Avodah Mailing List

Volume 25: Number 241

Thu, 03 Jul 2008

• 1. Re: Zekhiras Yetzi'as Mitzrayim in Yemos haMashiach (Micha Berger)
• 2. Re: the cohen gadol and marriage to a pubescent girl (Zev Sero)
• 3. Re: the cohen gadol and marriage to a pubescent girl (Zev Sero)
• 4. Re: the cohen gadol and marriage to a pubescent girl (Micha Berger)
• 5. K.P. vs P.A. (cantorwolberg@cox.net)
• 6. Re: K.P. vs P.A. (Micha Berger)
• 7. Re: T'uM (Zev Sero)
• 8. Re: Halachic Texts: More Background (Micha Berger)
• 9. Re: T'uM (Rich, Joel)
• 10. Re: Halachic Texts: More Background (Rich, Joel)
• 11. Re: Zekhiras Yetzi'as Mitzrayim in Yemos haMashiach (Zev Sero)
• 12. Re: Vegetarianism (Doron Beckerman)
• 13. Re: the cohen gadol and marriage to a pubescent girl (Zev Sero)
• 14. Re: Zekhiras Yetzi'as Mitzrayim in Yemos haMashiach (Micha Berger)

On Thu, Jul 03, 2008 at 10:57:05AM -0400, Zev Sero wrote:
: No, we do not!  Yachid verabim halacha kerabim, and I'm not aware of
: anything to indicate that this is an exception.  *Nobody* disputes that
: we say yetziat mitzrayim at night; there's no svara at all *not* to say
: it.  The mishna gives it as an undisputed statement.  The machloket
: between Ben Zoma and the Chachamim is only about yemot hamashiach, and
: we follow the majority, that we *will* say it.

Are you sure that "*nobody*" disputes it? The sugya is on Berakhos 12b.
It opens with R' Yehudah bar Chavivi explaining why there is a derabbanan
to say Parashas Tzitzis as the third paragraph of Shema. After some
discussion of his statement, R' Elazar ben Azaryah raises his uncertainty
about applying this derabbanan at night. Shema must be said at night --
"beshokhbekha uvkumekha", cited in the mishnah without a machloqes. But
where do you see the third parashah being necessary at night? In fact,
given the choice of parashah, primarily about a mitzvah not obligatory
at night, ben Zoma's conclusion is far from obvious.

As for rov... Ben Zoma holds he is following a stam braisa (there was
no mishnah yet), which would give him a rabbim as well.

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             Feeling grateful  to or appreciative of  someone
micha@aishdas.org        or something in your life actually attracts more
http://www.aishdas.org   of the things that you appreciate and value into
Fax: (270) 514-1507      your life.         - Christiane Northrup, M.D.

Minden wrote:
> RMYG wrote:
>>> (As an aside, physical maturity was probably even later in the time
>>> of the gemore, up to four or five years later.)

>> What do you mean here?
 
> Menarche, which dropped from about 17 years to less than 12 during the
> last 150 years. ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puberty#Historical_shift )
> It's difficult to extrapolate to the time of the gemore, though - it
> depends on a list of factors such as ethnic genetics, nutrition and the
> like. Still, chances are that at the time of the gemore, girls were
> nubile at a higher age than today, thus even widening the gap to today's
> societal standards.

It's quite clear that through most of history, including Roman and
Medieval times, it was about 12-13, both for Jews and others.  It's
very unlikely that it was ever as high as 17 for any large population,
over any long time frame; that figure was probably taken from an
atypical sample.

-- 
Zev Sero               Something has gone seriously awry with this Court's
zev@sero.name          interpretation of the Constitution.
                                                  - Clarence Thomas

Micha Berger wrote:

> My understanding is that the shiur deOraisa is 2 sa'aros. Waiting until
> normal ages for puberty is to insure the reality of the sa'aros, and
> not some form of wart or a mole (Niddah 46a).

Earlier hair is *deemed* not to be "real", even if it's unmistakeable.
It's a matter of definition, not of metziut.

 
> So it would seem to me:
> The shiur deOraisa is 2 sa'aros. The shiur deRabbanan for dinim deOraisa
> when lechumrah, is to also require age -- which is 12 for a boy and
> 11 for a girl.

