Avodah Mailing List

Volume 35: Number 73

Sun, 04 Jun 2017

• 1. Re: Elimelech's land (Ilana Elzufon)
• 2. Re: Elimelech's land (Lisa Liel)
• 3. Re: Maharat (Lisa Liel)
• 4. Re: Maharat (Ben Waxman)
• 5. Re: Maharat (Ilana Elzufon)
• 6. Maharat etc. (Martin Brody)
• 7. Re: Maharat (Zev Sero)
• 8. Re: Another approach to Ruth's geirus (Zev Sero)
• 9. Re: Maharat (Micha Berger)
• 10. Re: Maharat (Akiva Miller)
• 11. Re: [Areivim] L'sheim shmayim (Ben Waxman)

>
> Why was is so important for Naomi to find a goel/redeemer for
> Elimelech's land? Why didn't she just move back there and start
> farming?


They came back on Pesach, at the beginning of the barley harvest. Nothing
was growing on their land, presumably. Planting is after Sukkot, at the
beginning of the rainy season. If they planted, it would be a full year
until they could harvest the first barley. As we see from Megillat Rut, the
barley then had to dry and wasn't threshed or winnowed until after the
wheat harvest (early summer?).

When they come back, they have nothing. They need to eat. And two women
alone will not be able to do all the work of planting and cultivating in
the fall. They would need money to hire workers and probably buy or rent an
animal to help with plowing. And to buy seed. They didn't have the capital
to go back into farming, or the means to support themselves until the first
crop.

Kol tuv,
Ilana
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On 6/2/2017 6:01 AM, Akiva Miller via Avodah wrote:
> .
> I expect that this thread will have little or nothing to do with the
> halachic questions we discussed recently. I am asking questions that I
> think are based on purely financial and economic considerations:
>
> Why was is so important for Naomi to find a goel/redeemer for
> Elimelech's land? Why didn't she just move back there and start
> farming?
In the set of priorities that we had back then, the principle of yerusha 
was more important than simple economics.  As I understand it.

Lisa


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On 6/1/2017 10:39 AM, Ilana Elzufon via Avodah wrote:
> Me: ...most of us also live in an "outside world" that is highly 
> egalitarian...And I don't think it is wrong for those changes in the 
> experiences of women and couples and families and communities to 
> affect religious practice, to move us in a somewhat more egalitarian 
> direction WITHIN what is halachically permitted.
>
> RJR: Would it be correct to say that the general case of this argument 
> is that as long as it can be argued that something is halachically 
> permitted (which many seem to define  as not totally halachically 
> forbidden by r?mb?s black letter law), then we can accept it without 
> asking whether HKB?H prefers it?
>
> Me: No!!! But does HKB"H really prefer that psak and practice should 
> be identical for each community and each generation?
>
I'm not sure that's the question.  The problem is, as I see it, that 
when one adopts an external -ism as an ideal, and try and "move in a 
somewhat more -ism-friendly direction WITHIN what is halachically 
permitted", they're essentially saying that their motivating principle 
is that -ism.  That halakha isn't the motivating principle, but merely 
bookends.  Limits to how far they can push the -ism that's important.

It's the difference between a static principle and a dynamic one. What 
you're describing has egalitarianism as the dynamic force, and halakha 
as a static one.  A fossil.  And there's no way to maintain that 
worldview for long without starting to chafe against the static limits.  
At which point, people put their shoulders into it and *push* those 
limits a little bit further.  And then a little further than that.  And 
they feel frustrated by those limits.  That's probably the biggest 
problem.  It turns halakha into shackles and frustration.  And you only 
have to read articles written by certain YCT teachers and grads to see 
the hostility that comes out of that.

Yes, there are people who can manage to walk the tightrope and not fall 
into that kind of frustration, but they are few in number, and not 
representative of the "movement", as such.  And many of them, in my 
observed experience, eventually fall off.

