Avodah Mailing List

Volume 32: Number 106

Tue, 15 Jul 2014

• 1. Re: Sheim Elokus (Micha Berger)
• 2. Re: Kaddish (Micha Berger)
• 3. Re: Kaddish (Micha Berger)
• 4. Re: Review Essay: Torah, Chazal and Science (Micha Berger)
• 5. Re: shabbat in Alaska (Micha Berger)
• 6. Re: Kaddish phrasing (Micha Berger)
• 7. Re: Nadav, Avihu, Elazar, and Itamar (Micha Berger)
• 8. Re: shabbat in Alaska (Eli Turkel)
• 9. Re: shabbat in Alaska (Micha Berger)
• 10. Re: Kaddish phrasing (Simon Montagu)
• 11. Re: shabbat in Alaska (Zev Sero)
• 12. shabbat in Alaska (Eli Turkel)
• 13. Re: Sheim Elokus (Kenneth Miller)
• 14. Re: shabbat in Alaska (Kenneth Miller)
• 15. Re: Kaddish (Zev Sero)

On Mon, Jul 14, 2014 at 11:59:15PM -0400, T6...@aol.com wrote:
: He is the one who seems to be saying that pagans came first and monotheism  
: came later...

No, I'm saying that we have no idea who used the names "Keil" and "Elokim"
first. Of course I believe that monotheism predated dor Enosh and the
slide to full polytheism.

Which is why I said the issue is more how one understands Migdal Bavel
than how one understands Parashas Bereishis. My point is entirely about
langugae.

And the reason why I said that was because

1- As words, they have secular uses aside from Canaanite pagan uses.

2- When it comes to appearances of sheim havayah being used by the avos
(despite "ushemi H' lo nodati lahem"), there are rishonim willing to
assume the quotes are paraphrases. So, even the nachash or Adam using
the name E-lokim in the narrative doesn't prove they actually used
it historically.

The one word doesn't make or break a language. What if Adam only called
Him Melekh, or Adon, or Borei, or...? How would we know?

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             The thought of happiness that comes from outside
mi...@aishdas.org        the person, brings him sadness. But realizing
http://www.aishdas.org   the value of one's will and the freedom brought
Fax: (270) 514-1507      by uplifting its, brings great joy. - R' Kook

On Fri, Jul 11, 2014 at 02:06:04PM -0400, Zev Sero via Avodah wrote:
: Hate is the opposite of love.  How is this debatable?  Obviously "hating" and
: "not loving" are not equivalent, just as "cold" and "not hot" are not equivalent.

Although the gemara (BB 123a) that Le'ah is called "senu'ah" (Bereishis
29:31) because the word has a relative meaning. IOW, it doesn't mean
"hated", or maybe can mean that but not always. Here it means "more
toward hate on the love-hate axis".

And in relative terms, colder and less hot are equivalent.

...
: But either way, how does hating someone dishonour them?  What has how one
: feels about someone got to do with how one treats them? ...

Since we are talking about kibud, we are talking about treatment. Had
we actually been talking about kavod, the term being used in this
conversation, I'm not so sure.

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             You cannot propel yourself forward
mi...@aishdas.org        by patting yourself on the back.
http://www.aishdas.org                   -Anonymous
Fax: (270) 514-1507

On Fri, Jul 11, 2014 at 02:06:04PM -0400, Zev Sero via Avodah wrote:
: Hate is the opposite of love.  How is this debatable?  Obviously "hating" and
: "not loving" are not equivalent, just as "cold" and "not hot" are not equivalent.

Although the gemara (BB 123a) that Le'ah is called "senu'ah" (Bereishis
29:31) because the word has a relative meaning. IOW, it doesn't mean
"hated", or maybe can mean that but not always. Here it means "more
toward hate on the love-hate axis".

And in relative terms, colder and less hot are equivalent.

...
: But either way, how does hating someone dishonour them?  What has how one
: feels about someone got to do with how one treats them? ...

Since we are talking about kibud, we are talking about treatment. Had
we actually been talking about kavod, the term being used in this
conversation, I'm not so sure.

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             You cannot propel yourself forward
mi...@aishdas.org        by patting yourself on the back.
http://www.aishdas.org                   -Anonymous
Fax: (270) 514-1507

On Fri, Jul 04, 2014 at 08:35:11AM +0300, Akiva Blum via Avodah wrote:
: I have a mesorah from a great Torah leader to whom I was very close  that
: anyone who insists on taking every word of Chazal literally is actually
: treating Chazal disrespectfully and causing others to disrespect Chazal...

