Volume 33 Number 87
Produced: Thu Nov 23 13:47:07 US/Eastern 2000
Subjects Discussed In This Issue:
Bris by phone
[Aharon Fischman]
Hachnasat Orhim, Health, Hygiene, and Related Issues
[Eliezer Kwass]
Halachicha & Pregnancy (Vol. 33, #68)
[Catherine S. Perel]
Plural of Talis in Yiddish
[Meylekh Viswanath]
Plural of Tallit
[Sid Gordon]
Questions regarding Bris Milah
[Emmanuel Ifrah]
Shabbat HaGadol (2)
[Jay F Shachter, Andrew Klafter]
Surrogate Mother (4)
[Joel Goldberg, Ezriel Krumbein, Janet Rosenbaum, Ezra
Rosenfeld]
Talis katan/godol
[Gershon Dubin]
v'tain tal umatar
[Ed Norin]
Announcement: Job Openings
[Shmuel Jablon]
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From: Aharon Fischman <afischman@...>
Date: Mon, 20 Nov 2000 21:35:41 -0500
Subject: Bris by phone
My sister in law in recently had a boy and my other brother in law
called us from the bris so that my wife and could hear the goings on.
As we heard the brachot we were wondering: were we supposed to respond
Amen as if we were there, were we not required to repspond but were
allowed to, or should we not respond?
Thanks,
Aharon
<afischman@...>
www.alluregraphics.com
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From: Eliezer Kwass <kwass@...>
Date: Wed, 22 Nov 2000 10:50:01 +0200
Subject: Hachnasat Orhim, Health, Hygiene, and Related Issues
Shalom,
Regarding hachnasat orchim and health issues:
A comment by the Beis Halevi (available at
http://www.darchenoam.org/articles/web/parsha/ar_chayei.htm as Rivka:
Kindness with Wisdom and Tact) paints a vivid picture of how to deal with
health issues in hachnasat orchim situations. He points out that Eliezer
asked to drink directly from the jug ! Rivka picked up on the subtlety of
the situation, combining her kindness with wisdom and tact. It deals with
a situation where the guest might be the cause of the health problem, but
his comments might still be helpful to readers, especially the author of
the original comments posted in vol. 33 #14.
kol tuv
Eliezer Kwass
Darche Noam web site
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From: Catherine S. Perel <perel@...>
Date: Mon, 20 Nov 2000 17:41:05 -0600
Subject: Halachicha & Pregnancy (Vol. 33, #68)
On Sun, 05 Nov 2000 15:48:49 , Alexis Rosoff wrote:
> How is this medically possible? I was taught in college biology that
> menstruation is the decay expul- sion of the uterine lining following
> the lack of fertilisa- tion of the ovum (that's grammatically awkward,
> but the best I can do). Logically, it seems to me that you can't
> menstruate during pregnancy, because of the developing embryo/fetus...
> or am I wrong?
You are slightly mistaken. While it is usually the case that
menstruation marks the expulsion of the uterine lining when an ovum is
not fertilized, there are instances, rare and unusual as they may be,
when a pregnant woman continues to have menses throughout her pregnancy.
One other point: logic and the human being (in body, soul, and mind), do
not always coincide.
Catherine S. Perel
<perel@...>
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From: Meylekh Viswanath <pviswanath@...>
Date: Wed, 22 Nov 2000 11:05:51 -0500
Subject: Plural of Talis in Yiddish
Mr. Katz is, unfortunately, not knowledgeable regarding standard
academic Yiddish (by standard academic Yiddish, I mean the standardized
form that is accepted by YIVO and is taught at all - or almost all - the
Universities in the US and in Israel). Yiddish is a language that has
its own geist, which is not at all that of Hebrew. However, it is a
Jewish language, just as Biblical Hebrew is, and to a large extent,
Modern Hebrew as well (thank God).
We could hypothesize as to why certain plurals are formed in Yiddish
they way they are, just as we could hypothesize about a lot of
"irregular" forms in Hebrew (e.g. why laylah is masculine -- shall we
say somebody got confused :-)) or in any language. That's really not
relevant. What is relevant is that there are many nouns in Yiddish that
are pluralized with 'im.' It's not the most common pluralization, but
it's there. For example, the plural of 'nar' (fool) is 'naronim;' the
plural of 'doktor (doctor) is 'doktoyrim.' Similarly, the plural of
'talis' is 'taleysim.' No question.
