Avodah Mailing List

Volume 25: Number 147

Sun, 27 Apr 2008

• 1. Re: Daas Torah (T613K@aol.com)
• 2. Re: When does mixed swimming mean? (Liron Kopinsky)
• 3. Re: When does mixed swimming mean? (Daniel Israel)
• 4. Re: When does mixed swimming mean? (Rich, Joel)
• 5. Re: letter of RSRH (Michael Makovi)
• 6. Daas Torah (Cantor Wolberg)
• 7. Re: Violate Shabbat to Save a Jentile (Michael Makovi)
• 8. Re: HQBH speaks through History [was R' Angel & Geirus Redux] (Michael Makovi)
• 9. Re: HQBH speaks through History [was R' Angel & Geirus Redux] (Michael Makovi)
• 10. Dinosaurs kosher? (Michael Makovi)
• 11. Re: Shaliach for a mitzvah (Arie Folger)
• 12. Lying to protect the simple of faith (Akiva Blum)
• 13. Re: makom Ha'Mishkan (Gershon Dubin)

 
In a message dated 4/23/2008 6:39:40 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time,  
rabbirichwolpoe@gmail.com writes:



On Wed, Apr 23, 2008 at 3:20 AM, <_T613K@aol.com_ (mailto:T613K@aol.com) >  
wrote:


 
 
 
RRW wrote:
 
>>Example: I was taught in junior high that vinegar is Acetic  Acid AND that 
aspirin is made from acetic acid and salicylic acid. On that  basis I used to 
assum that aspirin was a product of  hametz!  But  I was corrected by  
practical chemists and pharmacists who explained  that using grain vinegar was 
prohibitive in the manufacture of  aspirin!  So a little learning can be dangerous 
and  misleading.<<


>>>>>

For that reason, one should not consult a rav who only has a little  
learning. 
 
Also one should not consult a posek who is still in junior high  school.
 

--Toby  Katz
=============






That's  not my point
My point is one should not consult any Rav in any area in  which he is not 
expert even if he is k'ven shiv'im shana  ....
UNLESS
That Rav will himself be wiling to consult  experts.

So my point is that Da'as Torah is really quite limited to the  sphere of 
Torah itself and only to the areas in which that Rav knows what he  is talking 
about!

OTOH, it is often a good idea to consult a Rav for  his insight  anyway.

=====================================================================

Maa'seh  shehaya #1:

A frum Jew drowned off the GW Bridge. 
Police Ruled it a  suicide.
The fellow involved was somewhat involved with the mob
I was  talking to a "Gadol BaTorah" and he discussed the fellow's suicide as 
a  fact.
I corrected that Gadol and said that we cannot be sure and that al pi  
halacha we MUST give him the benefit of the doubt!  The Gadol concurred  with my 
hochachah

What I did NOT tell that Gadol was that the fellow  had a mob connection for 
obvious reasons of LH etc.  Anyone aware of that  connexion would realize that 
a suicide is not ALWAYS a suicide and that the  fellow may have been either
    1.  murdered in a way to  APPEAR as a suicide  
    2.  OR he was told to jump off the bridge at the point of a gun or 
similar  coercion [like hurting the family]

Point? That Rav was probably  not so aware of how the mob works. I won't go 
into how I know but suffice it  to say that I am more worldly. 

Given a realistic probabilty that said  suicide was never a suicide we 
generally give the niftar the benefit of the  doubt, and the Gadol would probably 
concur. Just that he could not fathom WHY  it was a feasible reality IOW what's 
the safeik? The police and the M/E ruled  it a suicide!  But I had exposure to 
entire sets of facts that this Gadol  Lacked.

==================================================================

M'aseh  #2. A Rav with Semicha - but not practicing - was lecturing that we 
cannot  consider the case of a woman who is to shy to ask sh'eilos about 
taharas  hamishpacha.  He was talking BOOK LEARNING. I have heard anecdotal  
evidence hat there are many sizable communities in which the one-Rav town gets  a 
VERY low number of queries.   POINT? Despite  this Rav's  intentions to  uphold  
book halacha the reality on the ground is  that women ask in far fewer numbers 
than would normally be expected.   They don't print those sociological stats 
in the Mishnah Brurah!  But  Rabbonim in the know - know what they are up 
against.