Permit me to illustrate this mindset with something that just happened 
*as* I was writing this.  My 17 year old daughter was reading a comic 
book from the early 1990s.  In the comic, the hero (Superboy) is 16, but 
all of the women he dates are in their 20s. Today, we call that 
statuatory rape, and have little to no tolerance for it.  But if you 
recall the early 90s, that idea was rather new, and while the writers of 
the comic gave lip service to the idea, even having characters 
laughingly calling Superboy "jailbait", it wasn't nearly as taboo as it 
is today, at least when the younger person was male.  But my daughter is 
livid about it.  Appalled.  And she isn't able to imagine a world in 
which that was the way people thought.

Similarly, people immersed in the egalitarian ethos so prevelent in the 
Western world today cannot *imagine* a world where that isn't the 
universally accepted ideal, except for barbaric and backwards 
societies.  It's a given that egalitarianism is the more advanced 
worldview.  The more civilized worldview.  That to the extent that a 
worldview is less egalitarian, it is less civilized.  More backwards.

So now consider what it means to say, "I want to be as egalitarian as 
possible, within the bounds of halakha".  It means "I want to be as 
civilized as possible, within the bounds of the less civilized and more 
backwards system of halakha."  How can that help but breed disrespect, 
discomfort, and eventually contempt for halakha?

Lisa

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And of course the irony is even greater in that many yeshiva rabbis will 
tell their guys to go to a community rav because they, the yeshiva 
rabbis, don't deal with shailas.

Ben

On 5/29/2017 4:11 AM, Akiva Miller via Avodah wrote:
> It is my opinion that the typical yoetzet and maharat are at least
> equally qualified (and likely more so) than the typical gemara rebbe,
> because they have been trained in answering such questions, but he has
> not. And yet, it is an everyday occurrence for students (myself
> included, until I learned better) to ask all sorts of shailos to these
> teachers, because, after all,*Rabbi*  Ploni is obviously a rabbi!

>
> LL: The problem is, as I see it, that when one adopts an external -ism as
> an ideal, and try and "move in a somewhat more -ism-friendly direction
> WITHIN what is halachically permitted", they're essentially saying that
> their motivating principle is that -ism.  That halakha isn't the motivating
> principle, but merely bookends.  Limits to how far they can push the -ism
> that's important......
>
> Similarly, people immersed in the egalitarian ethos so prevelent in the
> Western world today cannot *imagine* a world where that isn't the
> universally accepted ideal, except for barbaric and backwards societies.
> It's a given that egalitarianism is the more advanced worldview.  The more
> civilized worldview.  That to the extent that a worldview is less
> egalitarian, it is less civilized.  More backwards.
>
> So now consider what it means to say, "I want to be as egalitarian as
> possible, within the bounds of halakha".  It means "I want to be as
> civilized as possible, within the bounds of the less civilized and more
> backwards system of halakha."  How can that help but breed disrespect,
> discomfort, and eventually contempt for halakha?


Yes, if one defines one's ideology and worldview primarily as feminist, one
is going to struggle with halacha. Some people struggle and still maintain
Orthodox practice. Some become "halachic egalitarian."

But even those who try to define our worldview primarly based on the Torah
live in an increasingly egalitarian society. Even women who would never
dream of making a women's zimmun (range of psak on this goes from
obligatory to optional to assur) have their own credit cards and vote in
elections and choose whom they want to marry. Halachic psak does not exist
in a vacuum; it applies to a particular metziut in a particular time and
place.

I can certainly see room to argue that the institution of maharat is an
example of an attempt to "push" halacha to evolve artificially to conform
to feminism. But to some extent, increased involvement of women teaching
and learning all areas of Torah, at all levels, is a natural halachic
development in response to changing reality. Each posek will draw his own
line as to what is a positive development (maharats? yoatzot? Rebbetzin
Heller?), and what needs to be reined in.

