gmane.culture.religion.jewish.avodah

Re: rational?

Ira Tick — 2009-07-01T22:32:59

_______________________________________________
Avodah mailing list
Avodah< at >lists.aishdas.org
http://lists.aishdas.org/listinfo.cgi/avodah-aishdas.org

Re: validity of ketubahs if .....

Yitzhak Grossman — 2009-07-01T16:48:13

On Tue, 30 Jun 2009 16:27:09 +0100
Jonathan Dickson <Jonathan.Dickson< at >blplaw.com> wrote:


There is actually a major dispute among the Poskim whether a written
kesuvah is required in the event of a kinyan having been executed in
the presence of witnesses (see SA EH 66:1).  We are stringent and
require, at least le'hat'hilah and shelo be'sha'as he'dehak, a written
kesuvah, which must be Halachically valid.


True, but not necessarily to the point.  In fact, the kesuvah is
obligatory even without any kinyan or written kesuvah, as it is a tenai
Beis Din (Mishnah Kesuvos 51a), but we still require kinyan or a
document, to ensure semichas da'as of the woman (see Kesuvos 7a Rav Ami
shari le'mival, 56b R. Meir omer kal ha'pohes, Tosfos s.v. ein osin,
s.v. aval, and 82b tanya nami hachi).

Yitzhak
--
Bein Din Ledin - http://bdl.freehostia.com
A discussion of Hoshen Mishpat, Even Ha'Ezer and other matters
_______________________________________________
Avodah mailing list
Avodah< at >lists.aishdas.org
http://lists.aishdas.org/listinfo.cgi/avodah-aishdas.org

Re: Baruch Hu Uvaruch Shemo

Cantor Wolberg — 2009-06-30T21:17:59

_______________________________________________
Avodah mailing list
Avodah< at >lists.aishdas.org
http://lists.aishdas.org/listinfo.cgi/avodah-aishdas.org

Re: rational?

Micha Berger — 2009-06-30T20:29:11

: There is a lot of confusion about the term "rationalism." What is a 
: rationalist? The differences between rationalists and non-rationalists
: fall into three categories:

: A) Denial of Pnimius HaTorah

The most fundamental question:
Denial in its reality, or denial that it has relevence, or denial that
its relevence is necessary to know in order to get on with life?



As I already noted, the concept of "penimius haTorah" is fuzzy, and I
showed how to of mesorah's greatest rationalists also held of much that
we call penimius hatorah.

I would instead speak of mystics vs rationalists, maximalists vs
minimalists.

A mystic is someone who gets his religious energy from being in touch
with the great mysteries. He is therefore willing and ready to accept
every maamar chazal at face value because the more amazing it is, the
more it feeds his religiosity.

The rationalist, OTOH, likes his world to make sense. He wants things
to connect back to first principles.

Both sides believe there is only a single truth. So then what do you do
when reason and mesorah contradict?

A mystic would be thrilled with seeing how G-d is so far beyond his
comprehension, *appeal to authority* and dismiss his incomprehension as
part of the mystery. If mesorah and reason contradict, the problem must
be in my philosophy/science/logic. He therefore tends toward a maximalist
approach. (Even on non-metaphysical questions, such as belief that Rivka
gave Eliezer and his camels water when only 3 yrs old.)

The rationalist would choose an *appeal to reason*, and therefore would
presume that any misunderstanding can't be in the structure he built
from first principles, and it must be the mesorah which he misunderstood.

These two *tendencies* (not absolutes!) are what I see as dividing the
two camps.

M went a little too far to most people's likings with the rational
approach. Too many maamarei chazal were recast in light of what Aristo
made look self-evident. And so, there was a tendency toward maximalism,
which meant having an authority on metaphysics to appeal to. Thus the
Maimonidian Controversy led to a vacuum which motivated publishing
the Zohar.

Until this point in the history of Qabbalah, I would argue that there
was no real dichotomy of camps. As per my comments about how close the
Rambam gets to discussing atzilus and how the earliest rishon to discuss
sephiros was Rav Saadia. On the other side of the alleged divide, the
mequbal knew he was speaking the same language of form and matter, and
forms being shadows of higher forms as Plato did, and in fact he even
knew why -- Plato got it from us. They weren't anti-philosophy.