Therefore, Da'as  Torah of the ivory tower nature can be downright misleading

OTOH a very  dear friend had a shidduch prolbem ironed out by Hassidc Rebbe 
about 25 years  ago in Boro Park,  Rebbes are often well-trained and 
well-versed in  personal and family issues. They not only know halacha but a lot about 
family  dynamics and human nature. Their "da'as" can be very effective, far 
more than  any assimilated social worker would have been. However, how much of 
that is  pure Torah and how much of that is plain "seichel" coupled with years 
of  intense experience
 
Torah, sechel and experience = da'as Torah

I don't  know. as far as Siyyatta Dishmaya goes, Rabbonim do not have a 
monopoly.  Doctors have it, too. Ever watch House?  He is a Kofeir who gets Siyyata 
 dishmaya!   

=====================================================================

Da'as  Torah to me is a function of using good judgment on gray areas. 
Illustration:  equating Electricity to fire [or not] is the kind of halachic 
judgment a  Poseik would do better than an engineer or physicist - because it is not 
a  function of what happens on the molecular level but on the visible Halachic 
 level.

-- 
Kol Tuv / Best  Regards,
RabbiRichWolpoe@Gmail.com
see: _http://nishmablog.blogspot.com/_ (http://nishmablog.blogspot.com/)   




--Toby
--Toby  Katz
=============





**************Need a new ride? Check out the largest site for U.S. used car 
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>> She responded to me, however, that there is no issur of wearing tight
clothing.

This is a common problem of people caring too much about the letter of the
law and not enough about the spirit of the law. If someone cares about their
relationship to Hashem and His requirements for dressing appropriately, why
would wearing a skin-tight long sleeve shirt even be a thought? This would
be entirely inappropriate to such an extent that it would have been a waste
of paper and ink for any halachic source to require its banishment!
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Michael Makovi wrote:
> She responded to me, however, that there is no issur of wearing tight
> clothing. This seems wrong to me, but to be honest, I cannot recall an
> explicit source that tight clothes are assur. We have arguments about
> showing arms and revealing a tefach and uncovered hair, but I cannot
> recall (from Rabbi Henkin's handy summarization of every single Gemara
> on tzeniut) anything about skintight. Is my memory faulty, or is my
> friend correct?

I am not up on the halachic literature, but I would say that much of 
tznius is from the fifth chelek of SA (common sense).  We all understand 
the basic idea of tznius- it seems wrong to you because it is, and one 
shouldn't need the SA to figure that out.

Somone (RnTK, maybe, or RnSB?) recently made an excellent point about 
this which boiled down to: yes, one can write a sefer that paskens 
outfit by outfit, but that misses the point and gets bogged down in 
minutia to the extent that the real concept is lost (and communal 
standards get replaced by someone's chumros).  If one teaches the 
underlying ideas and the basic halachos, women will figure it out.

"Tight clothes" is a perfect example.  A psak would require strictly 
defining "tight clothes," which is probably impossible.  Some common 
sense is required: does this outfit attract the wrong kind of attention 
or not?

-- 
Daniel M. Israel
dmi1@cornell.edu

A friend of mine recently learned that there is no issur of mixed
swimming per se, and asked why then do we avoid it? I replied to her:

>>>>
Actually, it makes a LOT of sense. There's no halacha for davka
swimming; rather, you have halachot of tzeniut, which applies to
swimming no more than to shopping at the mall. Why should the addition
of water change anything?

Practically, however, I imagine it is difficult for women to wear
garments that don't reveal their shape. Even those swimsuits that cover
the whole body, are skintight. Moreover, even if she wore flowing loose
garments, we all know what happens when women wear wet clothing.

I absolutely do not think that it is a fence on a fence on fence [which
is how she described it]; rather, it seems that practically, it is
impossible to keep tzenua while swimming.
>>>>

She responded to me, however, that there is no issur of wearing tight
clothing. This seems wrong to me, but to be honest, I cannot recall an
explicit source that tight clothes are assur. We have arguments about
showing arms and revealing a tefach and uncovered hair, but I cannot
recall (from Rabbi Henkin's handy summarization of every single Gemara
on tzeniut) anything about skintight. Is my memory faulty, or is my
friend correct?

Mikha'el Makovi
_______________________________________________
Fwiw iiuc there is now a line of full body non-skin tight bathing suits
available. 
CKVs
Joel rich
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> BTW, I get the feeling that quite a few passionate devotees of RSRH have no
> idea that his Kanous included Zionism and wouldn't be surprised to learn
> that if push came to shove many of them would dump RSRH - rather than their
> own Zionist hashkofos.
>
> R' SBA

I think even more of his followers are active devotees of his Zionism
too. (Actually, I wonder if were he alive today, he might simply be
the very mainstream Agudat Yisrael/non-Zionist; given that his
son-in-law and the descendants thereof were extremely involved in the
Agudah, this seems like a safe assumption until someone takes the time
to do a detailed analysis.)

