Avodah Mailing List

Volume 44: Number 5

Sun, 25 Jan 2026

• 1. msayea? (Joel Rich)
• 2. Re: msayea? (Micha Berger)
• 3. covering tfilllin shel yad (mco...@touchlogic.com)
• 4. kol dalim gvar (Joel Rich)
• 5. Re: Normal People Don't Care About Those Things (Ben Bradley)
• 6. Re: Normal People Don't Care About Those Things (Micha Berger)
• 7. Re: Normal People Don't Care About Those Things (Meir Shinnar)
• 8. robots on shabbat (Eli Turkel)

Is initiating a conversation with someone who is baduk that he will
speak lashon hara a violation of lfnei iver/msayea?
KT
Joel Rich

On Wed, Jan 21, 2026 at 06:11:34AM +0200, Joel Rich via Avodah wrote:
> Is initiating a conversation with someone who is baduk that he will
> speak lashon hara a violation of lfnei iver/msayea?

Saying something positive about someone that the listener has or probably
has a poor opinion of is avaq LH because it is too likely to cause a
negative response. (Rambam, Hil' Dei'os 7:4, Chafeitz Chaim, Hilkhos LH
9:1)

So, yes.

I think mesayeia (derabbanan) is only when the person would do the averia
either way. so this would be full lifnei iveir and thus a deOraisa.

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger                 When we are no longer able to change a situation
http://www.aishdas.org/asp   -- just think of an incurable disease such as
Author: Widen Your Tent      inoperable cancer -- we are challenged to change
- https://amzn.to/2JRxnDF    ourselves.      - Victor Frankl (MSfM)

...I had heard in the name of the R'YBS that one should return to their original dress state (eg not have one sleeve of the jacket on and one off)
 
bc one should look good for tephila (hikon)
 
no one meets the president with one sleeve hanging at their side. it looks stupid
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Is kol d?alim a permanent tug of war as in (Let That Be Your Last
Battlefield - Wikipedia) or is whoever prevails first now the
permanent owner?
KT
Joel Rich

'To the best of my knowledge, Rav Moshe Mendelssohn himself was most
definitely Orthodox (although that term may be a bit anachronistic?), even
if his ideas later became important in the development of Reform. The view
that he himself was somehow Reform seems to be based primarily on ignorance.'


Yes it is anachronistic to call Mendelson Orthodox or Reform, as neither
term was yet in use. However he was certainly a trail blazer, and the trail
he blazed lead straight to Reform within a generation. He was a
traditionally trained talmid chacham and his writings remained technically
and halachically within the bounds of Torah thought. But in his thoughts
about the relationship between being German and being Jewish , and his
openly unreserved desire to embrace German culture, he paved an obvious
path to the deviances of Reform from derech haTorah, not only in hindsight
but also in the view of some contemporaries. So perhaps viewing him as
being proto-Reform is more accurate. I certainly see no need to accord him
the honorific of Rabbi. The damage he wrought is tremendous.
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On Thu, Jan 15, 2026 at 04:59:40PM +0200, Ilana Elzufon via Avodah wrote:
> On Thu, Jan 15, 2026 at 9:26AM Meir Shinnar via Avodah <avo...@lists.aishdas.org> wrote:
> > 1. the first person I know who is explicit about actions being primary is
> > Mendelson. While he is viewed now by many as Reform,in his lifetime he was
> > viewed by most to be Orthodox.

> To the best of my knowledge, Rav Moshe Mendelssohn himself was most
> definitely Orthodox (although that term may be a bit anachronistic?), even
> if his ideas later became important in the development of Reform...

So he was Orthodopractic, and more people don't bother considering
someone with heterodoxical beliefs alone outside the camp. Which is
where this discussion's subject line came from.

Nor do I personally think that believing heresy always makes one
halachically someone we must treat like a min, apikoreis or kofer, and
for that matter whether or not we assume the heavenly court will treat
him as one -- I cannot assume that nebich an apiqoreis "ein lo cheileq
le'olam haba", although the Rambam (in a very Aristotilian move) did.

But since thebelieds themselves now fit in R, not O, I stand by theidea
that the notion that the Torah only requires and revelation only
transmitted orthopraxy is from Reform, or if you prefer proto-Reform.

--


> term was yet in use...

