way, then perhaps the Causative approach
would be more useful. It it's about my relationship with the Borei,
then perhaps it may pay to view it as Hashem's Response.

--


chain of cause-and-effect.

To pull out my usual example again, Conservation of Momentum. Aristotle
didn't have the idea. Instead of momentum, in his theory intellects
imparted impetus to objects, and then the objects were in motion until
the impetus ran out. And his model matched experience. After all, in
real world examples, there is always friction with the floor, gravity,
wind drag, forces that take momentum out of the object. While it is true
that "A body in motion at a constant velocity will remain in motion in a
straight line unless acted upon by an outside force." But only astronauts
have ever experienced an object having no or negligable outside forces.

And I think we need to take rabbinic statements about sekhar va'onesh
similarly. The mitzvah of mezuzah is rewarded with protection. Eating
treif causes timtum haleiv. But there is, more often than that, other
chains of cause and effect converging at that same moment. Always outside
forces acting on the body. So the law may not be all that observable,
even if true.

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger                 Today is the 9th day, which is
http://www.aishdas.org/asp   1 week and 2 days in/toward the omer.
Author: Widen Your Tent      Gevurah sheb'Gevurah: When is strict justice
- https://amzn.to/2JRxnDF                          most appropriate?

On Fri, Apr 11, 2025 at 02:53:08PM +0300, Joel Rich via Avodah wrote:
> I was listening to an interesting shiur discussing the Chazon Ish's many
> nisyonot (physical health, childlessness, wife) and how he met them all
> with the bitachon that he was in good hands. Not that all would necessarily
> be good in the way most people would think. The speaker saw this as
> superhuman belief.

This is one of the central themes in his Emunah uBitachon. He pushes
back against the Bitachon he identifies with the Mussar movement,
but I personally think of as more associated with Novhardok Mussar in
particular, and Chassidus in general.

So one difference is what one has bitachon in: is it trust that everything
will work out good for me in happy-making ways in the end, if I just
hold out long enough? Or trust that everything is working out according
to plan, and any pain I experience along the way is tolerable because
it has purpose and value?

Another difference is that the Norhardok and Chassidish model is
prescriptive; that good and happy-making ending is the reward for trusting
in Him. The model the CI describes is descriptive. It is the trust that
this Divine Plan exists and everything that happens to me is Planned
and Purposeful. Having that content in my head may or may not impact the
outcome, but the Plan I am believing in is in action equally either way.

I found the Chovos haLvavos's depiction could be read either way or a
third way in between. I really wanted to look closely at his word usage
to see exactly what he is saying. It was still shiv'ah for RSM when
this question hit me, and when I missed my personal expert in Medieval
Judeo-Arabic. I miss my rebbe who insisted on being a chaver.

One last note, the CI wrote EuB in the late 1940s, early 1950s. I wonder
if a motive of writing this sefer was historical, reflecting where the
Jewish community was that soon after the Holocaust, and while Medinat
Yisrael was a new exciting idea. But my theory revolves more about the
Holocaust. Novhardoker Bitachon raises huge unanswerable questions,
implying all the victims, even gedolim and qedoshim bechayeihem uvemosam
lo nifrodu failed to tap the yeshu'os that come from sufficient Bitachon.

The CI publicized a classical understanding of Bitachon that may have
been more credible to his audience in those years.

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger                 Today is the 9th day, which is
http://www.aishdas.org/asp   1 week and 2 days in/toward the omer.
Author: Widen Your Tent      Gevurah sheb'Gevurah: When is strict justice
- https://amzn.to/2JRxnDF                          most appropriate?

On Thu, Apr 03, 2025 at 12:13:50PM -0400, Henry Topas via Avodah wrote:
> In the lead up to Pesach, I am trying to formulate a thought around the
> chastisement of the malachim by Hashem as cited in Sanhedrin 39b...
> 
> The question I have is whether we have brought down any similar incidents
> of Hashem raising this same issue when other songs are noted in Tanach, as
> examples, Yehoshua 10:12 or Devorah (Shoftim 5), etc.

Did the mal'akhim give shirah then, or only humans?

Hashem doesn't stop BY from singing Az Yashir either.

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha


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