Volume 54 Number 62
Produced: Fri Apr 13 5:56:27 EDT 2007
Subjects Discussed In This Issue:
162 Educational Websites about the Holocaust
[Jacob Richman]
Copyright law and learning
[Abe Lebowitz]
Copyright Law and Learning
[Guido Elbogen]
Kabbalah Center and Ovadya Yosef
[<estabestah@...>]
Kitniyot
[Moshe Koren]
Kitniyot on Pesach (2)
[Batya Medad, Perets Mett]
Luchos
[<FriedmanJ@...>]
Machon Shilo
[Yisrael Medad]
matzoh she-avar alav hapesach
[Orrin Tilevitz]
Quoting others
[Carl Singer]
Talking in Schule
[Frank Reiss]
Unmarried women and kippot?
[Ken Bloom]
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From: Jacob Richman <jrichman@...>
Date: Tue, 10 Apr 2007 16:06:32 +0300
Subject: 162 Educational Websites about the Holocaust
Shalom.
Holocaust Remembrance Day is Monday, April 16, 2007.
I posted on my website 162 links to learn about the Holocaust.
Site languages include English, Hebrew, French, German,
Italian, Portuguese, Russian and Spanish.
All 162 links have been reviewed / checked this week.
The web address is:
http://www.jr.co.il/hotsites/j-holoc.htm
The top of the page should be dated April 10, 2007.
If the page has an older date, hold the control key and press
the F5 key to refresh your browser with the updated page.
Please forward this message to relatives and friends,
so they can benefit from these educational resources.
We must not forget.
Jacob
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From: <aileb@...> (Abe Lebowitz)
Date: Mon, 02 Apr 2007 11:02:56 +0200
Subject: Copyright law and learning
Ed Greenberg wrote:
> I would be concerned that, by copying the page of Gemara each week (or
> each day) in order to avoid stocking the classroom with copies of the
> text, we have gone beyond fair use. Yes, the Hebrew text is public
> domain, but the typography, layout, page breaks, page numbers, any
> translation and commentary, etc., are not. They could be considered a
> Derivitive Work. I think the Rabbi SHOULD retype the Hebrew text, and
> only the Hebrew text, in order to avoid even the appearance of
> stealing from the publisher of the book, especially in the pursuance
> of a Kiddush Hashem such as offering a shiur.
It seems to me that it should be perfectly permissible for the Rabbi to
copy from a standard Vilna Shas, whose copyright has long since expired.
Even if he copies from a current edition, as long as it is itself an
unmodified copy of the original Vilna (e.g. the lead-in phrases to
Rashi have not been emphasized), copyright should not apply. The
doctrine of fair use is not even relevant under these circumstances.
Chag kasher vesame'ach
Abe Lebowitz
Abraham & Shulamith Lebowitz (Jerusalem) <aileb@...>
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From: Guido Elbogen <havlei.h@...>
Date: Thu, 12 Apr 2007 14:48:00 +0300
Subject: Copyright Law and Learning
Elliott Hershkowitz states
> Photocopying the Artscroll for the text is just a matter of laziness
> since there are several public domain sources including
> http://kodesh.snunit.k12.il/i/t/t0.htm. Photocopying the rest of the
> page to obtain translations, citations, etc. is taking their work
> without permission.
We have discussed copyright and Intellectual property rights ad nauseam
in this forum before Pesach especially with regard to Yael's
Mi-Sheberach and its unauthorized translation.
Suffice it to say that for non-financial benefit, there are very few
major halachic authorities (if any!) that prohibit photocopying a page
(and even much more!) without permission.
Dina deMalchuta Dina and Hasagat Gvul have been also discussed and are
only valid under specific circumstances. Copyright and IPR are also
inventions of the civil world and thus
And there has been little civil litigation when the concerns are non
commercial to prove that photocopying a page 'is taking their work
[illegally] without permission'.
Guido
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From: <estabestah@...>
Date: Thu, 12 Apr 2007 04:35:46 -0400
Subject: Kabbalah Center and Ovadya Yosef
Does anyone know where I can access the statement that Rav Ovadya Yosef
made regarding the Kabbalah Center?
