AviraDeArah

So… We get to play god and decide who is better off alive, and who is better off dead. We can kill defenseless babies because they’re a financial strain or because they’ll end up becoming criminals.

Wow.

Ymribiat; at first Hashem made adam with his feminine counterpart in one body; that was the ideal. Then she became corrupt, and separated. Hashem then made chava from adam.

Sheasani kirtzono can be explained two ways; one is that they are closer to the perfect ideal of ratzon Hashem, and the other is that it’s a modest acceptance of their lot in life. The second pshat isn’t as popular.

Gedolei hador cannot be influenced by the tides of outside, alien philosophy. They are the pure transmitters of the mesorah. Being very knowledgeable and intelligent does not alone make one a gadol batorah. One can also lose their status if they fall prey to the yatzer hora. Acher was a tanna who fell into greek avodah zara. rabbi kook and rabbi yoshe ber fell into European Nationalism and other foreign philosophies. The chazon ish forbade explicitly to read rabbi kook’s books. The shach and taz had a lot of machlokes, but never did they ban one another. Lest someone invoke the ban on the rambam, teshuvaso betzidah – as time went on, the rambam only gained in acceptance. With rabbi yoshe ber and rabbi kook it’s the total opposite; early on not many opposed them and they were afforded great honor (which they actually deserved for having been big in learning, I’m not going to take that away from them), however as time goes on they are becoming less and less accepted, with the torah world distancing itself ever more from them.

Reb E, comparing rav moshe to the chasam sofer is very reasonable; there the chidush is that rav Moshe could be compared to him, not the other way around. Also thank you for pointing out that it was rav yosef and not rav huna – my mistake

The gaon also didn’t change the established minhagim of Lita for the most part, even though he was on the level of the rishonim – I’m not talking about minhag oilam, I’m talking about accepting the psak regarding a new issue that there’s no established practice. No community historically engaged in infanticide.

I was saying both a rational and a halachik argument; goyim are supposed to keep mitzvos that are largely understandable through honest reasoning. You’re right that i meant chazakah dehashta btw….wrote the wrong one. Also, legally I’m no expert, but it doesn’t matter what American law in itself would have to say if we are compelled to advocate the halachikally ordained position, even if it would mean making otherwise weak legal arguments on behalf of that cause. As it happens to be, it seems to me that roe v wade was a very politically motivated issue, with no legal precedent.

Just to illustrate, imagine you’re in the 1980s, and you have a shailoh of pikuach nefesh. You want to know what to do, and either decision will be dangerous. Would you prefer to ask rav moshe or the tzitzis Eliezer?

Skrry reb E, the tzitz Eliezer was a posek, but not in the same league as rav moshe – not by a long shot. Rav Moshe was essentially an early achron caliber of gemara learning and psak. There’s a reason why almost everyone was machnia to him.

Ubiq, where do i even start…a baby comes out, so now it’s alive – it has a chazakah dmi’ikara that has to be shown when it was not alive. We don’t say “kill kill kill until you know that it’s a baby”

It’s not “what is this inside me” everyone knows that there’s a baby developing

I don’t see how social considerations factor in to a discussion of murder – if something is murder, it is unequivocally forbidden, and jf it’s not, what’s wrong? This is why the 90s line of “safe, legal and rare” fell into women celebrating the murder of their children on tiktok dance videos, because it’s mima nafshach…if it’s not murder, then do it all you want! And if it is murder, then the only justification would be in situations where murder is acceptable.

Reb E, halacha considers abortion murder for yidden. There is talk if there’s a difference before 40 days(the time chazal say the neshoma enters the body), and for goyim it would be at any age. But even for goyim, an uber has to be called an uber, which is somewhat subjective and therefore conception is a good place to stop. Goyim often use the line of “it’s not a baby, it looks like a fish”, and they say that the burden of proof of what’s considered alive falls on us who wish to forbid. That argument is not only evil, vut very unintelligent – they’re saying you can kill as long as it’s not proven if something is alive, instead of not killing as long as you cannot prove that it’s not alive. It’s like if someone tells you that there’s a sleeping person aside 10 dead bodies, but you have no idea who’s alive and who’s dead. Abortion logic would be you can stab any of them because “who says this one is alive?”. No. You need to prove that the subject is NOT alive to allow anything.