Huh? Where are you getting these ages?  Are you claiming that, even
(leshitascha) mid'rabanan, a 12-year-old boy with confirmed hair would
be a gadol?  AFAIK this is not so, and a boy one day before his bar
mitzvah is a katan lechol davar, even if he has confirmed and
unmistakeable hair.



-- 
Zev Sero               Something has gone seriously awry with this Court's
zev@sero.name          interpretation of the Constitution.
                                                  - Clarence Thomas

On Thu, Jul 03, 2008 at 10:49:43AM -0400, Zev Sero wrote:
: >So it would seem to me:
: >The shiur deOraisa is 2 sa'aros. The shiur deRabbanan for dinim deOraisa
: >when lechumrah, is to also require age -- which is 12 for a boy and
: >11 for a girl.

: Huh? Where are you getting these ages?  Are you claiming that, even
: (leshitascha) mid'rabanan, a 12-year-old boy with confirmed hair would
: be a gadol?  AFAIK this is not so, and a boy one day before his bar
: mitzvah is a katan lechol davar, even if he has confirmed and
: unmistakeable hair.

I told you where... Niddah 46a. Rava closes the shaqla vetarya with the
conclusion that the 13th year is like the next year.

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

Remarkably, there is a halacha which states that if the whole community is
tamei, and if a Para Aduma can't be found, the people are permitted
nevertheless to participate in the KP, symbolizing to the nation that our
national achdut and well being transcends individual purity.

K.T.
ri

On Thu, Jul 03, 2008 at 11:54:47AM -0400, cantorwolberg@cox.net wrote:
: Remarkably, there is a halacha which states that if the whole community
: is tamei, and if a Para Aduma can't be found, the people are permitted
: nevertheless to participate in the KP, symbolizing to the nation that
: our national achdut and well being transcends individual purity.

Tum'ah huterah betzibur isn't limited to KP.

I thought of it in terms of my Electrical Engineering education. You
can't speak of the voltage of a single wire, voltage is the difference
in potential between two wires. Or, very often, between a wire and ground.

Similarly, the height of a mountain. An object is higher than another;
height is a distance between two points in one particular (radial)
direction. That other point is often left to implicitly be sea level.
The melting of the polar icecaps is lowering the height of Everest,
since its peak is now so many feet and inches above a higher sea level.

Similarly, tum'ah may be only defined in relation to a baseline. If the
whole tzibur is tamei, it's like sea level shifted.

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             Rescue me from the desire to win every
micha@aishdas.org        argument and to always be right.
http://www.aishdas.org              - Rav Nassan of Breslav
Fax: (270) 514-1507                   Likutei Tefilos 94:964

Micha Berger wrote:
> On Thu, Jul 03, 2008 at 12:58:06AM -0400, Zev Sero wrote:
> : But why would he expect him to feel such an obligation?  RMB isn't asking
> : anything, he assumes without question that the borrower *has* such an
> : obligation, and I'm asking why?  They're not his debts, they're the
> : corporation's, and he set up the corporation for the explicit purpose
> : that its debts *wouldn't* be his...
> 
> This is really where my head was, let's tell a different story...
> 
> Moshe and his son-in-law Baruch are in the shirt business. They commission
> shirts to be made in China and sell to stores. One of their customers
> goes under, while owing him $75,000. M&B Shirts is a small shop, and
> will really be stressed by the loss. Barukh learns in shul that Avi, the
> owner of the store, had known for a while that it was likely he would have
> to close, and continued making orders from them. Wouldn't they be angry
> about not getting as much forewarning as the store could have risked?

But did Avi have the right to give such warning?  Presumably at that
point he still thought he had a chance of turning his business around.
Suppose he had given the warning; M&B would not have sold to him, and
nor would anyone else, which would turn a probable failure into a
certainty.  The business would immediately have gone under, and Avi
would be out all the money and sweat and tears he had put into it.
But not only that; suppose he decided to be a "tzadik" and commit
corporate suicide by giving the warning; now think of Dovid, who lent
the business money years ago, and depends on it being repaid.  Now the
business has gone under, because of Avi's "tzidkus", and Dovid comes
to him with a taanah: what right did you have to deliberately destroy
the business like that?  And this is not just a moral taanah but a
legal one - he is very likely to prevail in court, if not in Beis Din,
because Avi really had no right to do it.  So long as he owed money
to others he had an obligation to run the business in a responsible
fashion, and to make a good faith effort to turn a profit, so he can
repay these investors.