Carl Singer is right about taleysim, though not quite right about
Standard Academic Yiddish. It does not sound like High German at all
(unless the base language for comparison is Japanese); of course, it
might sound more like German than Carl's Yiddish, particularly to Carl;
however, as an unbiased person who's learnt High German, Standard
Academic Yiddish, and Central Yiddish dialect, none of them as a first
language, High German is quite different from SAY.
I can't say anything about what WEVD sounded like in the 1970s, but at
least since the late 80s when I have listened to it, their language
sounds quite like Yiddish. And by the way, in Standard Yiddish, the
plural of 'oytobus' is 'oytobusn,' not 'oytobuses' or 'oytobusim,'
though I don't doubt that street speakers might use 'busim.' (And I
wouldn't tell a native speaker -- you're wrong! But I would tell
somebody learning Yiddish to use 'oytobusn.')
Meylekh Viswanath
Associate Professor of Finance
Lubin School of Business, Pace University, 1 Pace Plaza New York, NY 10038.
Tel: (212)346-1817; Fax: (212) 346-1573
mailto:<pviswanath@...> http://webpage.pace.edu/pviswanath
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From: Sid Gordon <sid.gordon@...>
Date: Tue, 21 Nov 2000 18:43:31 +0200
Subject: re: Plural of Tallit
Gilad J. Gevaryahu writes:
>The plurality of words with "it" suffix is sometimes with "yot" and
>sometimes with "tot" and occasionally with both. Therefore "tarmit" is
>only "tarmiyot" (Rashi, Sanhedrin 109a); but "brit" is only "britot"
This may be getting a little far afield but the anecdote is amusing
anyway (though possibly apocryphal). The plural of "hazit", meaning
"front", is "hazitot". During the Six-Day War when the Jordanian
announcer on the Hebrew news was broadcasting (prematurely) about the
great Arab victory, he said their forces were advancing "b'chol
hahaziyot". He meant to say they were advancing on all fronts, but what
came out is that they were advancing on all the bras ("haziya" means bra
in modern Hebrew).
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From: Emmanuel Ifrah <eifrah@...>
Date: Tue, 21 Nov 2000 19:57:17 +0100
Subject: Re: Questions regarding Bris Milah
In Volume 33 Number 82, Rabbi Eliezer Shemtov asked:
>>Is there any way that a 'clamp bris' is kosher?
>>Are there different types of clamps?
The Journal of Halacha & Contemporary Society recently dedicated a complete
article to this topic:
Rabbi Donny Frank, "Circumcision Clamps," JHCS, XXXVI (Fall 1998), pp.
32-57.
To order copies of the journal, one can call Mrs. Claire Friedman:
212-334-9285.
Emmanuel Ifrah (Paris, France)
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From: Jay F Shachter <jay@...>
Date: Mon, 20 Nov 200 19:06:10 -0600 (CST)
Subject: Shabbat HaGadol
In a recent issue of mail.jewish, a poster stated:
> By the way, a similar (apparent) anomoly occurs with the word
> 'Shabbat', which is also feminine: we refer to the Shabbat preceding
> Pesach as 'Shabbat HaGadol'. My speculation in this case is that the
> phrase derives from the occurrence of 'hagadol' in the last verse of
> the haftarah recited that day.
If the person who wrote the above pronounced a qamatz differently from a
patax, as many Ashkenazim do, he would probably have been less confused
and uncertain about the above-cited phrase "Shabbat HaGadol", in which
the Bet is vocalized with a patax, clearly indicating that "Shabbat" is
in its smikhut form, and confirming the poster's speculation that we say
"Shabbat HaGadol" for the same reason that we say "Shabbat Shuva" or
"Shabbat Xazon". Similarly, "lashon" and "`ayin" are both feminine
nouns, thus no one who has received a minimal Jewish education would
ever say "lashon hara`" or "`ayin hara`", since, clearly, the smikhut
form of the noun must be used.
Jay F. ("Yaakov") Shachter
6424 N Whipple St, Chicago IL 60645-4111
(1-773)7613784
<jay@...>
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From: Andrew Klafter <andrew.klafter@...>
Date: Tue, 21 Nov 2000 22:51:15 -0500
Subject: Shabbat HaGadol
>From: Caela Kaplowitz <caelak@...>
>Hi! I am a lurker on this excellent list.
>I believe that the word "HaGadol" in Shabbat HaGadol does not modify the
>word "Shabbat". It is intended to mean: "The Shabbat of the Great
>(Miracle)"-- i.e. Gadol modifies Miracle, Nays, which is masculine.