Ujm, there were and are people who are shomrei Torah who for whatever reason have made Shidduchim themselves. Many met in Brooklyn college in the 80s. That doesn’t mean it’s the standard of tznius in the Yeshiva world, or that bnei Torah would do it, but if one observes a woman who he is interested in marrying, it’s not assur to approach her, as long as it’s clear that he’s intended on marriage and nothing else. There needs to be a clear distinction between what’s assur gamur, what’s the proper decorum for a yid, and what is the standard of bnei torah. There’s a difference.

As to the OP, i doubt it’s her first time going out, so all you have to do is make a phone call saying what shadchonim usually say… You had a great time but you don’t feel the shiduch is for you, hatzlocha rabba and have a wonderful day. It doesn’t have to be with any details(that can be more hurtful). I don’t suggest texting. While she might not pry for more info on a phone call, on text people say things they normally wouldn’t say, and the confidence and assertiveness that one can employ on a phone call is missing in a text. I also don’t feel it’s tznius to text women in general.

There are only so many words that can be formed fully in one minute. Many people never learn how to pronounce and read words when they’re in elementary school, and while they might read English on a college level, their Hebrew skills are at the point where they have to sit and sound out every vowel and consonant.

Shimon, that was really insensitive and also baseless…where do you see that her parents are breathing down his neck?

Philosopher; yeah that was a miscommunication. I’m referring to how some gedolim, like rav chatzkel, cut their payos according to the shiur in halacha, but did not grow them larger than the rest of their hair. It is possible that the litvishe payos were shorter than the chassidishe ones, but they all used to be noticeable

It’s a chov gamur on any entertainer to make sure that such things don’t happen. We know that there are people who would behave this way anyway, but if it happens under our watch, we are held accountable for facilitating it

Philosopher, I’m sorry but that’s not historically accurate. Before the government banned payos, litvishe yidden mostly had payos – st the time, there was a machlokes between the divrei chaim and the litvishe poskim. The Divrei chaim held that payos were yehereg velo yaavor as per arkasana demasani, shoelaces, which we are moser nefesh for during a shaas hashmad…the litvishe held differently, except for the netziv who was indeed moser nefesh, as you can see from his pictures. Subsequently it became popular to either not have payos, or put them behind one’s ears

I know plenty of taimani yidden who still have “simanim” even though they’re not chasidish at all

AAQ, i heard from rav belsky that the issue of eating from a big lerusah doesn’t apply to shabbos, because aderaba, we want to show enthusiasm for eating seudas shabbos…kidush isn’t any different. Actually, it’s probably a hiddur, the same way it’s a a hiddur to swallow an entire kazayis of matzah in one gulp

I really don’t know how a “reader” can see that the rishonim didn’t have a mesorah, because I’m not a reader; i am a lomeid, and that means approaching the rishonim not as a book but as a piece of torah that is part of the continuum of Torah. You’re suggesting that i “can’t put my finger on it” simply because you cannot put a finger on what i was talking about.

I’ll be clearer – there is a mesorah in how to understand both the language of chazal, the words of the rishonim, and how to properly use Talmudic logic to understand both. This is why steinsaltz, who had no formal education, is so off base with his pshatim (see rav aharon Feldman’s critique for examples). What would make sense to “echad min hashuk” isn’t always a good sevara or shmaataa aliba dihilchasa.