> And given the problem Baruch will now have making tuition (it's not
> like he could ask his father-in-law <g>), didn't Avi have a moral duty
> to inform B&M about the mounting problems?

What about Avi's and Dovid's problems with the same tuition?  The only
case you could make is that if his existing creditors were EY, then he
should have made sure M&B were taken care of ahead of them, either by
giving them a warning in strictest confidence, that he doesn't give
other (EY) suppliers, or by paying them under the table before closing
the business.  But besides not being exactly honest, these actions
would put Avi at risk of serious trouble if he is caught; is it really
fair to expect him to put himself at that sort of risk for the sake of
his fellow yidden, who, though they don't know the exact state of his
business, do know that it is a LLC, and the risk that goes with that.


> Seeing the story from Baruch's angle makes Avi's moral duty self-evident
> to me. Lifnei iver type thinking.

So see it from Avi's POV, and from Dovid's.


>> and officer. It would also allow the corporation not only to keep dough
>> throughout Passover, but, if he hires non-Jewish bakers and salespersons,
>> to sell dough throughout Passover as well as on the Sabbath and other
>> Jewish holidays. Although it is possible that secular law creates the
>> opportunity to use a corporation to circumvent Jewish law, this is an
>> unsettling conclusion.
> 
> Why is that more unsettling than thinking he could borrow money and not
> pay it back? Both are miSinai...

Because dinei momonos depend on the intentions of the people involved;
if they're doing business on the basis of secular law, or merchant law,
then that becomes the din.  If they all agree that the corporation
exists, then it does.  Hilchos Pesach, though, doesn't depend on what
anyone thinks; if the corporation is really just Boruch, pretending
otherwise doesn't change the din.


-- 
Zev Sero               Something has gone seriously awry with this Court's
zev@sero.name          interpretation of the Constitution.
                                                  - Clarence Thomas

On Thu, Jul 03, 2008 at 12:02:54AM -0400, Richard Wolpoe wrote:
: But I am persisting on  insisting that he made them optional because the
: Talmud was STILL new enough to go back to it. After the Rishonim were over,
: that was no longer the case.

Give me a rigorous definition of "new enough" that allows for ther Rambam
and not the Gra.

The Gra argued that he only changed pesaqim that were against halakhah
(as he understood it) in favor of those that are not. Not that he
overturned pesaqim trhat were pointless. This is the same rule the
Rambam gives WRT shemittah (as per earlier -- close to a year back --
in this conversation).

: IOW you could be TRUE to the Rambam in 1205 and say we can still go back to
: Talmud and then in 1564 STILL be True to the Rambmaa and lsay this is no
: longer a viable option to ignore prominent Posqim

The Gra doesn't ignore prominent poseqim. He ignores the kehillah's
precedent as to which prominent poseiq to follow. It's an anti-mimetic
thing, and probably a product of the collapse of the ghetto's culture
during his times.

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             Rescue me from the desire to win every
micha@aishdas.org        argument and to always be right.
http://www.aishdas.org              - Rav Nassan of Breslav
Fax: (270) 514-1507                   Likutei Tefilos 94:964

 


Because dinei momonos depend on the intentions of the people involved;
if they're doing business on the basis of secular law, or merchant law,
then that becomes the din.  If they all agree that the corporation
exists, then it does.  Hilchos Pesach, though, doesn't depend on what
anyone thinks; if the corporation is really just Boruch, pretending
otherwise doesn't change the din.


-- 
Zev Sero               

Question: If halacha is the "ratzon hashem" is there an "inyan" of
agreeing to use  torah law rather than secular law for such issues?
KT
Joel Rich
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 It's an anti-mimetic thing, and probably a product of the collapse of
the ghetto's culture during his times.

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Interesting assertion - has anyone written on this?
KT
Joel Rich
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Thank you.

Micha Berger wrote:
> On Thu, Jul 03, 2008 at 10:57:05AM -0400, Zev Sero wrote:
> : No, we do not!  Yachid verabim halacha kerabim, and I'm not aware of
> : anything to indicate that this is an exception.  *Nobody* disputes that
> : we say yetziat mitzrayim at night; there's no svara at all *not* to say
> : it.  The mishna gives it as an undisputed statement.  The machloket
> : between Ben Zoma and the Chachamim is only about yemot hamashiach, and
> : we follow the majority, that we *will* say it.
> 
> Are you sure that "*nobody*" disputes it?

