Volume 45 Number 60
Produced: Fri Nov 12 5:57:44 EST 2004
Subjects Discussed In This Issue:
Halacha and Change (2)
[Ari Trachtenberg, Ben Katz]
Modern Orthodox
[Janice Gelb]
No Double Parashot
[Menashe Elyashiv]
Price of Silver in Talmudic times
[Mike Gerver]
Query re Shmuel Shraga Feigenzohn and _Sha`arei Homat Yerushalayim_
[Joseph I. Lauer]
Tefilin and Mirrors (3)
[Orrin Tilevitz, Hillel (Sabba) Markowitz, Gershon Dubin]
What Would Moses Wear? (Halacha's changes)
[c.halevi]
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From: Ari Trachtenberg <trachten@...>
Date: Thu, 11 Nov 2004 10:17:08 -0500
Subject: Re: Halacha and Change
From: Meir Possenheimer <meir@...>
>...Judaism may adapt to the times in accordance with
>immutable Halacha, change it cannot. And orthodoxy simply means
>conforming with this immutable Halacha.
This seems to be an unreasonable simplification of Halacha. First and
foremost, the halacha is not always clear, straightforward, or reachable
(or else this mailing list would be rendered moot). What you could say
is that the "truth is immutable", that G-d has one clear-cut way in
which He wants the world to function ... but I'm not aware of anything
in our tradition to indicate this.
Best,
Ari Trachtenberg, Boston University
http://people.bu.edu/trachten mailto:<trachten@...>
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From: Ben Katz <bkatz@...>
Date: Thu, 11 Nov 2004 11:45:13 -0600
Subject: Re: Halacha and Change
>From: Meir Possenheimer <meir@...>
>Mordechai Horowitz writes:
> "Judaism is not immutable. It changes with every generation.
> Moshe Rabbeinu never davened Shmonei Esrei, he certainly didn't
> own a black hat. The idea of the Oral law is that Judaism must
> change, in accordance with halacha, to the needs of the
> generation."
>Black hats, streimals, kipot srugot etc have nothing in themselves to do
>with Judaism - what we cover our heads with is irrelevant, the main
>point is that we cover our heads. As for Moshe Rabbeinu and Shmonei
>Esrei, Tefilla was instituted to replace the korbonos now that we have
>no Beis Hamikdosh. Judaism may adapt to the times in accordance with
>immutable Halacha, change it cannot. And orthodoxy simply means
>conforming with this immutable Halacha.
I agree with Mr. Horowitz and disagree with Mr. Possenheimer.
Halacaha does change. Rab Yosi Haglili was a great tana, yet he did not
consider chicken meat. Now the halacha does. And Jews in Israel did
not require head coverings even from the amud as late as the time of
masechet soferim (sorry, i don't have the exact reference at present).
Ben Z. Katz, M.D.
Children's Memorial Hospital, Division of Infectious Diseases
2300 Children's Plaza, Box # 20, Chicago, IL 60614
e-mail: <bkatz@...>
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From: Janice Gelb <j_gelb@...>
Date: Thu, 11 Nov 2004 09:28:12 -0800 (PST)
Subject: Re: Modern Orthodox
Bill Bernstein <billbernstein@...> wrote:
> I will reiterate that it is all but impossible to find proponents of the
> MO view as I have outlined in the pages of English-language Jewish
> publications. If anyone knows of such a publication I would be happy
> for the reference.
I found the following 1993 article from Judaism magazine (published by
the American Jewish Congress) interesting: it makes a distinction
between "behavioral" Modern Orthodoxy and "philosophical" Modern
Orthodoxy:
http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0411/is_n1_v42/ai_13796421
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From: Menashe Elyashiv <elyashm@...>
Date: Thu, 11 Nov 2004 19:37:00 +0200 (IST)
Subject: No Double Parashot
In Israel, no double parashot occurs also in a leap year of BSZ & GCZ,
i.e. when Pesah starts on Shabbat and ends on Friday, outside of Israel
are missing 1 Shabbat, they double Mattot - Masei.