The mechanics behind a gemara, which we call lomdus, is entirely mesorah driven. It’s hinted to in some rishonim, including notably the tosfos ri”d, called in yeshivos “reb chaim of the rishonim”, but mostly was not comitted to print. Rav Boruch ber (cited in rav hadomeh lemalaach) said that when writing chidushim, one should not write “too much”, not the entire shtikel, because we’re not writing artscroll type books. There’s a mesorah for the difference between a rashi writing “begemara mefaresh” and “mefaresh begemara”, as quoted in the shem hagedolim from the chid”a (could have been a different sefardi sefer, I don’t remember the name very clearly, just that it was sefardi)

Chidushim are rooted in that passed down tradition; they’re not a free for all. If someone wishes to open a gemara and pasken halacha without rishonim and achronim, he is rightly deemed a baal gaavah and is held responsible for allowing that which is assur. For example, the academic mentality would not see anything wrong with annuling yom tov sheni, chumra derebe zeira, or other issues that one can dismiss with simplistic kashos. Yet one who does these things is in violation of halacha, because we have a mesorah that we do not deviate from.

Bombarding with questions doesn’t dismantle an argument, but it is a debate technique used to make the other side less appealing, since it raises more questions than it answers; it’s not a real conversation point though, and it’s also evasive, like putting up flares in the hopes of confusing an attacker.

It doesn’t mean that every perush of a given gemara was passed down, much like the discussions in the gemara weren’t passed down, but rather the product of torah reasoning that is based on the amoraim’s rebbeim. The methodology of seeing a good sevara from a bad one is part of this mesorah. You’ll notice that rishonim often say pshatim that are initially hard to understand, and could be dismissed by superficial kashas… only for someone like the chasam sofer or reb akiva eiger to come and completely overturn the sugya and show how the rishon was the best pshat.

I wonder if you’ve ever learned in an iyun driven litvishe yeshiva, or if your experience was in a certain element in YU, an academic setting, a chasidishe yeshiva from which you weren’t intellectually satisfied, or a halacha kollel… it’s easy to hide behind the veneer of achievement in having completed many mesechtos, perhaps even shas (i admit i have not made a siyum hashas), and feeling that one has a complete grasp of gemara…enough to dismiss elementary teachings that one receives in a middle school setting. People who relish discussing “themes” in rishonim are usually at a loss for prime examples if asked; rishonim are way bigger than us and we should endeavor to understand what we can of their words without fooling ourselves into thinking that we can understand overarching “up teitches” the way one would with Dostoyevsky and Shakespeare.

Shimon, that’s not what the maharsham is talking about. Rov hakos/machzik reviis is an issue that’s relevant to hilchos pesach. I tzaychuntzu’d the maharsham; check it out

the maharsham indeed defends the minhag in chelek 1, 175. He aays this is based on shitas ha’taz, that you make a bracha achrona on a shot glass of yayin saraf (schnapps) even though it’s less than a revi”is, because it’s considered choshuv. So too by kidush, where chamar medina is acceptable, a shot glass of this sort of chamar medina is considered choshuv.

Ben, there is a lot of material in the mishnah that definitely predated rebbe. What rebbe did was:

Get together all of the chachamim in his generation and collect each one’s mesorah(see bartenuras hakdoma)
Took the words that had been recited and memorized and edit them together; cutting and pasting essentially.
Paskened according to one shitah and made that shitah a stam mishnah or “chachamim omrim” (see mesechta beitzah 2b)
Ordered them by topic and sub topic (seder and mesechta, perakim etc)
Decide which material should be excluded from the core and left to braysos
Fix up any mishnayos that may have had errors

There’s a machlokes if rebbe wrote down the mishnayos physically or just did the above and make it the standard for klal yisroel going forward

I should also have clarified that my archetype MO teenager description included some things that i personally, thankfully, did not engage in, but it’s what I saw all around me.

DBS, that was an exact quote from rabbi shechter’s teshuva during the oslo accords.

*Since Eretz Yisroel is vital to Jewish existence as a nation-state, conquest by a foreign power is considered a lethal blow to the conquered nation. Therefore, just as a doctor may amputate a patient’s limb in order to save the patient’s life, where the life of an entire nation is in danger it is permissible to sacrifice the lives of the few for the purpose of sparing the nation at large”

This is straight European Nationalism. Not Judaism. In judaism, the Torah is the lifeblood of the people, not a secular state built by holocaust collaborating murderers.