Sanhedrin is a Greek term, but I don't think it's anachronistic to
simply use the term for any Beis Din haGadol, even those that preceded
Galus Bavel.

Similarly, I have no problem using the word Jew for someone who is
subject to the covenants of Sinai and Arvos Moav even before "Yehudi"
was applied beyond sheivet Yehudah (Esther 2:5, Mordechai is described
as a Yehudi and a Benjaminite), even to someone who lived in Malkhis
Yisrael.

The concept a word was coined to refer to can exist before the word.

I have said here that O is a property a movement can retain, not
a movement or an invention, but an adjective. Summary on my take about
what O means: https://michaberger.substack.com/p/orthodoxy
(Copied from a Mi Yodeya [Jewish Stack exchange] post)

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger                 The true measure of a man
http://www.aishdas.org/asp   is how he treats someone
Author: Widen Your Tent      who can do him absolutely no good.
- https://amzn.to/2JRxnDF                 - Samuel Johnson

My response to Micha?s post generated several responses by him, and by by Ilana Elzufon

I will start Ilana?s post, and the Mendelson issue
I wrote
the first person I know who is explicit about actions being primary is
Mendelson. While he is viewed now by many as Reform,in his lifetime he was
viewed by most to be Orthodox
 Ilana wrote
To the best of my knowledge, Rav Moshe Mendelssohn himself was most
definitely Orthodox (although that term may be a bit anachronistic?), even
if his ideas later became important in the development of Reform. The view
that he himself was somehow Reform seems to be based primarily on
ignorance.

Response:
Looking at my post, I wasn?t sufficiently clear.  I fully agree with Ilana
that Mendelson is Orhtodox  My point is that while Mendelson was considered
Orthodox in hisletime, late on more and more people considered him trade -
and my guess is that most haredm or hared adjacent who know who Mendelson
was would think of him as trafe.
RMB first agrees with me then in a second post, disagrees.
First reply

> So much so, that when they had to post their curriculum, Volozhin told
> the Russian government they learned Chumash with his Biur. Certainly
> not something they would claim if they thought he was treif. Even if
> you think they were lying to / exagerating to the government to sound
> more worldly.

Then he apparently changed his mind
> So he was Orthodopractic, and more people don't bother considering
> someone with heterodoxical beliefs alone outside the camp. Which is
> where this discussion's subject line came from.
> 
> Nor do I personally think that believing heresy always makes one
> halachically someone we must treat like a min, apikoreis or kofer, and
> for that matter whether or not we assume the heavenly court will treat
> him as one -- I cannot assume that nebich an apiqoreis "ein lo cheileq
> le'olam haba", although the Rambam (in a very Aristotilian move) did.
> 
> But since thebelieds themselves now fit in R, not O, I stand by theidea++
> that the notion that the Torah only requires and revelation only
> transmitted orthopraxy is from Reform, or if you prefer proto-Reform.

Several points:

1.  If Volozhin  considered Mendelson Orthodox enough  to teach in Volozhin - then by any reasonable standard he is Orthodox 
2.  Wrt Reform, I think you have the causation backwards.  Reform was
initially criticized for NOT being Orthoprax - with open violations of the
accepted halachic norms.  When that became standard, people looked at why
this happened, and then focused also on ideology.  However, the primary
driver (At least initially) to Reform, was the lack of Orthopraxy?.
 Indeed, I find it extremely strange (even shocking)  that one would accuse
 Reform of originating the idea that practice is what is important.  Rather
 than reform claiming that behavior is necessary, traditional Reform
 rejects both traditional praxia AND traditional hashkafa, but the reaction
 against them was driven by problems with praxis - not hashkafa.  Modern
 Reform is more tolerant and even advocates for more traditional praxis,
 but is still not Orhtoprax.


3.  Wrt to later sources, two from RYBS z?l
     a) In the 1950w, he was willing to join with Rav Saul Lieberman z?l to
     set up a joint bet din with the Conservative movement to handle great
     and giittin.  The Conservative movement already taught biblical
     criticism, amongst other issues in hashkafah.  However, what killed
     the bet din that Lieberman could not guarantee that the Conservative
     movement would follow the bet din?s rulings - that is, Orthopraxy
     versus hashkafa

      b).  The Rav is cited as calling Franz Rosenzweig  Hayehudi hagadol. 
	I (for what it?s worth) fully agree with that assessment.Now,
      Rosenzwei  became increasingly observant, and apparently received
      smicha from Rav Nobel (leader of non Hirschan Orthodoxy in
      Frankfurt). .  However, it is not clear he became fully
      observant.,His machshava - - a powerful and original machshava - is
      not Orthodox by your definition, and yet he is hayehudi hagadol by
      RYBS - something few of us can claim or would have merited.