The maximalist unsurprisingly drew from Plato, who had more givens
explaining more of the gap between man and heaven. Which in turn meant
that less were second- and third-order implications of basic truths,
complications that would be hard to explain.

Then the version of metaphysics we today call Qabbalah gets identified
with Sod to the extent that the Rambam's claim that his philosophy is the
Sod of Pardeis reads very alien to us. And yet he has the same notions
of levels of mal'akhim that the qabbalah

But the Zohar too, while giving the maximalist more incontravertible
claims to work with, was heavily rationalist. Where the Ari stood,
whether his work was metaphoric for states of spiritual awareness /
revalation through history (Ramchal), discussing irreducible metaphysical
ontologies (Leshem), hainu hakh (R' Chaim Volozhiner and baal haTanya)
is an unresolved question. Without which, we really can't tell if his
intent was rationalist or to provide mystical ecstacy.

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

Re: validity of ketubahs if .....

2009-06-30T19:23:47

IIRC verbal commitments do not tofeis lekuchos or meshabeid karka"os,
but dated written shtaros do.

Then again kesubbos have special diinim as a tnai BD anyway

Maybe a Yadin Yadin can comment.

KT
RRW
Sent via BlackBerry from T-Mobile
_______________________________________________
Avodah mailing list
Avodah< at >lists.aishdas.org
http://lists.aishdas.org/listinfo.cgi/avodah-aishdas.org

validity of ketubahs if .....

Jonathan Dickson — 2009-06-30T15:27:09

_______________________________________________
Avodah mailing list
Avodah< at >lists.aishdas.org
http://lists.aishdas.org/listinfo.cgi/avodah-aishdas.org

Re: Baruch Hu Uvaruch Shemo

2009-06-30T15:25:36

Micha


Hang on for the ride :-)


Hertz's point:
Each phrase (Not just what we have)
Triggered a baruch hu
And the next phrase a baruch shemo.
Iow alternating responses

H - Hazzan
Q - Qehal

H: Baruch she'amar...
Q: Baruch hu
H: Baruch omeir...
Q: Baruch shemo

Etc.

My point from piyyut is that sometimes we have a 3-pronged response

H: A..
Q: Omrim qadosh
H: B...
Q: Omrim Baruch
Then an interweave
H: C...
Q: Qadosh uVaruch

Now go back and retrofit the same type of interweave into say Baruch
she'amar and you would get:

Q: Baruch hu
Q: Baruch shemo
Q: Baruch hu uvaruch shemo

Point: the response is likely very old (say Gaonic)

-----------------------

 [hagaha RRW: practical]

Amein! :-) this is my experience in most shuls where the shatz does not
pause long enough.

I usually pick and choose. If the shatz pauses I say bhuvsh otherwise
I don't

KT
RRW
Sent via BlackBerry from T-Mobile
_______________________________________________
Avodah mailing list
Avodah< at >lists.aishdas.org
http://lists.aishdas.org/listinfo.cgi/avodah-aishdas.org

Re: R Tzadok-TSBP

David Riceman — 2009-06-30T17:48:58

Or the same meal!

David Riceman

_______________________________________________
Avodah mailing list
Avodah< at >lists.aishdas.org
http://lists.aishdas.org/listinfo.cgi/avodah-aishdas.org

Re: Rambam on Metaphors

Micha Berger — 2009-06-30T17:58:22

: Given: It is clear that the Rambam holds that every anthopomorphic
: reference to HKBH is metaphorical

"Idiomatic" may be more accurate than "metaphorical".

: Therefore couldn't the Rambam apply this to "ayin tachas ayin" too?

I wondered why "ayin tachas ayin" being mamunus is a derashah, and not
peshat in an idiomatic pasuq. As I wrote as far back as v2n55 (17 Nov
1998), <http://www.aishdas.org/avodah/vol02/v02n055.shtml#15>:


Here's my latest formulation... derashah = idiom.

Or to be more specific, when it comes to halakhah, we have exact rules
of derashah to tell us what's idiomatic and what isn't. Halakhah is a
rule system, and even the idioms are constrained by rules.

And so a gezeirah shavah showing us that "tachas" in other locations
refers to payment, or that an "eidah" is a group of at least 10, are
actually idicators that the term is an idiom.

(Just as a kelal uperat is a writing idiom, etc...)

I this half-baked idea has any merit, I would answer RRW's question by
saying that "ayin tachas ayin" IS "metaphorical", where the derashah
spells out the terms of the metaphor.