A mesorah doesn’t add to the integrity of torah, it is merely the transmission vehicle; it was meant to be transmitted from rebbe to talmid, father to son, in both content and methodology. Those are things you need a mesorah for; to know a good sevara from a crooked one, to know what the kavanos of chazal, rishonim etc were, it’s not about proving the Torah or adding credibility, it’s about getting the tools necessary to understand something that all along was based on a handed down tradition. When the mishnah was completed, it was cryptic and needed the gemara to explain it; when the gemara was written, it would have been a closed book if not for the rishonim; he rishonim thensleves are very perplexing and are constantly studied over by the achronim and ourselves…someone without a mesorah cannot approach these matters because they simply don’t have the tools.

That doesn’t mean you have to blindly accept the particulars of what you’re taught; rashi argues with his rebbeim quite a lot, and tosfos argues on rashi on almost every daf. But those are in the details; tosfos doesn’t say that rashus entire approach was wrong and that they are inventing a new mahalach in torah ex nihilo.

I know from my own years in yeshiva that had i not had intensive blatt shiurim id never be able to understand rishonim; i could try on my own, but it would have been a colossal failure….the worst part of which would be the fact that i wouldn’t be aware of how much of a failure it is

Maysoh bereshis/merkava also was passed down without being written as per the rambam and other rishonim, for another example.

And just what “great torah sages” are you getting this from? Do they have recorded torahs echoing your sentiment? Or is it “mesorah”? Or is it people who you consider torah sages, but are considered heretics by people like rav shlomo zalman (re, kapach) or the chazon ish (re, liberman), or rav shach and the steipler(re, steinsaltz)?

Can you find a Yeshiva two hundred years ago?

The ramchal and others who talk about what to learn all mention tanach; those who followed the rambam about being meshalesh definitely did so, and those who didn’t probably didn’t have fornal time spent on nach. Not everything which doesn’t come up in a bar ilan search is false

I think it’s also a nice fairy tale to claim that there’s no mesorah and that until the chasam sofer everyone just thought and did whatever they pleased, had no rebbe, no shimush, and accepted any obscure sefer written by anyone who lived in the times of the rishonim. In this fairy tale, no one is an apikores, no one ever thought that hilchos deos was a halachik issue, and of course no one uses agadeta as a source for daas torah. Come to think of it, in the same fairy tale, there was a Jewish army defending its citizens, democracy and total tolerance for LGBT people. There was also no rashu that says that klal yisroel does nothing without its leaders, and all non-kashrus decisions were made by individuals without consulting the archaic and out of date daas torah. They also used to look at the characters of tanach as being no different than you and me, with no particularly special spiritual levels and attributes, and believed that parts of chumash were added later and compiled by some shadow beis din which has no record.

Did i miss anything?

I think the fact that you’re acknowledging liberman, who the chazon ish (a relative no less) referred to as a shanah upiresh, with the other maskilim, shows that we are on very, very different wavelengths. I don’t think i have anything to offer that would interest you, as my studies are from Torah’s own perspective, not academia and a desire to undermine mesorah. Take care.

Halevi, I don’t think there’s anything to be gained in classifying rishonim….r. Moshe taku is an enigmatic figure who wrote one sefer that we don’t have a complete version of. He’s not quoted in tosfos, or any subsequent halacha sefer as far as i know. In an issue of halacha, we have a beaten path. We (well, nomesorah doesn’t) have a mesorah, handed down from the previous generations in both how to learn and how to believe. Not every statement from every sefer written by every rabbi who ever lived is the same or treated the same. No one’s going to quote a menoras hamaor to argue with something in the Taz or shach. No one’s going to take an obscure sefer and use it to overturn or even reexamine basic rishonim and achronim. The same maskilish ilk like to read r. Moshe taku as being someone who believes that Hashem chas veshalom has a body. We, in the nesorah community, reject this idea and say simply that we don’t understand what he said, and that we have a mesorah that to say such things is forbidden. Likewise, we have a definition of prohibited belief systems outlined in the rambam. One of them is listening to the chachamim who transmit torah from generation to generation,; one who rejects this mesorah, says the rambam, is “machchish magideah”, contradicting the Torah’s teachers. If someone says that a drasha is incorrect, or a halacha lemoshe misnai is false, he has done that.