“James held it as a ????? to give it to Sirius.”

But when Sirius wanted to change the plan he should have given it back to James. Also, if it’s possible to change the secret-keeper, why didn’t Dumbledore change the secret-keeper for Grimmauld Place, considering that he knew that he was going to die?

“There was no other plausible explanation for the Dark Mark, except Voldermort’s resurrection.”

Maybe it just means that he is getting stonger. It could mean anything. Dark Marks are not exactly common household magic. Who is to say that people know what it means when it burns? Who is to say that there is not a way to make it burn? Why should Fudge believe that? Moreover, even if there was no other explanation, the pensieve would still be advantageous because it would allow him to visualize what actually happened, which would make it more believable then just hearing about it.

Ok, now it sounds like you are saying that you didn’t like him but since it might have been because of the beard that you didn’t like him, you gave him a chance to come without a beard, and you still didn’t like him. Had he shaved to begin with you would not have dated him again because you didn’t like him even clean shaven. So it had nothing to do with halacha. (Minor point: In your first post you wrote “I decided to give it another shot knowing that the next time we would meet would be after tisha b’av and he would be clean shaven” and in your second post you wrote “we went out a few times over the three weeks”.)

As an aside, I realized that my first response to you wasn’t really applicable since you were discussing the three weeks as opposed to chol hamoed. But it happens to be that there are halachic justifications there as well.

“Snake showed Fudge incontrovertible proof in the form of his Dark Mark, and Fudge just shook his head.”

That’s not quite as incontrovertible, unless you accept my memory tampering answer.

But it would be a lot harder to deny it if he had been presented with incontrovertible proof.

Chayav inish livisumay:

To address your first post, Joker Bar Daddy’s original question indicated that in all yeshivos besides for Chofetz Chaim, Mussar is not part of the curriculum (or at least that is his perception). I have no idea if that is true or not, but my first response was to provide a reason why a yeshiva would not have mussar – i.e. a possible defense for all the yeshivos that don’t have mussar. You can’t argue against me that R’ Chaim is irrelevant by virtue of the fact that all yeshivos learn mussar, if my whole usage of R’ Chaim was to explain the yeshivos which don’t learn mussar. If in fact all yeshivos do learn mussar, then that would indicate that R’ Chaim’s position was not accepted, or that the level of sickness has changed and my justification would be unnecessary and we could simply tell Joker Bar Daddy that it is indeed just him.

Your second post is addressing a different point that I made which is that the idea of an institutionalized mussar seder does not seem to jive with how the Chofetz Chaim viewed mussar. Even if everyone agrees that everyone needs mussar, that doesn’t mean that everyone’s mussar needs are the same. But I acknowledged that it might not be practical to have individualized mussar.

Why would there be a difference? A pensieve just puts you inside the memory. If the memory is corrupted then that should be what you see. However, we do know that the original memory is still there somewhere, in which case it is possible that the pensieve shows the actual memory, but at least in Slughorn’s case the pensieve showed the corrupted version which would indicate to the contrary.

ibump 2.0:

I was going to ask why they didn’t use veritaserum on Harry to get Fudge to believe that Voldemort back, but it’s the same basic question as using the pensieve. In fact there are many times when they could have used such methods to determine the truth – e.g. Sirius’s innocence. Perhaps these methods are inadmissable in court – memories can be tampered with which presumably could outsmart a truth potion as well.

A galleon is seventeen sickles and a sickle is twenty nine knuts.

Three questions:

1) Why couldn’t they use easy numbers instead of seventeen and twenty nine?

2) The first description of Harry’s vault is: “Inside were mounds of gold coins. Columns of silver. Heaps of little bronze Knuts.” Why didn’t Harry’s parents trade in their heaps of knuts and columns of silver for some galleons?

3) (This one is the real question.) “A plump woman outside an Apothecary was shaking her head as they passed, saying, ‘Dragon liver, seventeen Sickles an ounce, they’re mad….'”

???? ????? ????? ????”? ???? ????? ???? ?’ ??? ???? ???? ?”? ????

