Avodah Mailing List

Volume 43: Number 69

Thu, 13 Nov 2025

• 1. sim shalom to shalom rav (Marty Bluke)
• 2. Re: Where was Dan? (Micha Berger)
• 3. Re: simchat torah (Micha Berger)
• 4. Re: sim shalom to shalom rav (Micha Berger)
• 5. Re: mugmar bkeilim (Micha Berger)
• 6. Re: sim shalom to shalom rav (Marty Bluke)
• 7. lev bet din matneh (Joel Rich)

Interestingly enough Rav Soloveitchik never said shalom Rav at all he only
said sim shalom because shalom Rav doesn?t appear in the Rambams siddur and
was a later geonic invention
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On Wed, Oct 29, 2025 at 08:22:54PM -0400, Akiva Miller via Avodah wrote:
> > Why do you consider his contemporary generation a more important
> > audience than later ones? If you aren't bothered by the Chumash
> > referring to places we can't identify, why are you bothered by
> > the Dor Dei'ah having to settle for "the place where Dan will
> > live, wherever that is"?

> To me, it seems very obvious that things get forgotten over the course of
> time, and people accept that as natural. No one today is sure exactly which
> mountain is "Har Sinai", but that phrase is not totally meaningless. We
> understand what it refers to, and we understand why we're unsure which
> mountain it is...

The same is true for their understanding of a place named "Dan", in the
sense that they knew it means "the place where Dan will end up". And
they know why they're unsure -- Dan didn't end up there yet.

My objection, though, becomes more acute when dealing with theories
like R Dr Joshua Berman's comparing the architecture of the Mishkan
to that of Raamses II's War Camp. Yes, they parallel each other, but
how important can a comparison be when a century or so after Yehoshua,
none of us would remember what the war camp looked like?

There is a similar idea about tefillin being a response to Egyptian
headgear.

Both would be a case of something only the Dor Dei'ah knew until Modern
Archaology. Which opens the door to a likelihood that there are things
that were meaningful to them in ways we could not guess.

But the basic meaning isn't any more lost than the DD only knows of
"Dan" meaning "some place quite a trip from where Avraham started out".

...
> But I have always expected that the Dor Dei'ah did know these things. Maybe
> not every single individual, but surely there were experts who one might
> consult. It MUST have been so, because consider the reverse: Imagine Moshe
> Rabenu teaching Parshas Shmini, and six hundred thousand people all asking,
> "What's an atalef?" ...

> So too, if they are learning that Avram went to Dan, and someone asked,
> "Was Dan near or far? Where was it?", there must have been someone who
> could have answered. But if Dan was a place which did not yet have that
> name, then the pasuk would have been meaningless to all of Klal Yisrael.

Which Moshe could answer "wait and see, meanwhile, just know Hashem
is talking Avraham making a long trip.

Just as he must have said when teaching about bamos and someone asked
where the Maqom haMiqdash will be. (Although that's TSBP.)

> So, to suggest that there was a word which did not have a clear and precise
> meaning in the year 2448, is simply unacceptable.

I still don't see why we don't need clear and precise meanings, and
being vague is good enough, but their getting words that didn't yet have
precise meanings is a problem.

It isn't like the territory of Dan never would get a more precice meaning.

Dan in particular is interesting, because they didn't settle all of the
nachalah they were given. (The Dan region today, around Tel Aviv.) Likely
because -- like Shim'on's nachalah to the south -- the Pelishtim were
always a problem.

And the Dan we are talking here about isn't that original place where only
part (if any) of the sheivet remained, but the land north of the Kineret.

So, it would be revealing the outcome of future events if they knew
where Dan in particular would end up.

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger                 What you get by achieving your goals
http://www.aishdas.org/asp   is not as important as
Author: Widen Your Tent      what you become by achieving your goals.
- https://amzn.to/2JRxnDF            - Henry David Thoreau

On Wed, Oct 29, 2025 at 05:49:20AM +0200, Joel Rich via Avodah wrote:
> The rama in o"c 149:1 says it's a mitzvah to accompany the sefer torah back
> to the aron. What mitzvah is it? at the end of the sif it records a minhag
> to bring children in to kiss the torah. How old should they be and did they
> just bring them in for this (and not for davening?)

There are numberous dinim motivated by Kevod haTorah. (E.g OC 139:8,
and the AhS invokes the concept alot - 91:2, 135:24, repeatedly in 139,
etc...)

This could be one of the list.

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

On Mon, Nov 10, 2025 at 11:31:33AM +0200, Marty Bluke via Avodah wrote:
> Interestingly enough Rav Soloveitchik never said shalom Rav at all he only
> said sim shalom because shalom Rav doesn't appear in the Rambams siddur and
> was a later geonic invention

I don't know how far down the grapevine you are from RYBS, but if
that was his reasoning, he erred.

