Volume 42 Number 27
Produced: Thu Feb 26 4:39:18 US/Eastern 2004
Subjects Discussed In This Issue:
Bloomfield CO
[Eli Turkel]
Cleaning for Pesach (2)
[Carl Singer, Martin Stern]
Dani-el or Daniel
[Yehuda Landy]
Depriving People of Income/Employment
[Irwin Weiss]
Eilat
[Eli Turkel]
Halachic Priority
[Binyomin Segal]
Marriage in England
[Ed Greenberg]
Mikvah and Shul
[Martin Stern]
Non-Dairy Creamer/Bacon Bits
[Irwin Weiss]
Wedding in Synagogues
[Shmuel Himelstein]
Weddings in Shuls
[Martin Stern]
Yom Haaznaut
[Eli Turkel]
----------------------------------------------------------------------
From: Eli Turkel <turkel@...>
Date: Wed, 25 Feb 2004 13:45:09 +0200
Subject: Bloomfield CO
I believe there is also a chabad minyan in Colorado Springs - check
which is easier to get to
Prof. Eli Turkel, <turkel@...> on 2/25/2004
Department of Mathematics, Tel Aviv University
----------------------------------------------------------------------
From: Carl Singer <casinger@...>
Date: Wed, 25 Feb 2004 08:12:10 -0500
Subject: Cleaning for Pesach
Reminds me of the many years that I planned my Army reserve duty for the
2 weeks before Pesach.
My being out of the house gave my wife free reign to do according to her
family traditions. (I did the heavy lifting prior to leaving.) As our
children grew older they were enlisted to help out -- sure it's easier
to clean the house at 2:00 AM when the children are asleep -- but Pesach
"learning" takes place in many ways beyond the retelling at the Seder.
Consider involving your children with some of the Pesach preparation
chores -- they'll remember these family traditions and likely pass them
along.
Now that I'm retired from the Army I tend get underfoot as I try to help
out with Pesach cleaning. I think I'll hide in my home office and "do
e-mail."
Carl
----------------------------------------------------------------------
From: Martin Stern <md.stern@...>
Date: Wed, 25 Feb 2004 13:58:12 +0000
Subject: Re: Cleaning for Pesach
on 25/2/04 12:56 pm, Tzvi Stein <Tzvi.Stein@...> wrote:
>> Correct me if I'm wrong, but a lot of people go away for Pesach to avoid
>> the cleaning and cooking that the holiday involves. Why would you want
>> to go to a hotel where you have to cook 3 meals a day under much more
>> uncomfortable conditions than can be found in your own kitchen?
>
> Because you avoid having to clean your house for Pesach.
Despite current practice, one does not have to clean the house for
Pesach, one only has to remove all chamets. Crumbs trodden into the
carpets which are totally inedible do not count. Rooms into which
chamets is never brought are also exempt. One certainly does not need to
completely redecorate the house! Many women go mad over Pesach cleaning
not realising the distinction between removing chamets and spring
cleaning. Anyone who finds this posting shocking should consult their
rav for halachic guidance.
Martin Stern
----------------------------------------------------------------------
From: <nzion@...> (Yehuda Landy)
Date: Wed, 25 Feb 2004 15:15:20 +0200
Subject: Re: Dani-el or Daniel
I must say that that although the first part of the posting found its
way into the Da'at Mikrah commentary, I nonetheless find this
inconceivable. How could the Possuk/Yeshezkeil mention a name Daniel
referring to a person who is never mentioned in Tanach? Is there any
other example of this in Tanach?
I need not mention that the second half of the posting is totally
unacceptable.
Yehuda Landy
----------------------------------------------------------------------
From: Irwin Weiss <irwin@...>
Date: Wed, 25 Feb 2004 08:13:39 -0500
Subject: Depriving People of Income/Employment
Batya Medad's recent comment regarding weddings in shul ....." Maybe I'm
too much the CPA's daughter, but.... Why deprive the synagogue of the
business of a wedding?" reminds me of something.
We went on a quick trip to Florida recently and at the airport they now
have check-in kiosks with automated baggage tags, boarding passes, etc.,
which the airline has established to save costs (by firing employees).
It is also permissible to go to the counter the old way and have an
employee perform these services. We prefer the latter, because I feel
that one should try to assist people in employment not to be replaced by
machines. In the same way, we always go to the toll booth with a human,
rather than a machine, and won't use the grocery line which is
self-service, but rather go in the line with the checkout person.