??? ?????? ?????? ?????? ????? ??? ?”? ?????? ????? ???? ????? ???? ??????? ????? ????? ????? ????? ???? ?????? ????? ????? ???? ???? ??????? ?????? ?? ???? ??? ??? ????? ???? ????? ????? ????? ?????? ????? ???? ?”? ???? ????? ???’ ?????? ?? ???? ???? ????

?? ?? ??????? ??? ??? ??? ??? ?? ???? ???? ???? ??? ?? ??? ??? ???? ?????? ??? ????? ??? ???? ???? ????? ????? ?????? ??? ??? ???? ????? ??? ????? ?? ????? ??? ????? ????? ??? ????? ??????? ????? ??????? ????? ????”? ???????

???? ???? ?”? ?? ?? ????? ??? ????? ?? ??? ????? ???? ?????? ??? ??? ????? ???? ??? ???? ???? ?????? ?? ??? ????? ?? ????? ????? ????? ???? ??”? ??? ????? ??? ????? ?? ???? ??? ?????? ?? ????? ?????? ???? ????? ?? ?????? ?????? ???? ???? ??? ??? ???? ???? ??? ?????? ???? ???? ????? ???? ????? ?? ?? ???? ?? ???? ??? ????? ????? ???? ?????? ????? ???? ???? ???? ????? ?? ?? ???? ???? ????? ???’ ??????? ?? ???? ???? ???? ????? ??? ?????? ???? ??????

????? ????? ?? ??? ????? ????? ???? ?????? ?? ???? ????? ???’ ?? ???? ???? ???? ?????? ?? ?? ???? ???? ???? ?? ??? ???? ???? ???? ????? ???? ????

Noda B’Yehuda Mahdura Kamma siman 13

http://hebrewbooks.org/pdfpager.aspx?req=1497&pgnum=16

Although the Chasam Sofer disagrees with him in O.C. siman 154

http://hebrewbooks.org/pdfpager.aspx?req=794&st=&pgnum=118

R’ Soloveitchik held that it is muttar and therefore a chiyuv to shave on chol hamoed. See “Halakhic Positions of Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik” p.25 and Nefesh Harav p.189.

Igros Moshe O.C. 1:163

http://hebrewbooks.org/pdfpager.aspx?req=14673&st=&pgnum=285

Why is Snape trusted? Ok, Dumbledore had incontrovertible proof, but no one else did. The constant refrain, as expressed most eloquently by Lupin in the sixth book is that Dumbledore trusts Snape and we trust Dumbledore. Now Lupin clearly admits to not knowing why Dumbledore trusts Snape. Why does he assume that Dumbledore is practically infallible? Well maybe because Dumbledore is the greatest wizard alive so it is a safe assumption that Snape wouldn’t be able to fool him. Yet Voldemort is pretty much Dumbledore’s equal and he also trusts Snape. ?? ????, Snape is fooling one of the two greatest wizards. So why should anyone be so confident that Dumbledore is not the one being fooled. (If anything I would think that between Dumbledore and Voldemort, Dumbledore is more likely to place trust in someone who shouldn’t really be trusted.)

I have a few possible answers:

1) Voldemort didn’t really trust Snape. However, I don’t see how Lupin could have known this.

2) Dumbledore might have told Lupin that he had incontrovertible proof without telling him what the proof was.

3) Something to do with how Voldemort doesn’t understand love and those kind of things.

I think it seems pretty clear from the way the ashkenazi Rishonim talk about it, that in their times mayim acharonim just wasn’t done. They don’t really discuss it in terms of what the halacha is inasmuch as they are explaining why it wasn’t being done.

“The Mishna Berura says its a chiyuv.”

No he doesn’t. In ‘?”? ? he writes: ??? ????? ???? ???? ??? ?????? ?????? ?? ???? ???? ??? ????? ????? ???? ????? ? and in ?”? ?? he explains the reasoning behind Tosafos’s position which was quoted by the Shulchan Aruch, and he notes that several acharonim are machmir. In ‘?”? ? he says that even for those who are always careful about mayim acharonim it is ???? ???? ?? ??.

“Remember, she makes up the rules.”

Fair point.

“The Aruch Hashulchan might be implying that the particular Bal Tosfos who said that was on a mountain.”