Halacha is dynamic. (This is true even if the Conservative movement also
says it!) Obviously, there are boundaries, but there is also plenty of room
for different opinions, and for development over generations. I am not
advocating always choosing the most feminist interpretation possible within
the bounds of what is mutar. I am pointing out that increasingly
egalitarian psak within halacha reflects the reality in which we live.

Shabbat Shalom,
Ilana
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"R' Noam Stadlan asked:

: The other point which really hasn't been adequately unravelled is whether
: semicha is synonymous with heter hora'ah? something different? can someone
: have heter hora'ah and not semicha?
I agree that an answer to this is crucial to the conversation"

Did the Chazon Ish have semicha?.I think not


-- 
Martin Brody
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On 30/05/17 16:59, Akiva Miller via Avodah wrote:
> Many times, people have told me that the author of the Mishne Berura
> did not get semicha until very late in life when he needed the
> ordination for some government paperwork. And yet, he was quite
> involved with hora'ah, and we rely on his paskening even today.

Hora'ah means paskening shaylos; that was the town rav's business, and 
I'm sure if anyone would ask the CC a shayla he would send them to the 
rav.

-- 
Zev Sero                May 2017, with its *nine* days of Chanukah,
z...@sero.name           be a brilliant year for us all

On 29/05/17 17:32, Akiva Miller via Avodah wrote:
> R' Zev Sero wrote:

>> It seems obvious to me that the issue was discharging
>> Machlon's and Kilyon's obligations, and Ruth was such an
>> obligation. Whether or not she was ever his lawful wife, he
>> owed her, and unless she was taken care of his obligations
>> would not be settled.
>> Thus, even if you wish to say that M&K thought their marriages
>> were legitimate, it's not necessary to believe that Boaz
>> agreed with them.

> I honestly don't know enough about this whole "redeemer" business to
> respond intelligently. I wish I did. This geulah is probably too
> complicated to explain in a few paragraphs, so instead, here's a
> related question which is probably simpler:
> 
> What obligations are you referring to? If Ruth had not converted, then
> there was no kiddushin.

I don't see how this matters.  Machlon was shacked up with this woman 
for ten years, and left her high and dry.  She was now in Beit Lechem 
living in poverty, and everyone who saw her would say "there's Machlon's 
widow, poor thing".  Thus seeing her settled was an unsettled obligation 
that Machlon had left behind, so taking care of it was part of the 
goel's duty, just like paying off his credit cards and returning his 
library books, so that nobody should be left with a claim against his 
memory.


> I'm certainly not aware of any obligations that the husband's 
> relatives would have. I can see obligations that the Goel would have
> towards the husband himself [...] My question is: *What*
> responsibility? What responsibility does the Goel (whoever he might
> be) have towards Ruth, if Ruth's conversion was absent or invalid?
Yes, the goel's duty is to his relative, not to the relative's 
creditors.  But that duty *is* to discharge the relative's obligations, 
which he is himself unable to discharge, whether because of poverty (as 
in the Torah's example) or death (as here).  Neither Tov nor Boaz owed 
anything to Ruth, but Machlon did.


> (I anticipate an answer similar to: "Regardless of the status of the
> family, Elimelech's field was owned by both Naami and Ruth, so if we
> want the field to return to Elimelech's family, then the money must be
> paid to the owners, namely both Naami and Ruth." But if that is so,
> then Ploni or Boaz could have redeemed it right away when Elimelech
> left. Why did they wait ten years?)

Redeem it from whom?  At that point it still belonged to Elimelech.

-- 
Zev Sero                May 2017, with its *nine* days of Chanukah,
z...@sero.name           be a brilliant year for us all

On Mon, May 29, 2017 at 09:09:10AM -0400, Akiva Miller via Avodah wrote:
: But inevitably, someone will ask, "But what is the halacha in this
: other, similar-but-not-identical situation?" May he answer that
: question? Wouldn't that count as shikul hadaas? Wouldn't that require
: require semicha?