(Although I do use the self-service gasoline pump). Someone told me
there is an Halachic basis for this, but I could not find the
source. Any thoughts?
<irwin@...>
Irwin E. Weiss, Esq.
Baltimore, MD
----------------------------------------------------------------------
From: Eli Turkel <turkel@...>
Date: Wed, 25 Feb 2004 13:48:09 +0200
Subject: Eilat
In reference to the discussion of vacationing in Disney world I recently
visited Eilat. It has changed much since my last visit. Instead of
Scandanavian gentiles now the hotels are filled with mainly French Jews
and also many British Jews. A significant portion are religious with
many sheitels and minyanim. There is also a great increase in the number
of kosher restaurants available (especially fancy ones).
----------------------------------------------------------------------
From: Binyomin Segal <bsegal@...>
Date: Tue, 24 Feb 2004 19:32:00 -0600
Subject: Re: Halachic Priority
Yitzchak Moran wrote some troubling things that beg for clarification.
While I agree to a great degree with his conclusion -
> You can't strap on a pair of skis and go immediately down the double
>black diamond runs, after all.
And I even agree with his application of this principle to halacha - a
person who is trying to grow need not wake up one morning and do it all,
indeed he SHOULD not do it all at once.
That is very different than suggesting that halacha condones:
> "Yes, if you're famished, and you're at a truck stop in the middle of
> nowhere, and all they have left is the flounder, it's better you eat
> that than get sick,"
And the problem is not just what it might lead to, the problem is
inherent in this specific case. Unless the danger is VERY EXTREME it
would be forbidden to eat that fish.
But Yitzchak is not really asking that question. He doesn't want to know
what halacha says is the "best absolute answer" he wants to know what
the "best relative answer" for him in his growth is. Yitzchak is mixing
two issues - the internal priority system of halacha, and a priority
system of sinning during growth. Let me see if I can clarify.
If a person is trying to keep halacha and is in x situation with y
conflict, halacha does offer guidance. But Yitzchak is asking - assuming
I am not yet ready to follow the guidance of halacha, can you give me
realistic guidance on how I should choose between sins while I continue
to grow.
The first kind of guidance - a halacha priority system is pretty
explicitly developed in the poskim. I don't mean to imply that all the
applications are clear, certainly there are disagreements among poskim,
but the system for the decision is pretty clear.
The second kind of guidance though is much less developed. And I think
there are a number of reasons why that is true. First off, it is by its
very nature outside the regular halachik system. But second, it asks
that you take into account the person's individual abilities. This of
course is different for each person. As a result, there is by definition
no system here. Rather, the only real system here would be "aseh lcha
rav, ukney lcha chaver" - find a rabbi and a friend who can help advise
you.
Hope that clarifies.
binyomin
----------------------------------------------------------------------
From: Ed Greenberg <edg@...>
Date: Wed, 25 Feb 2004 04:52:58 -0800
Subject: Re: Marriage in England
--On Wednesday, February 25, 2004 12:19 PM +0000 David Ziants
<dziants@...>
> In England it is (or was) the law of the land that a wedding had to
> either take place in a registry office,
I think this must be "was". In 1994 I took my one and only trip to
England, a business trip to Hemel Hempstead -- I worked for 3Com at the
time. I checked into the Sopwell House in St. Albans. As I was exploring
the place, I came upon an array of chairs in the garden, with a chuppah
set up at the head of the array!
It was really heartwarming to see that a Jewish wedding was going to go
on, right where I felt myself to be a "stranger in a strange land."
(With apologies to all residents of England -- it felt strange to me at
the time.)
So in 1994, at least, it was OK to have a wedding in a hotel garden.
(See also: <http://www.sopwellhouse.co.uk/sopwell/weddings.shtml>)
</edg>
Ed Greenberg
San Jose, CA
----------------------------------------------------------------------
From: Martin Stern <md.stern@...>
Date: Wed, 25 Feb 2004 14:08:29 +0000
Subject: Re: Mikvah and Shul
on 25/2/04 12:56 pm, Roger Jefferson <rogerjefferson1975@...> wrote:
> I live in Silver Spring, and until recently, there was not a mikvah
> (that was accepted by R. Anemer, the Rabbi) in Kemp Mill. Kemp Mill is
> an area with about 300-400 orthodox families.