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha


PS (administative mind-wandering): I just realized when writing the date
on that post that the decade mark for Avodah came and went unnoticed
over a year ago. Avodah and Beis Tefila merged, giving us the list we
know now, on 17 Jul 1998, ie 26 Tammuz 5758. 4002 days.

3502 digests, 53,991 emails (an average of 13.5 per day, 16 per day of
chol here in chu"l). Scary to think how many man-hours that means. Hope
it has been a qiyum of talmud and harbatzas Torah.

Re: R Tzadok-TSBP

Micha Berger — 2009-06-30T17:27:52

: Professor Shapiro, ibid., does note at length that Rabbi Haim
: Soloveitchik was reticent to pasken, directing people to the dayan of
: Volozhin for practical questions. Rabbi Haim was sure that his
: hiddushim were true and correct, but he couldn't bring himself to
: practically rule that way, against the SA in favor of a novel ruling
: of the Rambam's or a novel reading of the Gemara. Faced with the
: conflict, he simply chose not to pasken anything.

This is 180deg off from the evidence.

There was once an agunah question that arose in Brisk, a question arose
on a get where the ex-husband already fled the area. R' Chaim asked
R' Simcha Selig Reguer (the dayan) to write out the question to send it
to R' Yichaq Elchanan, and to request from RIES that he telegram back a
one word answer. R' Chaim expressed fear that if RIES gave his sevara,
he would be able to argue both sides, and thus never be happy with the
conclusion. However, if he is simply given the poseiq hador's decision,
he would have no problem.

(See RARR's "The Rav", 6.02, who also points to R' Shelomo Yoseif
Zevin's Ishim veShitot, pp 58-59.)

IOW, it isn't that R' Chaim didn't trust his lomdus enough to pasqen from
it, but that he trusted his lomdus's ability to explain a machloqes so
far that he couldn't see any way to choose one shitah over another.

As I said, 180deg from RMShapiro's conclusion.

...
: My justification of academic study of Torah is simple: if it is
: objectively true, then surely, it must have an effect on halakhah. If
: it is objectively false, then obviously, it should have no effect,
: since it is false anyway. When people say that academic findings are
: true but are outside the halakhic process, I simply cannot comprehend
: this....

Halakhah isn't the determination of truth, it's the determination,
interpretation and legislation of law. Data is an important factor, but
it's only a factor. And someone can be authoritative as law even if
we would no longer agree with the original motivation.



On Sun, Jun 28, 2009 at 1:54pm EDT, R David Riceman wrote:
:>Perhaps this is why I'm so interested in the effects of hashkafa on
:>pesika - saving einam yehudim on Shabbat, Rabbis Uziel and Haim David
:>Halevi, etc.

: This puts the cart before the horse.  Psak influences hashkafa rather 
: than hashkafa influencing psak.

This is RSRH's critique of Wissenschaft, that it took theories about
how Judaism ought to be and redefined Judaism to fit the theory. Alchemy
style -- fitting the date to the theory rather than the other way around.

However, it's not entirely one-directional. To continue the mashal,
we assume a well-established theory holds in cases we didn't yet
test. If someone asked me how fast a pebble fell when he dropped it,
I will assume it was roughly moving 9.8 m/sec after the first second,
twice that after the second, etc...

Where the halachic process doesn't give us a clear answer, what do we
do? There is a trend toward "choseish leshitas ha-" or "baal nefesh
yachmir". There are also those who apply the rules of safeiq to this
safeiq in the din.

However, using aggadita / Telzher "fahr vos" lomdus to break the tie is
also very common. (This being my nimshal. We can't get an experimental
answer, so we follow the theory.)

And we even question the "experimental data" when the theory is
sufficiently entrenched. The question is how far that goes. Chassidim
were able to find room for things like clapping and dancing on Shabbos,
not sitting in the Sukkah on SA, etc... The misnagdim considered that
beyond the limits of din, "alchemy" terretory.

However, R' Moshe Soloveitchik sat for havdalah out of a "fahr vos"
sevara that havdalah closes the set initiated in qiddush (which is said
sitting). R' Chaim and the aforementioned notion that Vayekhulu is a
kind of eidus.

(BTW, I forgot to give the punchline that tied that reply to the post.
If Vayekhulu is eidus, and a father-and-son pair can invalidate the
whole kat, then you should be careful not to attend the same Friday
night minyan as any immediate family members.)