Well, sometimes it does, and often the similar situation is also not an
open question that requires decision-making rather than just reporting
the dominant shitah in the sho'el's community.


On Mon, May 29, 2017 at 11:51:26PM +0200, Ilana Elzufon via Avodah wrote:
: > the most able woman would never be covered by lo sasur, and therefore
: > can't be a "rav" in the sense of pesaq.

: All I can say on this is that I, personally, am not sufficiently learned to
: offer an opinion on whether you are correct here - and kal v'chomer, not
: sufficiently learned to pasken. But there are women who are the former, and
: possibly the latter.

I am missing something. My assertion was that "the most able woman would
never be covered by lo sasur" for the same reason that she could never
give hora'ah as a dayan either. I wasn't denying the reality that there
are women who know enough for their knowledge not to be a barrier to
their pasqening.


...
: I wouldn't want men to change the feel of (ruin?) those spaces. On the
: other hand, the shul might need a men's club feel but it should have
: comfortable space for women as well...

I think there should be comfortable space for women too, and that it
makes sense for it to be in the same building.

Our topic was women rabbis. My first point was my belief that the Mahariq
holds like Tosafos, the Rama like the Mahariq, and therefore we cannot
ordain a poseqes. In this, my 2nd point, I was arguing that since shul
and minyan as Anshei Kenses haGadolah invented them are men's spaces,
we shouldn't want women speaking from the pulpit or otherwise making it
a co-ed experience, a second element of the rabbi's job.

: > RMB: It runs counter to much of halakhah to say that we should try for
: > egalitarianism in religious roles. First, such an attempt would be
: > frustrated, as we can't reach full egalitarianism within halakhah....
: > Second,
: > the fact that we can't reach full egalitarianism implies something about
: > the
: > nature of gener roles, and whether egalitarianism as a value is entirely
: > consistent with our religion....
: 
: Yes! But on the other hand, most of us also live in an "outside world" that
: is highly egalitarian...

And this was my third point. That the notion doesn't fit the gestalt
built of numerous halakhos. I don't think our living in a world where
opportunity is increasingly egalitarian changes that. The disjoin poses
a challenge, not a license.


:                  And I don't think it is wrong for those changes in the
: experiences of women and couples and families and communities to affect
: religious practice, to move us in a somewhat more egalitarian direction
: WITHIN what is halachically permitted.

I tried to explain why that can't happen. You're not moving into a setting
of greater equality; you are aiming women toward hitting a glass cieling.
The implied message of "as much egalitarianism as allowed" is that it's
the role traditionally given to men that is meaningful, and women can't
fully take on that role. To my mind the long-term outcome, once there
is little room for further innovation left, will be worse that trying
to find different but equally valuable roles.

Aside from the "minor" problem that that message about male roles is
simply sheqer.


On Tue, May 30, 2017 at 01:06:28PM +0000, Rich, Joel via Avodah wrote:
: Would it be correct to say that the general case of this argument is that
: as long as it can be argued that something is halachically permitted
: (which many seem to define as not totally halachically forbidden by
: r'mb's black letter law), then we can accept it without asking whether
: HKB"H prefers it? If the answer is no but he does prefer it (for all
: or subgroup is another question), then why do we spend so much of the
: debate on black letter law?

I don't think that's fair. We all learn in the early grades that derekh
eretz qodmah laTorah, but we'll talk about frum theives, but not frum
shellfish eaters.

Our culture's focus on those mitzvos and dinim that can be reduced to
black-letter is a problem we need to work on, and not a given to be
leveraged further.



On Fri, Jun 02, 2017 at 10:50:32AM +0200, Ilana Elzufon via Avodah wrote:
: But even those who try to define our worldview primarly based on the Torah
: live in an increasingly egalitarian society...

Egalitarianism as metzi'us, the fact that gender roles are progressively
becoming more similar, is different than eqalitarinism as a value -- the
notion that they should.