In any case, his Zionism wasn't a promiment part of his hashkafa
(IMHO), but neither did he make it a secret. His Horeb on brachot,
Chumash on the birkat hamazon pasuk, and Siddur on the fourth bracha
(all three discussing bar Kochba) all make it very clear that he
eschewed practical human action to bring geula. I simply say, "No one
[even Rav Hirsch] is perfect". ;)

Mikha'el Makovi

R' R. Wolpe wrote:
"...as far as Siyyatta Dishmaya goes, Rabbonim do not have a monopoly.  
Doctors have it,
too. Ever watch House?  He is a Kofeir who gets Siyyata dishmaya!"

To further validate the above statement re: Siyata Dishmaya, I would  
say "Ma Tovu" is a
pretty good indication of Siyata Dishmaya and for whatever reasons,  
Bilaam had it for a
while.

> > Personally, it seems to me that if we can say that Shabbat was given
> > to us and not us to Shabbat, kal vachomer jentiles were not given to
> > Shabbat (to lose their lives on its account).
>
> Without reference to the, AFAIK, settled halacha that one does save the
> life of a non-Jew on Shabbos, the above kv"ch doesn't work.  IIUC, this
> limud says a Jew doesn't give up his life for Shabbos, so the kol
> v'chomer is that a non-Jew doesn't have to die to avoid violating
> Shabbos.  Which is clearly true: in fact a non-Jew is chayiv misah
> (bidei shamayim, I assume) for keeping Shabbos.  Nothing can be implied
> about whether a Jew should violate Shabbos to save him.
> R' Daniel M. Israel

B'vadai a gentile doesn't have to die to avoid Shabbat. But the
Gemara, AFAIK, uses this limud to prove that Jew A doesn't have to die
because of Jew B keeping Shabbat. Jew B can break Shabbat to save Jew
A, and Jew A doesn't have to die, because Jew A wasn't given to
Shabbat, but rather Shabbat was given to Jew A, and therefore, Jew B
can violate Shabbat.

It seems to me that if so, then all the more so, Gentile A doesn't
have to die by Jew B's shomer Shabbat-ness.

Yes, my logic is very quirky and my kol vachomer is suspect, I'll
admit. But is the Gemara's limud any less quirky? Because Jew A was
not given to Shabbat, this gives permission for Jew B to violate it? I
would think that it would give only permission to Jew A himself.

Mikha'el Makovi

> A college/university education [or something similar] is a neccesity imho
> for most Ortho's in the West who are involved with community leadership.
> Rav Perlow [Novominsker] is a classic paradigm of what I mean by that.  R.
> Dr. Twersky aslso comes to mind, not to mention the entire YU community.
> --
> Kol Tuv / Best Regards,
> RabbiRichWolpoe@Gmail.com
> see: http://nishmablog.blogspot.com/

I went to a talk of Rabbi Aharon Lichtenstein about TuM, and the most
memorable part, IMHO, was when he said that those who study mada
generally understand Sefer Bereshit better. If so, it's not only the
leaders who need TIDE/TuM.

Mikha'el Makovi

> I went to a talk of Rabbi Aharon Lichtenstein about TuM, and the most
> memorable part, IMHO, was when he said that those who study mada
> generally understand Sefer Bereshit better. If so, it's not only the
> leaders who need TIDE/TuM.
>
> Mikha'el Makovi

See also the introduction to Judaica Press's Trumat Tzvi (abridged
Hirsch Chumash) - there, it quotes Dayan Grunfeld (I forget from where
- sorry, my library is in EY and I'm in chutz) who quotes Rav Hirsch,
to the effect that without knowing Egyptian, Canaanite, and
Greco-Roman culture and history, one cannot understand what the Torah
was polemicizing against.

See also the Hertz Chumash in Vayikra 18 or 20 (I forget which) about
the sexual practices: there, he shows how all the sexual practices in
the Torah were popular throughout antiquity, not by "barbarians", but
rather by civilized Egyptians and Persians. The same passage, almost
exactly the same, word-for-word, occurs in R' Munk's Call of the
Torah. I don't know if one if copying the other or if they both have a
common source; neither author provides an attribution.

Mikha'el Makovi

T. Rex Closer to Gizzards Than Lizards
Washington Post April 25, A2
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/
04/24/AR2008042402025.html

Basically, preliminary genetic studies show that T-rex (and presumably
other dinosaurs) is more closely related to chickens and ostriches
than to alligators, and even less related to lizards.