Here is a source for you: Shulchan Aruch Hilchos Pesach, Orach Chaim
430:1. "The Sabbath preceeding Pesach is called SHABBAS HAGADOL because
of the the great miricale which occurred on it..." And see Magen
Avraham there.
Nachum Klafter
Department of Psychiatry-University of Cincinnati
222 Piedmont Ave. Cincinnati OH 45219
(513)475-8710 FAX(513)475-8023
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From: Joel Goldberg <joel@...>
Date: Wed, 22 Nov 2000 08:18:34 EST
Subject: Re: Surrogate Mother
Nicolas Rebibo <info@...> asks:
//I am looking for some references dealing with the status of baby born
from a surrogate mother (non jewish surrogate mother and jewish
"biological parents").//
In a previous life I used to go to a Science and G'mara shiur given by
professor Ze'ev Lev. He quoted a g'mara (sorry, I don't remember where,
but it might be chulin) that discussed the status of a birth directly
from one animal's womb into a second animal's womb, followed by exiting
the second womb "into the air". The result on the question of status
(b'chor, or whose b'chor) was "TEIKO".
Joel Goldberg
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From: Ezriel Krumbein <ezsurf@...>
Date: Mon, 20 Nov 2000 23:20:14 -0800
Subject: Re: Surrogate Mother
> I am looking for some references dealing with the status of baby born
> from a surrogate mother (non jewish surrogate mother and jewish
> "biological parents").
There is a breif discussion on Host Mothers in Contemporary Halakhic
Problems volume 1 by Rabbi J. David Bleich pages 106-109.
Kol Tov
Ezriel
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From: Janet Rosenbaum <jerosenb@...>
Date: Wed, 22 Nov 2000 12:28:20 +0200
Subject: Surrogate Mother
A good start are a few articles on the Jewish law website:
http://www.jlaw.com/
though if this is an issue in real life, you should definitely see a
rabbi to discuss the child's options.
Janet
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From: Ezra Rosenfeld <zomet@...>
Date: Tue, 21 Nov 2000 08:36:50 +0200
Subject: Surrogate Mother
Two (hebrew) articles appeared in volume 7 of Techumin. They were
translated into english and appeared in the first volume of "Crossroads
- Halacha and the Modern World"
Ezra Rosenfeld
Executive Director - Zomet
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From: Gershon Dubin <gershon.dubin@...>
Date: Mon, 20 Nov 2000 22:37:38 -0500
Subject: Talis katan/godol
From: Bernard Katz <bkatz@...>
<<Another possibility is that these phrases are ellipses or contractions
for the likes of 'tallit shel katan' and 'tallit shel gadol'. I should
emphasize that this is pure speculation on my part. >>
Rav Yaakov Kamenetsky gives this as the reason for the
terminology talis katan although he does not address talis godol. His
rationale is that the minimum size for a talis koton is that size which
would cover the body and head of a 9 year old child.
Gershon
<gershon.dubin@...>
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From: Ed Norin <EngineerEd@...>
Date: Tue, 21 Nov 2000 08:01:12 EST
Subject: v'tain tal umatar
Could someone from the MJ community tell me exactly on what day and in
which service, we are to start saying "v'tain tal umatar lebrachah" in
our amidah?
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From: Shmuel Jablon <rabbij@...>
Date: Mon, 20 Nov 2000 16:29:32 -0800
Subject: Announcement: Job Openings
Shalom to all!
If anyone is interested- or knows anyone interested-in any of the
following, please drop me a line.
Shmuel Jablon
EXCITING OPPORTUNITIES AVAILABLE
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2001-2001 school year.
1)Experienced Upper School Principal in Judaic and/or General Studies
2)Experienced Judaic Studies faculty for Upper School students (all subjects)
3)Experienced Judaic Studies faculty for Middle School students (all subjects)
4)Experienced Judaic Studies faculty for Lower School students (all subjects)
5)Department chairs to teach, supervise and develop curricula in Judaic
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Salary and benefits are commensurate with your qualifications. Proven
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Rabbi Pinchos Hecht, Head of School, phone 216-932-0220, x105, <hechtp@...>
Rabbi Shmuel Jablon, Head of Lower School, phone 216-932-0220, x121,
<rabbij@...>
(fax 216-932-0345)
Rabbi Shmuel Jablon
<rabbij@...>
Find out about my new book, JEWISH ANSWERS, at www.rabbijablon.com.
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End of Volume 33 Issue 87