> I would argue that the halachic definition of who is a kofeir has
> beendecided by subsequent minhag Yisrael to be someone whose beliefs
> don?t fit the 13 iqarim. And if we are to hold like the Radvaz, he
> reachedthat conclusion the wrong way.


First, that is a major accusation against the Radvaz, one of our major
poskim ? one can disagree with his maksana,or the reasoning, but it still a
stsuhva by major charon.

However, wrt to your answer about the 13 ikkarim - we have been down that
road before (very ?fruitfully?0, and while that is a common shorthand for
true belief, it does not describe reality .
	a. First, as Marc Chapiro demonstrated,, many gdolim held beliefs
	that are clearly against the 13 ikkarim.  We would be writing many
	people out of Orthodoxy.
	b.  Second, I don?t know (and the past no one could post) a
	coherent answer) of what  exactly are the 13 ikkarim.  Eg,
	forbidding prayer to angels - while some people try to rewrite
	piyutim, most of us still say shalom Aleichem with (barchuni
	leshalom..
There are tshuvot trying to reconcile mintag with the ikkarim - but it is not clear how to definewht that ikkar actually means (last go round no one did).
Therefore, requiring belief in the 13 ikkarim means requiring belief in
something we can?t actually define - or something that is not the actual
standard of the community. 

Lastly,, one of the issues we have is semantic.
You argue that belief is required - but that false belief does not make you
a halakhic epikoros..  Thaerrefore, halachically, while some beliefs may
have a status as true,wrong hbeleifsave no halachic consequence - and it is
tought to call	something that has no halachic consequence as required.

I would say that the closet to a required belief is that one believes that
doing mitzvoth is, in some sense, avodat haboreh - rather than the
equivalent of Ukrainian fold dancing - eg, keeping close to tradition or
the emotional feeling that it generates.  However, even here , we usually
say mitoch shelo lishma ba lishma  - and would still include him, so even
this is not truly required.  However, there are some major thinkers widely
accepted as Orthodox  whose notions of how its became or are avodat haboreh
are, too many, quite radical (eg, Yeshaya Leibowitz z?l)

Here is where the Radvaz comes in.  If you hold honest beliefs that are
against what the community holds as essential - that is fine.  If you do
actions to promote these beliefs in public - then the community needs to
enforce communal norms.  Again, it is the action of promoting such beliefs
- that has halachic consequences - not the belief itself.

This is essentially my position - that is ultimately required is proper
action - not proper belief.  Some actions are intrinsically tied to proper
belief - but wrong belief by itself is permissible if due to honest
thinking..

 What remains is how to define what beliefs whose public promulgation is
 problematic..	One point is that for the Rambam, the notion of ikkarim is
 not time dependent, except that some only make sense after a certain time
 (eg, Matan Torah only makes sense after Sinai, and mashiach ben David only
 makes sense after malkhut David.  However, the notion thatt ikkarim are
 subject to halachic determination he would have found strange- although
 the halachicconsequences of wrong beliefs may be subject to halachic
 determination..

Someone we know wrote an excellent book about widening your tent- and I would recommend widening your tent of Orthodoxy..

Meir Shinnar







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In 2024, Germany's courts ruled that fully automated robotic supermarkets
must close on Sundays. Let me repeat that: robots got the day of rest.

This applies to stores like Tegut's "*teo*" mini-markets, which operate
completely without human workers. Just robots, doing robot things, selling
you groceries 24/7.

This is where "*Sonntagsruhe*" comes in. Since 1919, Germany's constitution
has required a day off. Originally tied to Christian traditions, it's
evolved to focus on societal rest, family time, and keeping things quiet. A
Hessian court rejected exemptions for the robot stores, classifying them as
retail shops subject to the Sunday ban.

Unions like Verdi fought to prevent automation from undermining the rest
days of human workers. Although the rule is based on religious practice,
its implementation currently prioritizes cultural silence over religious
belief.

-----------------------------------------



-- 
Eli Turkel


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