A community is supposed to build a mikveh before it builds a shul. While
this may not be practical when Jews first move into an area because too
few require it, I find it very disturbing that Kemp Mill could have so
many orthodox families without having built one. With that number of
families one would expect it to be in use almost every day by several
women.
Martin Stern
----------------------------------------------------------------------
From: Irwin Weiss <irwin@...>
Date: Wed, 25 Feb 2004 08:05:32 -0500
Subject: Non-Dairy Creamer/Bacon Bits
On a related topic, there are fake bacon bits, made entirely from
vegetable matter and assorted spices, which are said to taste like
bacon. These products are appropriately hekshered, and I know
intellectually that it is permissible to eat them. I just emotionally
can't stand the thought or the smell or the idea of consuming these
things.
<irwin@...>
Baltimore, MD
----------------------------------------------------------------------
From: Shmuel Himelstein <himels@...>
Date: Wed, 25 Feb 2004 15:00:38 +0200
Subject: Wedding in Synagogues
I just found, in Herbert C. Dobrinsky's "A Treasury of Sephardic Laws
and Customs," p. 60, in the section on wedding customs "As Practiced by
Spanish and Portuguese Jews," regarding Congregation Shearith Israel,
the following:
"In early days, the weddings were not held in the synagogue at
Congregation Shearith Israel, but now that has changed, and it is very
common for the synagogue to be used for weddings. The earlier reluctance
to permit synagogue weddings was because of the fear that the possible
overcrowding of facilities ... might result in damage to the physical
facilities of the synagogue building."
Note - not a word of fear of Reform.
Shmuel Himelstein
----------------------------------------------------------------------
From: Martin Stern <md.stern@...>
Date: Wed, 25 Feb 2004 13:51:16 +0000
Subject: Re: Weddings in Shuls
on 25/2/04 12:19 pm, Shmuel Himelstein <himels@...> wrote:
> Although I have no sources available, I understand that Edot HaMizrach have
> no problem with weddings in Shuls.
> Can anyone of these Edot clarify whether this is indeed the case?
My daughter recently married a Teimani in Israel and I decided to follow
the custom of making the mechutanim happy by allowing them to make the
arrangements according to their minhag. As I live in Manchester, England
this was also much more practical. The chuppah was held indoors at the
wedding hall, which was in any case customary in many Orthodox circles
throughout Western Europe.
The Teimanim have many other interesting customs, some of which one
reads about but which have fallen into desuetude in other circles. For
example they write the date according to the minyan hashtarot (i.e. the
Seleucid era counted from the establishment of the successor states
after the death of Alexander the Great) in the ketubah and the witnesses
do not sign it until after the chuppah.
Another old custom which they still preserve is to read the special
haftarah for a chatan during the sheva berachot week (Sos asis -
kechatan yekhahein p'er - which we say on parshat netsavim), which is
said after the regular one of the week which used at one time to be
common minhag.
Also, they still have a meturgaman who reads the targum of each pasuk
after it has been read from the Sefer Torah. The same is done for the
haftarah. This is the origin of the old minhag of saying akdamut after
leining the first pasuk since it was an introduction to the targum. When
Ashkenazim abandoned reading the targum this became somewhat anomalous
and many communities, having forgotten its original purpose, have
changed to reciting it before keriat hatorah so as not to be mafsik in
the keriah. The same applies to yetsiv pitgam which is also an
introduction to the targum on the haftarah.
Martin Stern
----------------------------------------------------------------------
From: Eli Turkel <turkel@...>
Date: Wed, 25 Feb 2004 14:32:44 +0200
Subject: Yom Haaznaut
> What has happened to Yom Ha`assmaout?
> Over 50 years ago the Chief rabbinate of Israel Led by Rabbis
>Ouziel and Kook declared special prayers for this miraculous day. The
>>pronounced the recital of the Hallel. What has happened now? Why can
>one barely find a Jerusalem synagogue that adheres to this? Why does
As a minor point R. Herszog was chief rabbi in 1948 Rav Kook having
passed away several years earlier.
In Raanana all the shuls I know still say Hallel, many with a beracha.
With the situation of Israel in the world and the intafada I suspect
some places do not feel like celebrating. Certainly many cities have
curtailed their secular celebration of yom haazmaut for economic,
security and emotional reasons.
Eli Turkel, <turkel@...> on 2/25/2004
Department of Mathematics, Tel Aviv University
----------------------------------------------------------------------
End of Volume 42 Issue 27