On Mon, Jun 29, 2009 at 3:07am EDT, R Samuel Svarc wrote:
: Totally off the mark. The real reason is that to have 'sugyos' in Shas
: contradict each other is no evil in your eyes. Tosfos gives the most
: straight forward ways to resolve these seeming contradictions, a real
: straight shooter. If you would accept the reality, that Shas is a
: seamless whole (by and large - we are talking in generalities), you
: would have no issue with Tosfos.

Because of the earlier discussion as to whether the primary distinction
between academic study and talmud Torah is that the former is a quest for
unity or detatchment vs internalization, I was thinking about it further.

I think that someone looking to internalize will perforce end up trying
to unify. Each new datum encountered has to be incorporated into a single
worldview, lifestyle, value system and emotional schema -- in short, me.

We therefore have philosophical reasons to tend toward finding unity
across ideas, and Tosafos-style reconciliation (or Brisk-style finding
the exact point where the common theme reaches diverse variants).



On Mon, Jun 29, 2009 at 3:55pm EDT, R Samuel Svarc wrote:
: So, yes, RSRH (and RMF - remember Shira al Hayam, Shiras Devorah,
: etc.) holds that there exists nobility in music (to use but one
: example). But what is the yardstick to measure it with?

Or in poetry. Shirah al haYam was definitely sung, but "shirah" refers
to the lyrics, and can refer to poetry even without a tune, no? In which
case, the nobility could well be in the words, not the music.

...
: Don't lump RSRH with the others. They don't hold his views.

To put it broader: MO traces more from Hildesheimer's than RSRH. And is
doubly true of the Academic Orthodoxy subtype.

RSRH didn't have positive things to say about Wissenschaft even knowing of
the varient followed by R' Dovid Zvi Hoffman, whose first job was teaching
at RSRH's Realschule, and eventually becoming rector at Hildesheimer's.



On Mon, Jun 29, 2009 at 8:45am EDT, Rich, R Joel wrote:
: I would argue that R' Boruch Ber's statement , if taken at face value,
: is inconsistent with Brisker (and broader) traditional talmud torah.

Brisker derekh is actually newer than frum variants of Wissenschaft.
And, given the Rambam's description in his letters to Luneil of how
to answer questions on his Yad, no less traditional. There are more
precedents for RDZH among the Spharadi rishonim than the mesorah offers
for RCBrisker. Brisk is to my mind more talmud Torah, but I can't argue
it's more traditional.

...
: It wouldn't shock me at all if an academic better understood the local
: conditions (what one ate, where one lived) and how that informed on what
: issues an amora spoke on and how they were dealt with. Of course , that
: doesn't mean we rely on them for psak but I still think their input can
: be of value.

Total tangent, but there is another advantage to knowing the amoraim on
that level. I can't remember who said what until I have some sense of
the people I'm referring to. The way I relate to words requires having
some meaning to attach the word to, so that it's not just a set of
(familiar) sounds.

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

Re: R Tzadok-TSBP

Michael Makovi — 2009-06-30T16:32:35

I quoted RSRH:

R' Samuel Svarc replied:

My reply:
Everything you say about yardsticks is already present in the quote I
brought of RSRH. Rav Hirsch said:

L'apukei that which is not "noble and good, true and upright". The
benchmark? The Torah.

But RMF says

Rav Hirsch accepts "anything that is noble and good, true and uprigth
in art or science, in culture or education"; as long as the Torah
approves, one may accept that secular knowledge. But for RMF, such
secular knowledge is almost ipso facto to be rejected, and it never
even has a chance to be tested against the Torah. Or, perhaps their
yardsticks are different; RSRH and RMF perhaps have different
conceptions of the Torah, and so even though both posit the Torah as
the benchmark, RMF's Torah-benchmark is far more critical of secular
knowledge than is RSRH's.

Similarly, R' Uziel says that we are not complete without secular
knowledge, but that secular knowledge does not affect our essence,
which is holiness ( = Torah, I presume). I see RSRH as being far more
similar to Rabbis Uziel and Halevy than to RMF. Indeed, most (AFAIK)
regard RSRH as having resurrected the pre-Expulsion Spanish
weltanschauung; remember that Rabbis Uziel and Halevy were Turkish
Sephardim with roots in Spain.