Two variants of Shalom Rav were found in the Cairo Geniza. Intrestingly,
one ends "Oseh haShalom". Which according to the Mesores haRav machzorim,
RYBS would not switch to because it's changing the chasimah of a
berakhah.

But it's nusach EY. There is no reason to believe it post-dates tannaim
and amora'im.

(For this reason, I presonally say "Oseh haShalom" on 10 Yemei Teshuvah
but for Minchah and Maariv only, as it's a valid Chazal-era ending for
Shalom Rav.)

I wrote it up here:
https://aspaqlaria.aishdas.org/2016/04/16/shalom-rav/

Two snippets:
   ...
   This is one of a number of cases where Sepharadim follow Nusach Bavel
   and Ashkenazim find a compromise between Nusach Bavel and Nusach Eretz
   Yisrael. Among many historians, these cases are caused by the number of
   captives from Eretz Yisrael taken back to Italy by the Roman army,
   whose descendants then go up to Ashkenaz in Charlemagne's day.

Prof.s Agus and Ta-Shma are named in the ellided text.

   ...
   Another example is the preservation of the Israeli nusach by saying it
   in only some situations is "LeDor vaDor", using it instead of "Atah
   Qadosh" when saying Qedushah. In Israel (and the Cairo Geniza), LeDor
   VaDor was simply the text of the third berakhah in every Shemoneh
   Esrei.

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger                 If you want others to be happy,
http://www.aishdas.org/asp   practice compassion.
Author: Widen Your Tent      If you want to be happy,
- https://amzn.to/2JRxnDF    practice compassion.

On Sun, Oct 26, 2025 at 06:07:13AM +0200, Joel Rich via Avodah wrote:
> Does anybody know historically when mugmar was used to perfume clothes, was
> it a one time thing for when they were sold or was it an ongoing thing done
> every so often for people to  perfume their clothes?

Laundering meant hours of banging clothes on rocks at the stream.

(Even as "recently" as 17th cent New Amsterdam. There was a wall at
the north end of the colony, where Wall Street is now. And just outside
was a brook that was a popular spot to send your daughter to do the
laundry -- today's Maiden Lane.)

So, scenting clothes that were getting stale, or that washing didn't
freshen up enough was a way to stretch the time between launderings in
in many cultures.

The Romans would burn incense and hang the clothes over the smoke.
The word "perfume" comes from "per fumum" -- through smoke. Exactly
how Chazal describe mugmar.

I don't know how often they scented their clothes, but according to
https://imperiumromanum.pl/en/roman-society/hygiene-in-ancient-romans/ancient-roman-perfume
"Even an ordinary citizen smeared not only himself but also his horses
and dogs with fragrant oils three times a day on average."

So I would guess that clothing was frequently perfumed. (More often
than I guess when I answered on Facebook, 2 weeks ago.)

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger                 In the days of our sages, man didn't sin unless
http://www.aishdas.org/asp   he was overcome with a spirit of foolishness.
Author: Widen Your Tent      Today, we don't do a mitzvah unless we receive
- https://amzn.to/2JRxnDF    a spirit of purity.      - Rav Yisrael Salanter

On Tue, Nov 11, 2025 at 11:20 Micha Berger <mi...@aishdas.org> wrote:
> On Mon, Nov 10, 2025 at 11:31:33AM +0200, Marty Bluke via Avodah wrote:
> > Interestingly enough Rav Soloveitchik never said shalom Rav at all he only
> > said sim shalom because shalom Rav doesn't appear in the Rambams siddur and
> > was a later geonic invention
>
> I don't know how far down the grapevine you are from RYBS, but if
> that was his reasoning, he erred.
>
> Two variants of Shalom Rav were found in the Cairo Geniza. Intrestingly,
> one ends "Oseh haShalom"...
> But it's nusach EY. There is no reason to believe it post-dates tannaim
> and amora'im.

I heard this from RHS, he also printed this in Nefesh Harav. Additionally
it's printed in the Hanhagos Harav in the Mesoras Harav machzor.
"The Rav always recited the paragraph of Sim Shalom and not Sholom Rav,
even at Mincha and Maariv, since neither the Rambam nor the Machzor Vitri
nor the siddur of Rav Amram Gaon make any mention of using the text of
Sholom Rav at any time. (Nefesh Harav p.152, R' Menachem Gopin)

Is lev bet din matneh a nice way of saying it?s ?impractical? to apply the
letter of the law in a particular situation (so chazal, HKBH?) must?ve had
this situational caveat in mind?
KT
Joel Rich
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