The Rambam says that but stronger, more like treating the Torah
disrespectfully and causing others to disrespect the Torah in his
introduction to his commentary on the mishnah Pereq Cheileq.

: also have a mesorah that one of the takeaway lessons from Chazal is "chachma
: bagoyim ta'amin."  They taught us to follow their example...

As in Rebbe's deferring to Athenian science (Pesachim 94b), letting go of
Persian astronomy for the Greek geocentric one. See the Maharsha ad loc.

Although there are those who take "venir'in divreihem midevareinu"
more literally -- as if Rebbe was saying that their opinion looks more
reasonable, despite being less accurate. I don't think that fits Chazal's
idiom; eg "nir'eh li" is about what is more reasonable to me, not what
seems more reasonable but isn't.

The phrase "chokhmah bagoyim ta'amin" is from Eikhah Rabba.

See also R' Eliyahu Carmel's footnote, said besheim REEDessler (saying
he heard it directly) in MME vol 4, pg 355, fn 4. BTW, he says that
pesaqim that appear to be based on faulty science are to be kept being
lechumerah, bein lequlah, because those explanations are made after the
fact. And similarly we should come up with our post-facto explanations
for those existing pesaqim using today's science.

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             "Fortunate indeed, is the man who takes
mi...@aishdas.org        exactly the right measure of himself,  and
http://www.aishdas.org   holds a just balance between what he can
Fax: (270) 514-1507      acquire and what he can use." - Peter Latham

On Sat, Jul 12, 2014 at 09:45:34PM +0300, Eli Turkel via Avodah wrote:
: All this assume modern astronomy. It doesnt seem that Rabbenu Tam knew that
: the earth was a sphere and that the length of the day was different in
: France than Babyonia or Israel

Well, I would think it's hard to miss that the days are longer in
Telzh than in Mitzrayim, even if you don't know why.

And yes, Rabbeinu Tam knew the earth was a sphere. All the intelligensia did,
even in France in the Dark Ages.

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             Man is capable of changing the world for the
mi...@aishdas.org        better if possible, and of changing himself for
http://www.aishdas.org   the better if necessary.
Fax: (270) 514-1507            - Victor Frankl, Man's search for Meaning

On Wed, Jul 09, 2014 at 07:40:45PM -0400, Rich, Joel via Avodah wrote:
: In the last two paragraphs of kaddish we say aleinu val kol yisrael.
: I remember learning that once it's said as a complete phrase and the
: other time with a comma after aleinu. Does anyone know the source
: (I thought it was mishneh brurah but was unable to locate)

In http://www.aishdas.org/avodah/vol04/v04n367.shtml#15 (Feb '00)
RRW mentions a conversation he had with R' Schwab on the subject.

R' Schwab said the aleinu is the iqar, and therefore "ve'al kol Yisrael"
is an appended third thought.

See SA OC 123:1 (I think the citation RRW intended). One bows to the left
for "Oseh shalom bimromav", right for "hu ya'aseh shalom aleinu" ve'akhar
kakh to the middle. Implying the comma is before "ve'al kol Yisrael".

Another Qaddish phrasing issue I came across...

The AhS OC 56:5 <http://j.mp/1jtqff3> links the minhag of ending
"Amein. Yehei shemei raba" with "yisbarakh" to the idea that the list
of praises after that line is supposed to have 7 entries keneged 7
reqi'im. By making "yisbarakh" part of the previous sentence, veyishtabach
... veyis'alal is 7 words. Otherwise, the logical thing would be to
follow the nusach (eg the Gra) to skip "veyis-halal". But the AhS notes
the minhag pashut is to say "veyi-halal"..

So, I think the AhS would have us say it as
    Amein.
    Yehei shemeih rabba mevorakh
    le'olam ule'olmei almaya yisbarakh
"Le'olam ule'olmei olmaya" going on "yisbarakh", making it fully part
of that sentence rathet than the next sentence having 8 words of praise.
In any case, in his milieu saying "yisbarakh" was the minhag.

And that only if one is in a minan that doesn't say veyis-halal should
it be said
    Amein.
    Yehei shemeih rabba
    mevorakh le'olam ule'olmei almaya

Notice this means that the machloqes over saying "veyis-halal" impacts
the phrasing of a sizable chunk of Qaddish.

BTW, does anyone know if the idiom "haminhag pashut" means "simple minhag"
or "the minhag was nispasheit"?

