Avodah Mailing List

Volume 43: Number 37

Mon, 16 Jun 2025

• 1. Re: Candyman (HT-S Davis jr.) (Micha Berger)
• 2. Amen (Michael Poppers)
• 3. My Current Futile Life Project (Jay F. Shachter)

On Wed, Jun 11, 2025 at 10:44:17AM +0300, Joel Rich via Avodah wrote:
> I've always wondered about this role with regards to the age of chinuch and
> having those children eating before kiddush. Thoughts?

When teaching davening altogether, what's the point of teaching a
child to utter a bunch of syllables they can't understand? It can
even be counter-productive, as we are creating a habit of talking
without connecting to meaning.

Why worry about the resulting lack of decorum, or children (who eat on
fast days also) learning about eating before Qiddush, when the basic
experience that people go to shul for creates habits that need overcoming?

To my mind, the whole concept of tefillah for children is to create
happy childhood memories, nostalgic ties to shul.

And therefore the candyman can play an important role.

(I picked up from a yahrzeit reminiscence article somewhere that R Aharon
Lichtenstein played candyman. I fell in love with that mental image. But
Googling just now, I couldn't find confirmation.)

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger                 It is a glorious thing to be indifferent to
http://www.aishdas.org/asp   suffering, but only to one's own suffering.
Author: Widen Your Tent                    -Robert Lynd, writer (1879-1949)
- https://amzn.to/2JRxnDF

In the "when it?s so asynchronous that it?s not even toch kdei dibbur"
case, I would prefer RAMiller's *derech* (try to answer everyone whom
you've heard because "l'halacha, one ought to") over RJKaplan's *derech*
(answer only the last because "the speedsters are simply being rude") --
making a blanket assumption like RJK made deserves its own thread! -- but I
have to add one point re a partial example of the case: when one of the
Qaddish sayers is the SHaTZ, really there should be no one else saying
Qaddish, so all other sayers should be keeping up w/ him, and in that
situation, I'm doing my darndest to listen _only_ to the SHaTZ and to
answer _only_ to what he's saying.  (For the record, in my community there
is at least one current *aveil* who figuratively bows to the crowd and,
when acting as SHaTZ, says Qaddish in such a low voice, trying to sync w/
the other sayers, that I cannot hear his voice -- in such a case, I go back
to RAM's methodology [and I strongly disagree w/ what that *aveil* is
doing, but at least until he's no longer an *aveil*, I don't feel
comfortable confronting him with "v'niqdashti b'soch..."/the importance of
saying a *davar shebiqdusha* loud enough for a *minyan* to hear...].)

All the best from
*Michael Poppers* * Elizabeth, NJ, USA
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>
>>
>>>
>>>>
>>>>> 
>>>>> (My current futile life project is no longer that, because I have
>>>>> changed it.  My current futile life project is to get people to say
>>>>> "sherut l'umit" since "sherut" is feminine.)
>>>>>
>>>> 
>>>> Why do you think sherut is feminine? The tav is a root letter, not a
>>>> suffix.
>>>>
>>> 
>>> Similarly, "Sheirut" is indeed a feminine noun, even though the vav-tav
>>> is not related to that fact. Probably because service is a "receive
>>> and further develop" type thing.
>>>
>> 
>> What is your evidence that Sherut is feminine? Ben Yehuda and Even Shoshan
>> both say it is masculine, but I only see one quotation in Ben Yehuda which
>> shows gender:  Yoma 58a "shene khelim besherut ehad"
>>
> 
> Actually, I could cite that very source, since the text actually has
> "achas".
> https://www.sefaria.org/Yoma.58a.8
> 
> But I just wrote that after glancing at an on-line dictionary. I didn't
> have a primary source.
> 
> (Actually, it's neither in Tanakh nor Mishnah, so we don't have a source
> old enough to rule out the likelihood of Aramaic borrowings. I don't
> know if Aramaic ever has a different gender for a word than Hebrew did.)
> 

If anyone wants to tear himself away from these two people and hear
from the person who started the discussion: Mr Montagu has convinced
me that I was wrong, and that "sherut" is masculine, not feminine.
I have, therefore, changed my futile life project, which formerly was
to get people to say "sherut l'umit", but no longer is, because I was
wrong (I know I just said that five seconds ago, but I'm practicing,
for when I get married again).  My current futile life project, which
I decided jointly with Mr Montagu following an e-mail conversation
with him, is to get people to say "peleg hamminxa", which is the
correct pronunciation of the term, see, inter alia,
https://beta.hebrewbooks.org/reader/reader.aspx?sfid=43082#p=14

I had considered taking on a different futile life project, to get
people (or, if not people in general, then at least the one who runs
the Avodah mailing list) to say "`Arokh HaShulxan".  In the end I
decided that that was too attainable to be a futile life project,
because one can persuasively point to the verse from which the title
is derived, and although it is empirically true that no Jew has ever
changed his behavior as a result of being persuasively shown a verse
in the Bible, still it seemed to be something that ought to be
possible in principle, and might even, some day, happen.  So "peleg
hamminxa" it is.

(As for whether an Aramaic word ever has a different gender than the
corresponding Hebrew word, that question is, in one of those dazzling
coincidences that logicians loathe and poets love, relevant to this
week's parasha, which contains the only verse in the Torah that has
feminine language that Onqelos completely removed in his Aramaic
translation, leaving only masculine language.  Look at the Targum
Onqelos on Bmidbar 11:12.)

I could say more, but I have to sign off now, because it is Friday
afternoon, and I still have a few more things that I want to do before
I start Shabbath, which I might want to do early today, as soon as it
is peleg hamminxa.

               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

               When Martin Buber was a schoolboy, it must have been
               no fun at all playing tag with him during recess.



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