It’s not just Tosafos. The Mordechai, the Rosh, the Tur, the Hagahos Maimoni, the Shulchan Aruch, and the Levush which I quoted earlier (and perhaps others) all mention it. Granted, one could argue that they were all just following Tosafos, but you can’t just dismiss it as something a lone renegade rishon said which was uniformly rejected.

“The smoker is violating open halachos about “Venishmartem me’od lenafshosaichem””

How did this pasuk get co-opted as the source to stay away from danger. The pasuk is talking about avodah zarah, and the various midrashim and Torah commentators speak about it in that context. I have not seen anywhere in Chazal or Rishonim where this pasuk is the source for this issur. The closest thing that I have seen would be the Gemara in Berachos 32b and Tosafos in Shavuos 36a. The Maharsha in fact points this out in the Gemara in Berachos. The earliest sources that I have seen use this pasuk as the source are the Rashbash in siman 1 and the Sefer Charedim. Then suddenly when we get to the late Acharonim, I have seen this pasuk being used by many of them as such a source. Anyone have any idea how this happened, or know of an earlier source that uses this pasuk?

4) Why did Harry have to be the one to locate and destroy the horcruxes? I’m sure others (e.g. Kingsley, Moody et al) could have done a much better job.

5) The whole fourth book makes no sense. Why did (fake) Moody have to devise the entire elaborate plan of entering Harry into the tournament, and helping him every step of the way, and volunteering to carry the cup etc.? He could have skipped all of that and just turned any random thing into a portkey at any random time and he would have achieved the same result of getting Harry to the graveyard, with a lot less suspicion created along the way.

A few more questions:

1) Harry beats Voldemort because he has the allegiance of the Elder Wand because he disarmed Malfoy who had disarmed Dumbledore. However, Harry didn’t win the Elder Wand from Malfoy; it was just Malfoy’s regular wand. So why would Harry have the allegiance of the Elder Wand?

2) In the first book, Dudley’s friend Piers is described as “a scrawny boy with a face like a rat” yet a mere six pages later, we are told “Piers, Dennis, Malcolm, and Gordon were all big and stupid”. ??? ?????.

3) Hermione says that she has never done a memory charm before, yet she had already modified her parents memories. Maybe you can be mechalek between wiping memories and changing memories.

Here’s a question:

In the seventh book we are introduced to the “trace”, a means by which the Ministry can track underage magic. Yet this is at odds with earlier books where the Ministry is not able to determine if an underage wizard did magic; they can merely determine that magic was performed in a certain place (e.g. Dobby in the beginning of the second book).

I think everyone here is wrong (although feel free to disagree with me). First of all, there are two different hebrew words that are spelled ?????, depending on whether the nekuda under the ? is a patach (and the ? has a dagesh), or the nekuda under the ? is a chataf patach. When it’s just a patach, the word means sinners (as in selichos ???? ????? ??????). When it’s a chataf patach, it means the cause of sins. The word ?????? can only mean sinners. Pshat in the Gemara, is that since the pasuk wrote ????? instead of ??????, it must be coming to teach us that you should wipe out the cause of sins (i.e. the Yetzer Harah) and not the sinners themselves. It can’t mean to wipe out the sins because then Bruriah’s pshat doesn’t answer the question that she asked on R’ Meir – how would it be ?????? ??? ????? Once you say that it means the Yetzer Harah, it is clear how it would be ?????? ??? ????. See Rashi, the Maharsha, and the Yaavetz.

Interestingly, the Tzlach seems to feel (or at least strongly entertain the notion) that we don’t pasken like Bruriah/R’ Meir as evidenced by the fact that in both the preceeding Gemara and the subsequent Gemara, tis pasuk is interpreted as referring to the downfall of the actual Reshaim.

“And who says anyone said you don’t? (And who says…)”

Popa implied it with his veiled barb which wasn’t actually so veiled. But I didn’t take it personally.

So for anyone who still cares, the ORIGINAL QUESTION was: “Ever seen a forest animal die of old age”

Which I answered: http://www.theyeshivaworld.com/coffeeroom/topic/ever-seen-a-forest-animal-die-of-old-age#post-537335

Prophecies ??? ??? ?????