--------------

R' Svarc asked,

I'm sure there are, but I've never met them. I've simply never had the
opportunity to actually meet very many Orthodox Jews, rabbis or
otherwise. It isn't through lack of trying.

Michael Makovi
_______________________________________________
Avodah mailing list
Avodah< at >lists.aishdas.org
http://lists.aishdas.org/listinfo.cgi/avodah-aishdas.org

Re: Psulei edus invalidating the whole group

Micha Berger — 2009-06-30T15:36:45

: Does this apply only to people who could be in the geder of edus, if
: only they weren't relatives, cardsharps, or whatever?   In other words,
: if women are included among the witnesses, can we say that they don't
: invalidate the male witnesses, because they're not even potentially
: kosher, so they're as if they weren't there?

Something I don't get, although this has more to do with the thread
about R' Chaim and pesaq...

There is a Brisker "zach" not to say Vayekhulu after "shemoneh esrei"
alone, as it's a form of eidus, and eidus requires 2. For similar
reasons to standing for Vayechulu when making qiddush -- although
there we don't have someone else say it along.

Nu, so one time I see a father repeating Vayekhulu 2 serve as a 2nd for
a son who fell behind the minyan. I pointed out the irony of it, since
there wouldn't be eidus there way either.

Besides, why wouldn't eid echad suffice, anyway? It's not a matter of
oneshim or mamunus.

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

Re: Baruch Hu Uvaruch Shemo

Ben Waxman — 2009-06-30T06:30:30

In Ma'aseh HaRav, it says that the Gra was against saying BHBS for a 
technical reason, that the shaliakh tzibbur doesn't wait for people to say 
it, people do say it, and then they miss saying amen.

Ben
----- Original Message ----- >
_______________________________________________
Avodah mailing list
Avodah< at >lists.aishdas.org
http://lists.aishdas.org/listinfo.cgi/avodah-aishdas.org

Re: Baruch Hu Uvaruch Shemo

Micha Berger — 2009-06-30T14:36:59

: The repsonses baruch hu and baruch shemo are ancient
: Look at baruch she'amar and the article in the HERTZ siddur

But there it's a clear progression, describing G-d in ever more
comprehensible terms.

Look also at the progression of
    sheAmar veHayah haOlam
    Omeir ve'Oseh -- we introduce "asiyah", which people do too
    Gozeir umQayeim -- now, the statement isn't itself the action, He
descrees and fulfils that decree
    Meracheim al haaretz
    Meracheim al habrios -- less cosmic than the previous
    Meshaleim sechar tov lirei'av -- and in the previous line it was
everyone

It could well be that the problem is in the connective, without which
"barukh shemo" could be considered a rephrase of "barukh Hu".

OTOH, Tehillim has keifel lashon with a vav hachibur all the time. Not
always a paraphrase of exactly the same idea, but I don't know Tehillim
by heart to say that there is /no/ instance of a keifel lashon with a
vav in the middle.

Unfortunately, no one actually substantiated what I heard besheim haGra
with a source. So the whole thing could be legend.

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

R' Soloveitchik on religious turmoil, pesak halakhah

Michael Makovi — 2009-06-30T00:12:56

Tradition", by R' Emanuel Rackman, Commentary June 1952

Some quotes I found very powerful, mostly regarding Rabbi Soloveitchik:

(1)
Soloveitchik regards as altogether too simple the popular notion of
religious experience as one preeminently pleasing and soothing-a
stream of delight and relaxation and an asylum from the frustrations
of life. This conception of religion Rabbi Soloveichik deems a fraud,
the result of a surrender on the part of religious thinkers to the
desire of the mass of men to lose themselves in states of bliss. It
also echoes Rousseau in his flight from reason, and much subsequent
romanticist thought. Religion's invitation has been misinterpreted to
say: "If thou cravest peace, if thou cravest integration, make the
leap of faith." In the flight from reason and the rejection of
objective truth, Rabbi Soloveichik sees the cause of the moral
deterioration of contemporary man. He would prefer to see religion
wedded to a cold objectivity and rationality, even though faith and
reason may at times appear to conflict with one another, rather than
derive religion from man's instinctual longings.