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             I slept and dreamt that life was joy.
mi...@aishdas.org        I awoke and found that life was duty.
http://www.aishdas.org   I worked and, behold -- duty is joy.
Fax: (270) 514-1507                        - Rabindranath Tagore

On Sun, Jul 13, 2014 at 02:26:38PM +0000, Kenneth Miller via Avodah wrote:
: In other words, Ramban says that these five (Nadav, Avihu, Elazar,
: Itamar, and Pinchas) were NOT the only descendants alive at the time
: Aharon became kohen, but all the others would remain non-kohanim forever.
: 
: Ibn Ezra (also on Shmos 28:1) says similarly: "It specifies the names of Aharon's sons. Perhaps he had other sons besdies these."

Given that we are given a list of Aharon's 4 sons a few times (eg Shemos
6:23, Bamidbar 3:2, 26:60, DhY I 6:3), I would think IE means "male
descendents" rather than first generation sons.

And in Vayiqra 10:12 Elazar and Isamar are "benei Aharon hanosarim", and
not explicitly the remaining benei Aharon hakohanim.

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger                 Life is complex.
mi...@aishdas.org                Decisions are complex.
http://www.aishdas.org               The Torah is complex.
Fax: (270) 514-1507                                - R' Binyamin Hecht

On Tue, Jul 15, 2014 at 9:29 AM, Micha Berger <mi...@aishdas.org> wrote:
> Well, I would think it's hard to miss that the days are longer in
> Telzh than in Mitzrayim, even if you don't know why.

> And yes, Rabbeinu Tam knew the earth was a sphere. All the intelligensia
> did, even in France in the Dark Ages.

In the disagreement between Rebbe and the Greeks about the path of the
Earth the genara says that Rebbe admitted the Greeks were right. Rabbenu
Tam states that in reality Rebbe was right and the admission was
technical.
According to modern Astronomy both were wrong!

Without modern communication there was no way for Rabbenu Tam to know
that the length of days in EY was different than France. In the sefer of
Beinisch he shows that northern Europe accepted Rabbenu for the definition
of Shekia while southern Europe never did but accepted the opinion of the
Geonim. The opinion of Rabbenu Tam makes sense only if you assume a long
twilight time which occurs in the North. Israel the sun drops rapidly
after shortly after the sun is below the horizon it is already dark.

Note that a spherical earth immediately raises the problem of a date
line ir one circumnavigates the earth.
Nevertheless there almost no mention of the issue among Rishonim. modern
poskim rely on a Kuzari and Baal Hamaor
(note they are from Spain and Provence).

-- 
Eli Turkel

On Tue, Jul 15, 2014 at 09:53:37AM +0300, Eli Turkel wrote:
: Without modern communication there was no way for Rabbenu Tam to know
: that the length of days in EY was different than France...

Except that Scholasticism begins with Augustine, who lived in the
4th cent CE. Charlemaign encouraged secular studies. Roscelin is 11th
cent. Abelard and Anselm are 12th. The Xians knew Aristo and Plato,
and were grappling with their philosophies. All before Rabbeinu Tam.

This idea that people in Xian Europe in the Dark Ages didn't know Greek
science is a myth. The Xian masses were intentionally kept ignorant, but
Rabbeinu Tam had as much reason to know Aristo's take on the length of
days as the Rambam did. He would just have been less likely to accept
Aristo's explanation for it.

Rashi describes Greek astronomy in quite some detail on our amud (Pesachim
94a) d"h "i nami ki tzinora dedeshe". Geocentricity means that we live on
a ball. (Although I guess it is possible to believe the sun and planets
revolve around a flat earth, it's not very intuitive nor suggested by
anyone.) And knowing Aristo or Ptolmey means knowing that day length
depends on lattitude.

: In the disagreement between Rebbe and the Greeks about the path of the
: Earth the genara says that Rebbe admitted the Greeks were right. Rabbenu
: Tam states that in reality Rebbe was right and the admission was
: technical.

And one also has to deal with the Ran (Shabbos 34b), who had a secular
education and makes a similar assertion. The Ramban too (Toras haAdam),
but his opinion of Greek science is less clear than the Ran's.

It could well be that they are asserting the accuracy of the idiom
of chalonei raqia' for religious purposes, rather than saying it's
scientifically accurate. Much the way astronomers today still speak of
sunrise.

Or, if you insist that Rabbeinu Tam (but even the Ran?) accepted Persian
Astronomy as theory, he could still accepted the actual Greek observations
as data. Perhaps at different lattitudes, the raqia blocks your view of
the sun at different points in time.