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From: <MJGerver@...> (Mike Gerver)
Date: Thu, 11 Nov 2004 15:39:47 EST
Subject: Price of Silver in Talmudic times
Elozor Reich, in v45n67, offers this calculation of the present day value
of 400 shekalim,
A silver Shekel weighs about 14 gm, so 400 Shekolim come to 5600
gm. There are about 31.1 gm to a Troy Ounce, so dividing by 31.1,
we get around 180 Troy Ounces. The current (Nov 2004) price of
silver is about $4 per Troy 0unce, so 400 Shekalim (180 X 4) comes
to $720.
but notes that the real cost of silver was in some sense much greater
then than it is now.
To quantify this, it is useful to assume that unskilled wages, and the
cost of bread, have remained constant. One can do this consistently,
since the amount of time that an unskilled worker has to work to earn
the price of a loaf of bread has remained nearly the same in the past
2000 years, about a quarter of an hour. This is not so surprising, since
making bread is largely labor intensive.
The gemara notes somewhere (I'm not sure where, maybe someone can tell
me) that an unskilled worker earns one shekel a day. Assuming a 12 hour
work day, which I think is about right for that time, at $6 an hour, a
shekel is equivalent to $72, and silver costs about $140 an ounce. This
is much higher than the present price of silver, though as recently as
1979, when the Hunt brothers tried unsuccessfully to corner the world
silver market, it was as high as $52 an ounce, and taking into account
inflation, that would be something like $100 an ounce is today's
dollars. The price of gold would be $3500 an ounce, again not so much
more than the late 1979 price of $800/ounce, maybe $1500/ounce in
today's dollars. Remember too that the technology for mining gold and
silver was more primitive in those days, and the known sources of silver
were far fewer before the rich silver mines of the New World were
discovered.
Then the cost of the Ma'arat Hamachpelah would be $28,800, rather steep
for a gravesite that, at the time, didn't have any special significance
to the rest of the world. (Yes, I know there is a midrash that Adam and
Chava are buried there, but I assume this wasn't known or believed by
the general public at the time, so would not have affected the market
price.)
The value of a ketuba by this calculation, by the way, would be only
$3600, which seems quite low by today's standards of divorce
settlements. Though maybe not for an unskilled laborer, who probably
would not have been able to accumulate much savings. It should also be
kept in mind that the cost of housing was much lower then, relative to
wages and the cost of food, then it is now. (Renting a house cost only 1
shekel a month, which seems very low until you remember that we're
talking about a one room house in rural Iraq without indoor plumbing.)
The relative cost of clothing was much higher before the Industrial
Revolution than it is today (about 3 shekels for a shirt), but people
made do with far fewer changes of clothes. So maybe it would have been
possible to live for a while on $3600.
Mike Gerver
Raanana, Israel
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From: Joseph I. Lauer <josephlauer@...>
Date: Thu, 11 Nov 2004 16:31:47 -0500
Subject: Query re Shmuel Shraga Feigenzohn and _Sha`arei Homat Yerushalayim_
While not in a position (yet?) to answer the major questions raised
in MJ 45:57 by Prof. Martin S. Jaffee (via Arieh Lebowitz) regarding
Shmuel Shraga Feigenzohn and his Sha'arei Homat Yerushalayim, it should
be noted that 14 Encyclopedia Judaica 255 ("Romm") mentions "Feiginsohn"
as follows: "The firm prospered from 1867 to 1888 under the leadership
of its literary director, the Hebrew writer Samuel Shraga Feiginsohn
(known as [Hebrew - ShaFa"N ha-Sofer]). *** After the death of Deborah
Romm [1903] the firm declined. The heirs were not interested in running
it and Feiginsohn was reinstated as director. He remained with the firm
even after it was sold to Baron D. Gunzburg in 1910 and resold several
years later to the firm of Noah Gordon and Haim Cohen. During this
period, a complete edition of the Jerusalem Talmud was published."
Joseph I. Lauer
Brooklyn, New York
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From: Orrin Tilevitz <tilevitzo@...>
Date: Thu, 11 Nov 2004 08:15:47 -0800 (PST)
Subject: Tefilin and Mirrors
I regularly see posters in shuls showing the "right" and "wrong"
positions for tefillin shel yad and shel rosh. It would be helpful if
there were a companion poster showing, side by side, someone wearing
tefillin while davening, with the heading "right", and the same person
wearing tefillin while talking, with the heading "wrong". Could someone
direct me to a source for such a poster or, better yet, send me a
printable file?