Also, he asserts, the highest form of religious experience comes from
constant turmoil and from the experiencing of life's irreconcilable
antitheses-from the simultaneous affirmation and abnegation of the
self, the simultaneous awareness of the temporal and the eternal, the
simultaneous clash of freedom and necessity, the simultaneous love and
fear of God, his simultaneous transcendence and immanence. True, with
the departure of Sabbath's peace, Jews may sing, 'The Lord is my
Shepherd, I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down in green
pastures." But the road to the green pastures is a narrow and winding
one, along a steep cliff, with a bottomless pit below. It is the other
words of the Psalmist-"From the deep I called unto Thee, O Lord"-that
describe the most authentic religious experience, and the deep is a
deep of antinomies, doubts, and spiritual travail.In A sense, it can
be said that Rabbi Soloveichik is trying to fuse the emotional
intensity of existentialism with the hard logic of rationalism.

(2)
Yet in traditional Jewish style, his philosophy is derived from, and
applied to, the Halachah of Judaism. He is not content with the way in
which Jewish scholars have heretofore examined the sources: to
reconcile conflicting authorities and to arrive at the correct rule of
Law is only one phase of Jewish jurisprudence. Soloveichik finds the
essential antinomies of religious reality also incarnated in Halachic
matter. A dispute over the extent of liability in a particular tort,
the question of a prohibited form of work on the Sabbath, or of the
proper preparation of a temple offering-all these may become for him
the basis of a theological insight. In this, he is in the tradition of
the illustrious Abraham I. Kook, late Chief Rabbi of Palestine, who
derived a philosophy of Jewish community, as opposed to mere
"collectivity," from Talmudic law on the acquisition of property.

Given the premise that all the Law is God's revealed will, it follows
logically that all of it will have theological significance. The
totality of the Law is taken by Soloveichik as a realm of ideas in the
Platonic sense, given by God for application to the realm of the real.
Just as the mathematician creates an internally logical and coherent
fabric of formulas with which he interprets and integrates the
appearance of the visible world, so the Jew, the "Man of Halachah,"
has the Torah as the divine idea that vests all of human life with
direction and sanctity. Legislative change is irreconcilable with
Halachah, yet creativity is of its very essence. "The Halachah is a
multi-dimensional everexpanding continuum which cuts through all
levels of human existence from the most primitive and intimate to the
most complex relationships" (from an unpublished lecture by Dr.
Soloveichik). Thus, though Halachah refers to the ideal, its
creativity must be affected by the real.

(3)
Halachic creativity is not an ingenious academic exercise. The man who
would bridge the distance between the ideal and the real, who would
discover what is the intent of divine will in a new and unprecedented
situation, must employ the dialectic of reason in fear and
trembling-his thinking must be part of a religious agony. God willed
that man obey his Law. God also willed man's welfare. Sometimes the
Law and man's welfare come into seeming conflict. The pious jurist
must then probe the sources and the commentaries of the saints, must
descend into that same crucible of pain out of which the right way was
originally revealed.

(4)
[Permitting the draft of rabbis for the military chaplaincy,] Rabbi
Soloveichik admitted that he had not approached the sources with
complete objectivity; that he had had certain intuitive feelings and
held certain basic values that prejudiced him in favor of the decision
rendered by Yeshiva University and guided him in his exploration of
the various aspects and facets of the problem. But this lack of
objectivity is merely a fundamental avowal of inevitable human
limitation, and is not to be confused with arbitrariness. As anyone
who has studied the Talmud knows, the Halachah is too objective a
discipline to permit an approach based on transient moods.
Nevertheless, in the deepest strata of Halachic thinking, logical
judgment is preceded by value judgment, and intuitive insight gives
impetus to the logic of argument.

(5)
[Quoting Rabbi Soloveitchik, permitting the Jewish community to adopt
and raise as Jewish its share of abandoned babies; even though
statistically, the babies are probably gentile.] "One school sees, in
a naturalistic fashion, life and death on a biological level
exclusively and identifies Pikuah Nefesh (the obligation to conserve
life) with the saving of a carnal existence from extinction. The other
school introduces an idealistic motif. It maintains that the law of
Pikuah Nefesh which is based upon a value judgment-the appraisal of
life as the highest good-transcends the bounds of biological fact and
extends into the domain of spiritual activity. Life is not only a
factumn but also an actus, not only a tangible reality but also an
abstract ethical value to be attained. Death is both a biological and
ethical-spiritual phenomenon. The failure of an individual to realize
his own personality in a manner decreed by his creator at birth is as
tragic as his physical disintegration. One may save a life not only
through medical skill but also by extending moral help. Hence,
whenever man's inner life, his unique relationship to God, and the
mode of his existence as an individual and social being are to be
determined, we encounter the problem of Pikuah Nefesh, which means
here the preservation of a spiritual identity. .... Hence [the concept
of] majority finds no application in this case."