As I noted some years back, unless you know about the atmosphere ending
and that causing refraction, Persian astronomy explains the appearance
of the sun at sunrise and suset better than the Greeks did. Because of
refraction, the sun looks slower at the beginning and end of the day,
noticably so at sunrise and sunset. (Which is why the back end of the
sun gets ahead of that parts before it, squishing its appearance into an
oval.) One can see what looks like the sun going around the bottom of the
raqi'ah to get to the outside. So as a description of observation, it has
its advantages. Again, like caling it "sunset" rather than horizon-rise.

A problem is that this Rabbeinu Tam is recorded by the Shitah Mequbetzes
(Kesuvos 13b), not in our Tosafos nor do we have any record closer to
RT's original statement in time. We can't deduce much from wording.

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             In the days of our sages, man didn't sin unless
mi...@aishdas.org        he was overcome with a spirit of foolishness.
http://www.aishdas.org   Today, we don't do a mitzvah unless we receive
Fax: (270) 514-1507      a spirit of purity.      - Rav Yisrael Salanter

On Tue, Jul 15, 2014 at 10:00 AM, Micha Berger via Avodah <
avo...@lists.aishdas.org> wrote:

BTW, does anyone know if the idiom "haminhag pashut" means "simple minhag"
> or "the minhag was nispasheit"?
>

Isn't it the same idiom as the "open gemara" that I asked about a few weeks
ago, i.e. pashut as in "get pashut"?
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On 15/07/2014 2:53 AM, Eli Turkel via Avodah wrote:
> Note that a spherical earth immediately raises the problem of a date
> line ir one circumnavigates the earth.
> Nevertheless there almost no mention of the issue among Rishonim.

It wasn't an issue, because it was obviously impossible to circumnavigate
the earth.  Any ship would be lost in the vast ocean, and/or run out of
provisions.  Even if it could be done, it would be pointless; any such
journey would be much harder and expensive than travelling the Silk Road.
So it was enough to know that at some point during such a hypothetical
journey one would have to go forward or back a day; there was no need to
speculate about the exact point in the journey when this would happen.

The accepted theory at the time was that the top hemisphere ("chatzi kadur
ha'elyon") was "the yishuv", and the bottom hemisphere was "the ocean".
The Rambam calls the meridian 24 degrees east of EY "emtza hayishuv".

Columbus was the luckiest crackpot in history.  He had a crank theory
that the world was only about half as big as everyone thought it was,
the so-called "vast ocean" didn't exist, and India was just over the
western horizon from Europe.  A few days' sailing would get one there,
and those fools who went on the long overland trip were unknowingly
almost circumnavigating the globe.  He was wrong and everyone else was
right; the earth is just about exactly as big as everyone thought it was.
But what nobody knew was that there was a continent on the way, breaking
up the vast ocean into two, and providing a base from which one could
travel on to the eastern edge of Asia.


> modern poskim rely on a Kuzari and Baal Hamaor
> (note they are from Spain and Provence).

IIRC they don't directly discuss a dateline either.  They *imply* it derech
agav, in the course of discussing other subjects.  I think they'd both be
startled to learn that later generations would hang a practical psak din on
these throwaway lines.  And yet we have nothing else.

-- 
Zev Sero             Sufficiently advanced incompetence is indistinguishable
z...@sero.name        from malice.
                                                          - Eric Raymond

For some discission of the opinion of Rabbenu Tam  see

http://www.rationalistjudaism.com/2011/03/reckoning-with-rabbeinu-ta
m.html

http://www.math.harvard.edu/~shlomo/docs/beinhashemashot.pdf
especially page 19

It is understandable that  *Rabbenu Tam *advocated a flat  earth theory. This
 was because the general state  of ignorance in his time  and  place
allowed him
 to give more  weight to scripture and  prayer than  to scientific theories.
It is more  difficult to understand how  Rabbi Akiva Eiger, writing in the
19th century, could endorse this position- see his citation of the *Shittah
Mekubetzet quoted *above  in his *Gilyon haShas *to the above  quoted
passage in Pesahim. After  all he  was  writing more than  three hundred years
 after  the discovery of America! The reason must  be  (in part)  that he
followed Rabbenu Tam's position in practice.  Indeed, we know this to be the
case from  testimony by his son-in-law quoted by Benish (page 556).

http://www.aishdas.org/toratemet/en_pamphlet4.html
Note that although Gil brings a number of early works that discuss
astronomy these are all Sefardim


-- 
Eli Turkel
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R"n Toby Katz wrote:

> My understanding is that there were no people around before
> Bereshis, unless they were in the other worlds that Hashem
> created and destroyed before this one.  But in this world, the
> first people were Adam and Chava, and they knew Hashem, and they
> spoke Hebrew.

Yes, but *their* Hebrew is not *our* Hebrew.