The mishna presents it as an undisputed statement; if you think there's
some machlokes about it, it's up to you to name the person who disputes
it.


> The sugya is on Berakhos 12b.
> It opens with R' Yehudah bar Chavivi explaining why there is a derabbanan
> to say Parashas Tzitzis as the third paragraph of Shema. After some
> discussion of his statement, R' Elazar ben Azaryah raises his uncertainty
> about applying this derabbanan at night.

No.  The mishna is not a continuation of the previous gemara!  REbA
was a tanna, RYbCh was an amora.  REbA's question does not follow or
arise in any sense from RYbCh's memra.


> Shema must be said at night --
> "beshokhbekha uvkumekha", cited in the mishnah without a machloqes. But
> where do you see the third parashah being necessary at night?

For the same reasons that it's necessary by day.  None of the ones
RYbCh suggests are peculiar to the day time.


> In fact,
> given the choice of parashah, primarily about a mitzvah not obligatory
> at night, ben Zoma's conclusion is far from obvious.

REbA is the only one who expresses any doubt, and that doubt is not
about whether one must say it at night, but about why.  So he relies
on Ben Zoma's drasha, even though it's disputed by the rov.


> As for rov... Ben Zoma holds he is following a stam braisa (there was
> no mishnah yet), which would give him a rabbim as well.

What braisa?  It seems to be Ben Zoma's own drasha, that REbA liked.
But we generally follow the rov, and I'm not aware of any reason why
this should be an exception.

-- 
Zev Sero               Something has gone seriously awry with this Court's
zev@sero.name          interpretation of the Constitution.
                                                  - Clarence Thomas

RZS writes:

>> Which is easily understood as a change in nature rather than in halacha.
If the animals start chewing their cuds, and their hooves split, then
they will naturally be kosher.  And if women stop bleeding as part of
their cycles, perhaps because every egg is fertilised, then the issur
of nidah becomes hypothetical. <<

That's not Mashma from the Medrash.  And the Medrash adds an opinion that
Tashmish HaMittah will be Assur L'Asid Lavo, Ayen Sham.

(Regarding the Korban Todah - I guess Rav Kook understood that to mean the
Lachmei Todah.)
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Micha Berger wrote:

> I told you where... Niddah 46a. Rava closes the shaqla vetarya with the
> conclusion that the 13th year is like the next year.

No, he says it's like the previous year.


-- 
Zev Sero               Something has gone seriously awry with this Court's
zev@sero.name          interpretation of the Constitution.
                                                  - Clarence Thomas

On Thu, Jul 03, 2008 at 12:53:52PM -0400, Zev Sero wrote:
: >Are you sure that "*nobody*" disputes it?

: The mishna presents it as an undisputed statement; if you think there's
: some machlokes about it, it's up to you to name the person who disputes
: it.

The mishnah doesn't discuss it. Did you read my following sentences
before writing this reply to the first one?

: >The sugya is on Berakhos 12b.
: >It opens with R' Yehudah bar Chavivi explaining why there is a derabbanan
: >to say Parashas Tzitzis as the third paragraph of Shema. After some
: >discussion of his statement, R' Elazar ben Azaryah raises his uncertainty
: >about applying this derabbanan at night.

: No.  The mishna is not a continuation of the previous gemara!  REbA
: was a tanna, RYbCh was an amora.  REbA's question does not follow or
: arise in any sense from RYbCh's memra.

Okay, so I took liberties with the flow. Still, ReBA is certainly only
discussing when is zechiras y"M, not the rest of shema. The mishnah
opens that you do, there is a machloqes as to whether it's because 
"lema'an tizkor".

And as already noted by RDECohen, both sides of the machloqes
presume that it's perfectly possible that ZYM wouldn't continue after
mashiach. Otherwise, why would the Chakhamim waste a derashah to exclude
a non-possibility which is kefirah?

The gemara presents the beraisa as a continuation of the previous sugya,
yes.

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             The trick is learning to be passionate in one's
micha@aishdas.org        ideals, but compassionate to one's peers.
http://www.aishdas.org
Fax: (270) 514-1507


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