(6)
However, as has been demonstrated, the Orthodox view does not exclude
Halachic creativity or changes, flexibility, and. growth in concept
and method in order to meet the most perplexing of the problems that
trouble the religious minds of today. But it insists that such
evolution must be organic, i.e., it must be a further unfolding of
historical continuity and develop authentically out of tradition.
Orthodox Jews feel that they are helping the revealed Law to fulfill
itself, and in their Halachic creativity they move slowly and with the
same turmoil of soul that characterizes the authentic religious
experience, but with the firm faith that where the basic values of
Judaism still live, the Law will suffice to meet the requirements of
life.

Michael Makovi
_______________________________________________
Avodah mailing list
Avodah< at >lists.aishdas.org
http://lists.aishdas.org/listinfo.cgi/avodah-aishdas.org

Re: Baruch Hu Uvaruch Shemo

Micha Berger — 2009-06-29T22:35:32

: > There is something else going on too, like the propriety of blessing Him
: > and His Name. After all, once one refers to Shemo, then Hu must be very
: > specifically Hu, not the Or Ein Sof. But HQBH be'atzmo, the Ein Sof
: > Itself, how can it be blessed or changed in any way?

: > I was told this is why the Gra never said bhu"sh, using this rationale
: > as proof that the minhag was beta'us.

: These hhashashot would apply either with or without the vav hahhibbur,
: correct? Or am I missing a distinction?

No, you're correct. I was repeating the claim that the Gra never said
barukh Hu ubarukh Shemo (do I capitalize the "S"?) even with the vav
hachibbur.

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha
_______________________________________________
Avodah mailing list
Avodah< at >lists.aishdas.org
http://lists.aishdas.org/listinfo.cgi/avodah-aishdas.org

Re: Angel Hierarchy

Micha Berger — 2009-06-29T22:09:10

: In Yesodei Hattorah Rambam demarcates a very specific angelic hierrarchy
: Touger notes that the Zohar has a similar albeit slightly different
: hierarchy.

This touches on something I wanted to post as part of my reply to R'
Saul Newman's post of Fri, Jun 12, 2009 at 10:54:31AM -0700, where
he quotes a blogger who writes (in part)
: "There is a lot of confusion about the term "rationalism." What is a
: rationalist? The differences between rationalists and non-rationalists
: fall into three categories:

: A) Denial of Pnimius HaTorah

Does he mean like the Aristotilian rationalist who wrote the classic
peirush to Seifer haYetzirah -- R' Saadia Gaon?

Or like the rishon who describes creation as an overflow of Divine
Intellect. The Mamtzi -- not not the "Borei" -- who is the only
Non-Contingent, has a Thought. That Thought is in turn a seikhel nivdal,
a tzurah beli chomer, and one step more contingent. It too has a thought,
also a seikhel nivdal / tzurah and one step even more contigent, and so
on downward until this overflow of thought becomes the world as we have it.

Meanwhile, nevu'ah is also caused by the overflow. Such that the prophet
sees the actual overflowing itself.

Of course, as is telegraphed by my handing this on RRW's words, this
seemingly hyper-mystical view of creation is the Rambam's.

As I wrote here back in 2004:
Averroes (ibn Rushd), who translated Aristotle's works, mistook Plotinus's
Enneads (the works that started neo-Platonism) to be Aristo's, and
therefore includes them in the translation. Therefore, everyone who got
Aristotle via the Arabic had strong neo-Platonic influences. Including
the Rambam...

What I wrote above is from YhT 1:1 (the Mamtzi) and 2:5 (the chain of
mal'akhim).

That nevu'ah is seeing the overflow is from MN 2:36 and III:18 (which also
connects it to HP). And BTW, I noticed that this fits well with what he
says about mal'akhim only being visible bechazon hanevu'ah (ibid ch 56).
Nevuah sees the overflow that reaches and becomes the universe, and
mal'akhim are the steps of that overflow, so mimanafshach they should
figure in nevu'ah.