It is very easily demonstrated that the language developed even within the
times of Tanach. (Others can demonstrate it better than I can, but among my
favorite examples are spelling "David" with a yod in Divrei Hayamim, or the
brand-new verb "mis'yahadim" in Esther.)

And if so, then it is entirely reasonable to believe that the Lashon
Hakodesh used by Adam and Chava was not exactly the same as the Lashon
Hakodesh used by Moshe Rabenu. In fact, I would think it UNreasonable to
say that the language remained static. After all, from Bereishis to Har
Sinai was 2448 years, and from then to the close of Tanach was less than a
thousand.

I will now add another point that I've mentioned here in the past:
Conversations which appear in pesukim are NOT direct quotes, even though
they appear to be so. They are HaShem's edited version of the conversation.
In my opinion, this is proven by the conversations between the Viceroy
(a/k/a Yosef) and his brothers. The Torah testifies that they spoke
different languages, "for the interpreter was between them". But the
conversation as recorded in Chumash is in only one language. Thus, one side
of the conversation or the other (or both) got translated from the original
into the Chumash's language. And we know (I think the Rambam says it) that
no translation is perfect, so it must be that the words in Chumash are
HaShem's perfect *interpretation* of the conversation.

And if Yosef's side of the conversation got interpreted into the Lashon
Hakodesh that was current in Har Sinai days, it is quite possible that the
words actually spoken by the brothers were also redacted into another
version, namely the words we have in the Chumash. Everything I've said is
totally consistent with the idea that Hashem is perfect and the Torah is
perfect: The perfect Editor made a perfect rendering of the words which
were actually spoken, into the words that He wanted us to read.

(This does not contradict what I said that "no translation is perfect". The
imperfection of a translation is not a fault of the Translator, chalilah.
It is due to the nature of "language". HaShem cannot make a perfect
translation any more than He can create a rock to big for Him to lift, or
create a five-sided octagon. What He *can* do is to find words in the
second language which perfectly capture the message that He wants us to
get.)

What I'm trying to say is that is that when the Torah quotes Adam and Chava
and the nachash as using certain words, they did not necessarily use those
exact words. Lashon Hakodesh may have developed in the intervening years,
and if Hashem would have recorded the actual words, then the people at
Sinai might have misunderstood them. But we know that "Torah speaks in
people's language", and in this case it means that Hashem recorded Adam's
speech, but translated it into the version of Lashon Hakodesh used by the
later generation.

I believe that the above explains what R' Micha Berger mean when he said
that we don't know who used the words "E-l" and "E-lohim" first. A quick
glance in Bereshis shows that Chava used the Name "E-lohim" in 3:3, but it
is POSSIBLE that she actually used a different word, one which has the same
connotations (midas hadin, etc) that we associate with "E-lohim", and so
that's how Hashem recorded it.

Akiva Miller
____________________________________________________________
The #1 Worst Carb Ever?
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R' Micha Berger wrote:
> Well, I would think it's hard to miss that the days are longer in
> Telzh than in Mitzrayim, even if you don't know why

Really? I've long wondered about that. Even the few people who did travel
great distances would have gone in a random direction, not necessarily
north. And even those who did, spent a long time on the trip. Can we really
presume that they noticed that twilight was lasting longer? They might have
simply figured it was the seasonal change. Even if they did suspect the
slower twilight, how could they be sure without an accurate clock? And even
with a good clock, wouldn't someone have to go back souuth to verify it?

Mind you, I'm not talking about quantifying the effect for any particular variation of latitude. I'm just asking about knowing that the effect exists.

Akiva Miller
____________________________________________________________
Odd Carb-Hormone Trick
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http://thirdpartyoffers.juno.com/TGL3131/53c5123c7cd58123c5c0dst03vuc

On 15/07/2014 10:03 AM, hankman wrote:
> RZS wrote:
> ?He can be secretly overjoyed when they die, but must pretend otherwise.?

> CM notes:
> This seems to imply that even you agree that to hate openly would be
> to dishonour your parents. Only secretly would hating not be the
> equivalent of dishonouring.

Hatred, by definition, is an emotion felt internally, not something visible
from the outside.  There's no such thing as "open hatred" per se; it consists
of two discrete components: the hatred itself, and the deliberate act of
revealing the hatred to others.  And pretty much the only reason one would
reveal a hatred to others is to make them think less of its object, which is
the definition of dishonour.  Letting people know you hate someone means
letting them know that you have a reason to hate them, which will automatically
lead them to think less of him.

-- 
Zev Sero             Sufficiently advanced incompetence is indistinguishable
z...@sero.name        from malice.
                                                          - Eric Raymond


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