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From: Hillel (Sabba) Markowitz <hsabbam@...>
Date: Thu, 11 Nov 2004 14:48:26 -0500
Subject: RE: Tefilin and Mirrors
>From: David Glasner <DGLASNER@...>
>While many people are exceedingly concerned about the position of the
>bayit of the shel rosh, fewer seem to care about the position of the
>kesher of the shel rosh. Casual observation suggests that perhaps 25 to
>50 percent of regular tefilin wearers don't have the kesher in the
>correct position centered at base of the skull. I have often speculated
>that a good engineer could make a lot of money by constructing a
>retractable double mirror that would allow a person simultaneously to
>check both the position of the bayit and the kesher, especially if a
>patent could be secured and the appropriate haskamot were conferred.
I would say that it is a matter of practicality. It is a lot easier to
feel the position of the kesher and put it in the hollow at the base of
the skull than to feel that the shel rosh is in the correct position in
front.
Hillel (Sabba) Markowitz - <sabbahillel@...>
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From: Gershon Dubin <gershon.dubin@...>
Date: Thu, 11 Nov 2004 17:03:58 -0500
Subject: Tefilin and Mirrors
From: David Glasner <DGLASNER@...>
<< While many people are exceedingly concerned about the position of the
bayit of the shel rosh, fewer seem to care about the position of the
kesher of the shel rosh. Casual observation suggests that perhaps 25 to
50 percent of regular tefilin wearers don't have the kesher in the
correct position centered at base of the skull.>>
My observation is that many people don't know the proper forward/back
position of the shel rosh; many wear it too far forward and don't
realize that if it's beyond the hairline (NOT the hair) one is not
yotze [fulfill the requirement].
Often the reason is that the retzuos [straps] stretch and no longer keep
the S"R in position; people don't realize that an adjustment of the
kesher [knot] that takes approximately 15 seconds can preserve their
mitzva.
I distribute, free of charge, 3x5 index cards showing the proper
position and how to make the adjustment for both common types of kesher
shel rosh. You can see what they look like at
http://www.aishdas.org/articles/tefilinPoster.pdf; the top picture is
the front of both cards, and the bottom two pictures are the backs of
the cards.
Feel free to contact me off list to arrange to get these cards.
Gershon
<gershon.dubin@...>
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From: c.halevi <c.halevi@...>
Date: Thu, 11 Nov 2004 11:27:30 -0600
Subject: What Would Moses Wear? (Halacha's changes)
Shalom, All:
Mordechai Horowitz wrote that >>Judaism is not immutable. It changes with
every generation. Moshe Rabbeinu never davened Shmonei Esrei, he
certainly didn't own a black hat.<<
Meir Possenheimer replied that >>Black hats, streimals, kipot srugot etc
have nothing in themselves to do with Judaism - what we cover our heads
with is irrelevant, the main point is that we cover our heads. <<
Yes, many Jews **now** cover their heads - but I see no evidence that
Moshe, King David or any of the patriarchs did. Can anyone here cite
Biblical proof they did? I doubt it.
If covering our heads were such a great mitzva, then (A) there would be
a bracha (blessing) said every time we did it. But we don't make any
bracha for this. (B) Since covering one's head nowadays is viewed as a
mitzva, then why are unmarried women exempt? In general, women get a
pass on mitzvot that are positive actions which are time-dependent. But
wearing a head covering, while a positive action, is not time-dependent,
so unmarried women should have to cover their hair - but they
don't. Ergo, IMHO this is not a Torah halacha but rather a custom that
arose long after the Torah was given.
Meir also wrote that >>As for Moshe Rabbeinu and Shmonei Esrei, Tefilla
was instituted to replace the korbonos now that we have no Beis
Hamikdosh.<<
Tefilla (prayer) pre-dates the Temples. I was even taught that each of
our forefathers instituted a different one of the daily services. Some
even claim that "Alaynu" was written by Yehoshua (Joshua). Certainly,
the Torah and Prophets are replete with prayers offered by Avraham
(Abraham), Yaakov (Jacob), Shmuel (Samuel) etc., while Shlomo (Solomon)
prayed up a storm at the dedication of the First Temple. The Priestly
Blessing is also a prayer.
Charles Chi (Yeshaya) Halevi
<halevi@...>
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End of Volume 45 Issue 60