The difference between the "Mequbalim" and the "rationalists" was more
in which Greek philsophers they tended to borrow terminology from. Which
is why the Rambam, who was (I believe) an unwitting semi-neoPlatonist,
can sound like a mequbal if you pick up the right pieces. And in fact,
the Rambam considered his philosophy to be the Sod of the Pardeis and
beyond the reach of the hoi-paloi just as Mequbalim thought theirs was.

And the Zohar acknowledges this similarity to Plato and neoPlatonism.
However, the flow went the other way -- Greek thought traces back to the
Bavliim who were taught by Daniel and the other nevi'im who were forced
by Ashpenaz to staff Nevchadnezzar's court.

(Similarly, the Zohar doesn't deny the similarity between its mystical
traditions and Eastern Meditation. Rather, it explains that Avraham
gave them these skills when he taught them to benei Qeturah and sent
them east.)

...
: So hagganah we get the Michael interface
: Vengence - Gavriel
: Healing - Rephael
: Learning - Uriel

Mikhael is Chessed, opposite Gavriel/Gevurah. Which is why, according to
the Malbim, in Daniel, Chessed can span the world in one step, but
Gavriel requires two.

Gevurah is a consequence of Divine Chessed; much the way parents will
stand back and let their toddler walk or fall on her own -- it's the
greater chessed (mashal mine). Therefore the Malbim describes Gavriel's
two steps as being one to Mikhael for consultation and then one to span
the world.

: We can play the same game with the Sephiros
: We may need Hashem's Hessed or His Gevurah. Instead of a hierarchy it
: could simply be a ring of interfaces.
: (As to why we need interfaces at all ein kan mekomo leha'arich)

Excapt that the Eitz Chayim structure is as much part of the post-Zohar
qabbalah as the sephiros themselves. (I don't think it's mentioned in
Seifer haYetzirah.) The Leshem describes the partzufim as more like what
you're calling interfaces, and they are interactions of subsets of the
sefiros and the connections between them. All of which are only existent
in Hashem-as-perceived, the Qav, not the Ein Sof.

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

Re: Mitzvos Tzreichos Kavvanah

Micha Berger — 2009-06-29T21:32:53

: See mishna Megila 2:1
: It seems that the longstanding machloqes need not apply here
: The cases that the mishna requires kavvanah are (e.g.) Maggiah etc.
...

Havanah and kavvanah are not necessarily identical.

Also in the mix would be lishmah.

Many is the mispallel lost in tears over the words of a tefillah he
only understands a one line summary of (or only knows the tune!).
In contrast to the master of Hebrew who has something else on his mind.
One has more kavanah, the other more havanah, no?

And both are davening lesheim mitzvah.

Just thinking out loud from first principles...

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

Re: FW: R Tzadok-TSBP

2009-06-29T20:21:22

JR:

Illustration:
Look at the terms "gollel v'soseim"

As understood by historians
As understood by Rishonim.

Halachically Rishonim may have correctly applied the din to medeival
burial procedures
But
They really did not seem to understand the terminology nor the procedures
as they applied to the late Bayyis Sheini era.

KT
RRW
Sent via BlackBerry from T-Mobile

_______________________________________________
Avodah mailing list
Avodah< at >lists.aishdas.org
http://lists.aishdas.org/listinfo.cgi/avodah-aishdas.org

Re: validity of ketubahs if .....

2009-06-29T19:55:45

_______________________________________________
Avodah mailing list
Avodah< at >lists.aishdas.org
http://lists.aishdas.org/listinfo.cgi/avodah-aishdas.org

Re: Was Ben Petura a Christian?

Yitzhak Grossman — 2009-06-29T20:01:38

On Mon, 29 Jun 2009 11:47:31 +0100
"L Reich" <lreich< at >tiscali.co.uk> wrote:

...


http://www.etzion.org.il/dk/1to899/760daf.htm#Heading7
http://www.education.gov.il/tochniyot_Limudim/machshevet/download/PerekAMaim.doc [p. 21, 24]

Yitzhak
--
Bein Din Ledin - http://bdl.freehostia.com
A discussion of Hoshen Mishpat, Even Ha'Ezer and other matters
_______________________________________________
Avodah mailing list
Avodah< at >lists.aishdas.org
http://lists.aishdas.org/listinfo.cgi/avodah-aishdas.org