At the very least, halakhah is telling us there are a number of greater
values that override egalitarianism. I argued that some of them actually
impact who enters the rabbinate.

But really the burden of proof lies in the other direction: It is change
that needs justification. One has to prove that whatever those conflicting
values are -- and I guess this would require identifying them -- they
are not issues that impact the desirability of ordaining women.

So, to get less abstract, here's an example.

On Mon, May 29, 2017 at 04:03:26PM -0500, Noam Stadlan via Avodah wrote:
: R. Micha disagrees with my reading of YD 242:14 and also insists on quoting
: R. Shaul Lieberman as opposing.
: Regarding R. Lieberman, I would point you to the statement by his talmid
: muvhak(who happens to be my father in law) who does not agree with R.
: Micha's interpretation:
: http://blogs.timesofisrael.com/no-rabbi-stud
: ent-professor-liebermans-responsum-does-not-apply/

But lemaaseh he wrote a letter against ordaning women that held up JTS
changing policy until after R/PSL's passing.
<http://www.torahmusings.com/2010/02/prof-saul-lieberman-on-womens> has a
complete translation by Rabbi Wayne Allen. The issue isn't how RGS
read the letter, but the letter itself.

And I understood your father-in-law differently than your (and your
wife's, judging from her choice of subject line) take. He writes:
    Professor Lieberman might have been opposed to any clerical role
    for women. Nevertheless, he only cited the classical sources that
    indicate that only men may be dayyanim or even serve on a bet din
    as laymen (hedyotim). Since Yeshivat Maharat is careful to remain
    within the bounds of Halakhah by not ordaining women to roles that
    are proscribed by Halakhah, Professor Liebermans responsum does not
    apply to the yeshivah or to any of its graduates.

So he agrees with RGS that R/PSL was opposed to orgaining women as
rabbi. After all, most of the letter is about what we mean today by
"Yoreh Yoreh", and how it's NOT dayanus. It was about admitting women
to JTS's semichah program, to "being called by the title 'rav'", not
"dayan". It would seem that minus the political pressures within JTS,
R/PSL's letter would at most permit "Rabbah uManhigah".

Your FIL writes that R/PSL only cites sources about dayanus, not that
his point was only about dayanus. And as we saw, there is a connection
made between who can become a dayan and who can give hora'ah.

His only mention of the political dynamics at JTS at the time is to
explain his own position -- why he was against ordaining women when he
was among those starting UTJ, but is in favor of Yeshivat Maharat. His
letter to your wife does not speak of this issue in terms of his rebbe's
position.

For that matter, his description of R/PSL's lack of proving his point
WRT non-dayan rabbanim reads as explaining why his own position was
justified despite R/PSL's letter, rather than justified by that
letter. He doesn't say RGS is wrong, he says it's "beside the point".


: Regarding the reading of YD 242, I would point you towards R. Broyde and
: Brody in their article in Hakirah who admit that there are two ways to
: understand the Rama, but one of them is:

But the burden or proof is on the innovator. You can't simply say your
read is possible -- and given the aforementioned citation of the Mahariq,
I don't see how this se'if can be, you would have a self-contradictory
siman. But in any case, you have to prove your read is the Rama's intent;
saying "it's possible" is not enough to justify a mimetic rupture.

...
: the point being that those who want to outlaw ordination for women have
: sources to rely upon, and those who find nothing wrong with it also have
: sources to rely upon.  I suggest that, rather than nitpicking, R. Brody and
: Broyde agree with me that the plain meaning of YD 242 finds nothing wrong
: with semicha for women.

"Rather than nitpicking"? How do we learn a sugyah without nitpicking?

In any case, you jumped from "could be read as someone to rely upon" to
"someone to rely upon".

: The other point which really hasn't been adequately unravelled is whether
: semicha is synonymous with heter hora'ah? something different? can someone
: have heter hora'ah and not semicha?  it seems that the concentration on the
: specific issue of semicha has skirted the perhaps more important issue.

