Re: Are women allow to blow Shofar in Rosh Hashana?


Yisroel Markov wrote:
On Sun, 27 Aug 2006 11:01:33 +0000 (UTC), moshes@xxxxxxxxxxxxx said:
I understand why and how what Jacko says grates on you. I often wish
that he took a bit more notice of our cultural differences.

For FOUR DECADES I did. I smiled and nodded, I said "well, I see your
position but the text says ....", I was as nice as peach pie on a
Sunday afternoon.

And all it got me was manners mistaken for weakness. Exhortations to
Da'as Tora. I was **repeatedly** asked "who needs to recite Isiah" "who
needs ta'amim. Are you a baal koreh?" "You want only by rote
knowledge!" "You really believe in this diqduq naarishkeit?"

So I quit. I now tell it like it is, and hopefully the stark contrast
will wake up those of my descendants who are "nebukhim" in an
overwhelmingly more and more black hat and anti-Maimonidean world.

There is no "equivalency" between Maimonidean and anti-Maimonidean.
That story has to be told.

Take this very exchange between Jacko and Meir. As I see it, Meir has
explained the logic of Tosafot in the classic yeshivish manner, with
which I'm quite familiar. Until recently, I thought that's all there
was. But to Jacko, aggada is not halakha, and ma'ase rav are proof
only when the Gemara cites them l'halakha. So he challenges Meir on
this, and Meir genuinely can't see what the problem is - as far as
he's concerned, the Tosafot have proved their case. Now I look at all
this from the outside, as it were, and Jacko's notions of Law just
make so much more sense to me.


Consider, Moshe - you have learned Gemara, I'm sure. Surely you can
recall more than one instance where the text goes through several
iterations of a given issue, and arrives at a conclusion. Then Tosafot
step in, and in just a few lines what seemed clear (however difficult)
suddenly becomes a swirl of possibilities and uncertainty. And when it
comes to actually paskening halakha, the akhronim (especially, but
sometimes rishonim, too) often sound in such cases like they're making
a stab in the dark: "this one says this, and that one says that, and
maybe there's a third possibility, and one can introduce yet a fourth
doubt..." One begins to wonder - how did it ever become so convoluted?

In my experience the yeshive welt NEVER has a clear answer. There are
always 17 possible answers, and in the end, you get ,"well, technically
it's mutter, but it's better not to." I did not ask that. I do not
care about "better not." I asked "what is the law." Either you know or
you do not.

This is especially so since it meshes with what I know of history. The
"highest achievement" of the Ashkenazi method was pilpul, which is the
ultimate "weariness of the mind" and a total waste of time (loosely
quoting the Maharal here). The changes in practice throughout the ages
are also a matter of record. The Christian influences I perceive
plainly. (It remains to be seen whether Jacko's approach has been
influenced by Islamic fiqh, but that's another story.)

The references to fiqh in Maimonides writings are all sourced in the
Talmud! Here is one of many examples:

In the Sefer Hammisvoth, Iqqar No. 7, Maimonides states that we do not
count the fiqh of a misva, only the misva itself. He goes on to
explain that a misva is not fiqh, but a geneal concept "qadiya ma".
The Tora discloses misvoth and perhaps some fiqh, but the Oral Law
generally is the source of fiqh. (It is only possible to be a zaqen
mamre if you are moreh hora on **fiqh** against the hora'a of the
Sanhedrim).

In Qamma 87A (relevant to this discussion in particular) we have Ribbi
Yehuda stating a blind man is patur form all the misvoth because
"whoever is included in the *mishpatim* is inlcuded in the misvoth and
huqqim, and vice versa."

Here "mishpat" is semantically identical to "fiqh" as used in the Sefer
Hammisvoth.

I'll give you another example. In the sedra we just read we have the
law of the defamer (Dvarim 22:13-19). Granted that we don't do capital
cases today, still, the law should be discernible, as the matter is
treated at length in K'tubot 46a. There, we find a debate between R'
Eliezer b. Yakov, who understands all of these verses literally (down
to the bloody sheet), and the rest of the Sages, who do not. The
halakha is according to whom?

The hakhamim. However, once upon a time it very well could have been
as stated by R. Eliezer ben Ya'aqobh!

These are dinim mufla'im. As are all the techicalities state din this
connecitonin Sanhedrin 8-10 (sugya that begins "vekhi yesh bo dine
nefashoth mai havve" .. and that ends with palginan dibbura).

Yisroel "Godwrestler Warriorson" Markov - Boston, MA Member

Jacko

.