IMHO, this is not so terribly surprising, as it has long been said
that birds today are basically small feathered dinosaurs. In fact,
studies of pelvic structures have shown this similarity, and many
dinosaurs have long been speculated to have been warm-blooded and/or
feathered. Only now, there is genetic evidence to boot.

(Or perhaps I should say at least some dinosaurs; I'm not exactly sure
how closely related all the dinosaurs are, so perhaps some are more
closely related to birds than others. Regardless...)

Also, Rabbi Slifkin says the Torah classifies based on shape and
locomotion, not evolutionary category, and therefore, dinosaurs are
not sheratzim, which by definition are creepy-crawlies. I don't
remember what he says they'd be instead, but it seems to me that the
most likely category for them is birds.

It seems to me that if all this is true, dinosaurs would likely be
kosher. Being extinct for 65+ million years, the Torah could not
possibly have a word to use to declare them treif in the list of treif
birds (I understand this argument was used to kasher the New World
turkey. And for those who say that the taninim were dinosaurs (Dr.
Gerald Schroeder et. al.), meaning the Torah DOES have a word for
dinosaurs, I don't recall the taninim being in the treif list.)

So who wants a bronto-burger?

Mikha'el Makovi

RAF wrote:
> I conjectured that tzedakah is different than gittin. By a get, the giving
> is a critical part of the act, and so either the husband must give it
> himself, or it can be given by someone who is a real shaliach of the
> husband. But if it is given by a pasul shaliach, then the husband did not
> "give" it, and they are still married.

Please note that gittin are sent by mail, as long as it is mailed to the beis 
din/shaliach, and is then given by the shaliach to the woman. IOW, the 
intermediary of the non Jewish mail office does not create any problems. 
Likewise, the tzdaqah you give is likely going to an institution, which will 
in turn pass it on or expend it on behalf of those in need, hence the whole 
question doesn't arise. Nonetheless, it is a nice theoretical question.

GM, GS & GYT,
-- 
Arie Folger
http://www.ariefolger.googlepages.com

Mikha'el Makovi:
>>>>>>
> > Most importantly, the Gemara
> > itself opines that Yehoshua wrote the end of the Torah - surely Rambam
> > cannot declare Chazal to be heretics!
> > Mikha'el Makovi

> What's the question? Moshe Rabeinu couldn't have written them because that would have
> been not true. But he certainly could have instructed Yehoshua on the exact text to write.
> So the entire Torah is the direct prophecy of Moshe Rabeinu.
>
> Akiva

The Gemara says Moshe could in fact have written them - that's one of
the two (AFAIK) answers the Gemara gives - G-d dictated and Moshe
wrote with his tears.

And yes, Moshe could have instructed Yehoshua on what to write. But
could this Gemara not be read just as well that Yehoshua himself wrote
them independently of Moshe? Unless you can refute my reading, it's
still a valid one. In fact, I'd say my reading is more valid than
yours:

Javing Yehoshua write them literally sitting next to Moshe is
certainly possible, but it is too similar to Moshe himself writing
them, and so I see no reason why the Gemara would offer this as an
alternative to Moshe himself writing it. The Gemara is trying to solve
the difficulty of how a Moshaic Torah could describe Moshe's death -
an obvious problem of chronology; one answer is that Moshe wrote down
his own death at the dictation of Hashem (hence the tears as he wrote,
and with which he wrote), and the other answer is that Yehoshua wrote
it down after Moshe's death ...

<<<<<<<<


What I meant was, Moshe received from Hashem the text for the last 8 pesukim, dictated them to Yehoshua with instructions to write them only AFTER his death.
Thus the chronology is in order, and the entire Torah text is the prophecy
of Moshe Rabeinu. The gemorra does not entertain the idea the anything
could have been written independently of Moshe (that would be kefira). Even
if it would be a valid reading, there is no proof now that the gemorra
sanctions post-Moshe additions, since my reading is no less valid (and, I
think, the only correct reading).

Git Shabbos and Yom Tom

Akiva

-- Goldmeier <goldmeier@012.net.il> wrote:

<<By the Mikdash we know people cannot go, in a state of tumas meis, in 
certain areas (the azara), and other areas can be approached after 
tahara in a mikva to relieve oneself of tumas keri/nidda, etc. (not 
getting involved if we can determine or not where those places are).

Is there such a limitation by the makom ha'mishkan? I seem to remember 
learnign once, but cannot remember where or when, that the makom 
hamishkan is not kadosh, and only the binyan itself was. That would mean
the place could be tread upon by anybody. Is that correct though or do I
remember incorrectly?>>

Rambam hilchos beis habechira, perek alef, first 3 halachos.

Gershon
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