Sorry I made you wait long enough that you felt a need to re-ask this
question.

Semichah today may well be a heter hora'ah, but that doesn't mean that
it's the only barrier to hora'ah. And if one's rebbe passed away, there
is no need for heter hora'ah -- and yet still other barriers could exist.

Tosafos, and the Mahariq cited by the Rama link the authority for
hora'ah with being eligable to gain the qualifications and become a
dayan. That's a barrier to hora'ah even if someone's rebbe wrote them a
"qlaf" or passed away.

We would have to find another shitah about hora'ah, show it's not dekhuyah
-- and given we're talking about an opionion that disputes 3 pillars
of Ashkenazi pesaq (if I include the Rama's se'if 4), for someone of
Ashekazi background, that's a tough row to hoe.

And then there are my other two problems.... Both of which would also
reflect on Rabbah uManhigah.

:-)BBii!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             A cheerful disposition is an inestimable treasure.
mi...@aishdas.org        It preserves health, promotes convalescence,
http://www.aishdas.org   and helps us cope with adversity.
Fax: (270) 514-1507         - R' SR Hirsch, "From the Wisdom of Mishlei"

.
Is semicha required for hora'ah? To illustrate the possibility that it
is *not* required, I wrote:

> Many times, people have told me that the author of the Mishne Berura
> did not get semicha until very late in life when he needed the
> ordination for some government paperwork. And yet, he was quite
> involved with hora'ah, and we rely on his paskening even today.

R' Zev Sero responded:

> Hora'ah means paskening shaylos; that was the town rav's business,
> and I'm sure if anyone would ask the CC a shayla he would send
> them to the rav.

And yet, he DID write a six-volume work, in which it is difficult to
find even a single page where he merely reports what other acharonim
wrote. Rather, he frequently brings various opinions and tells us
which one is the ikar, or tells us how to follow both, or some other
expression of his personal opinion.

Is this not "shikul hadaas"? Is this not "horaah"? Is this not "paskening"?

I had written that a non-semicha person could give a shiur in Kitzur
Shulchan Aruch, provided that he is careful to merely read and explain
the text, but ... ...

> But inevitably, someone will ask, "But what is the halacha in this
> other, similar-but-not-identical situation?" May he answer that
> question? Wouldn't that count as shikul hadaas? Wouldn't that require
> require semicha?

R' Micha Berger responded:

> Well, sometimes it does, and often the similar situation is also
> not an open question that requires decision-making rather than
> just reporting the dominant shitah in the sho'el's community.

"Black-letter halacha" is often not as black as we might think. Who
gets to decide which shita is the dominant one? If the community has a
recognized rav who issued a ruling on this exact question, then I can
quote that. But in the great majority of cases, there are two or more
shitos, and I have no idea which is "dominant".

Akiva Miller

My intent, or my desire, is to reduce the number of issues on which we 
decide to break Torah community into even more pieces.  If these issues 
are meta halachic, or have a bad feeling, then let's take the argument 
between the RWMO and LWMO down a notch or two. Let's lower the tones.

For decades, the DL community has said to the Chareidi community that 
the latter can't cut out the former because of issues like Zionism or 
secular learning, issues which many in the Chareidi community consider 
to be kefira. If so, than kal v'chomer many of the issues dividing some 
of American Orthodox communities. There are some real issues, no doubt 
about it. But I don't see the point in getting hung up on multiple 
non-issues.

Ben

On 5/29/2017 4:20 AM, Micha Berger wrote:
> I am totally at lost as to your intent. Megillah reading or dancing with
> a sefer Torah are reducible to black-letter law. In contrast to, for
> example, deciding how to triage my tzedaqah donations.
>
> Wehther that reduction can be done within vanilla halachic process or
> by appeal to metahalakhah, or by appeal to the general "feel" of halakhah
> -- like the Rambam's "li nir'eh" -- is a different question.




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