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From: Moshe Koren <moshekoren7@...>
Date: Wed, 11 Apr 2007 15:37:01 -0700
Subject: Kitniyot
Rabbi Wise demonstrated utter lack of understanding of Rav David
Bar-Hayim's approach to minhag and halacha in general. After having
listened to several of Rav Bar-Hayim's audio-shiurim at
www.machonshilo.org it is quite apparent to me that Rav Bar-Hayim is in
no way advocating that Jews in Eretz Ysirael all follow Sephardi
minhagim. His aim is that given the new reality of possibly most of the
world's Jews living in Eretz Yisrael that halacha be paskened in light
of this reality. It is clear that Rav Bar-Hayim considers the
Ashkenzi-Sephardi paradigm as being inappropriate to the reality of
Jewish life in Eretz Yisrael,and he therefore is posek halacha for Jews,
and not for ethnic sectors thereof. He cogently argues that a minhag is
binding in being osser et hamutar when in a given place a given action
is universally prohibited.He bases this on rules set in the gemara
regarding minhag hamakom. Since clearly many religious Jews in Eretz
Yisrael do in fact eat kitniyot in Eretz Yisrael there is no basis given
the gemara's rules regarding minhag hamkaom to prohibit other Jews in
the same locale from eating kitniyot. In addition, Rav Bar-Hayim
convincingly cites gedolei Torah over the generations who felt that in
any case the minhag of kitniyot is a foolish one.
I should also point out that I have spoken to several rabbanim regarding
Rav Bar-Hayim and even if they do not necessarily agree with all of his
positions they unanimously agree that he is very learned and scholarly.
Rav Bar-Hayim is a visionary whom I believe bears an important message.
Moshe Koren
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From: Batya Medad <ybmedad@...>
Date: Mon, 09 Apr 2007 20:14:01 +0300
Subject: Re: Kitniyot on Pesach
If you look at the psak at www.machonshilo.org, the signatories to this
ruling are said to be "Rav David Bar-Hayim, Rav Yehoshua Buch, and Rav
Chaim Wasserman, all of Jerusalem."
As we've posted about before, there isn't any halachic authority to a
"psak" if nobody asked.
Having known Rabbi Wasserman in my NCSY days. He was Asst. National
Director and Director of the Greater NY Region in the early-mid 1960's,
I'm glad to hear that he's not really a signatory to the "psak."
The issue is being discussed in the comments to:
http://me-ander.blogspot.com/2007/04/maybe-he-shouldnt-have-started-with.html
Batya
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From: Perets Mett <p.mett@...>
Date: Thu, 12 Apr 2007 10:54:07 +0100
Subject: Re: Kitniyot on Pesach
Jonathan Baker wrote:
> R' Bar-Hayim has been trying to reinstate the old Minhag Eretz
> Yisrael, which pretty much died out during the Crusades, when the
> indigenous Jews were killed or fled to Sephardic lands. There are
> clues in the Minor Tractates, which are Palestinian in origin, from
> the Geonic period, and in manuscripts from the Cairo Genizah.
>
> Since Kitniyot was an invention of the European diaspora in the Middle
> Ages, it was never the rule in Eretz Yisrael to avoid Kitniyot on
> Pesach.
This seems to be a complete red herring.
Suppose a community of German Jews ("yekes") settle in Salonika, finding
no indigenous Jews there. Are they then obliged to shed their own
minhogim in favour of the Salonikan minhag hamokom? Of course not!
Places per se do not determine custom. Communities of Jews do.
It does make a shred of sense for a community to abandon its minhogim of
centuries standing just because they have all moved to a new location.
By the same token you could argue that Jews in America and England
should not observe the rules of kitniyos because it was never the rule
there. (Unless someone knows that the Red Indians had this custom before
the arrival of Columbus :-) )
Perets Mett
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From: <FriedmanJ@...>
Date: Thu, 12 Apr 2007 08:21:33 EDT
Subject: Re: Luchos
Which set of luchos? And who was allowed to touch the mishkan? And when
was Moshe allowed in and when wasn't he?
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From: Yisrael Medad <ybmedad@...>
Date: Tue, 10 Apr 2007 00:31:54 +0300
Subject: Machon Shilo
> Can anyone elucidate and/or vouch for the Machon and the 3 rabbanim who
> signed this psak?
> --Barry S. Bank
As someone who actually lives in Shiloh, I too was unaware of this
Machon and as already responded to, the Machon is not affiliated to the
yishuv of Shiloh (although a few people in Israel thought so for a
while). The "chief" rabbi is an immigrant from Australia and previously
close to the Kahane philosophy. As many have already noted, his psak is
some 200 years too late and since the various minhagim have been
implanted for so long, while his reasoning is theoretically cogent, it
seems as a psak to be a lost cause. Of course, I've always been amazed
that all a girl has to do, as my daughter did, was to marry someone who
does eat Kitniyot and poof!, all is okay. So, I guess, on a private
level, all one has to do is just change your minhag if you want to while
if you don't want to, the above psak has no affect.
Yisrael
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From: Orrin Tilevitz <tilevitzo@...>
Date: Thu, 12 Apr 2007 05:09:22 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: matzoh she-avar alav hapesach
>From Hillel Markowitz:
> I should point out that in those days, bread had to be made closer to
> use so that they could not have let it rise "days before" and then
> left it unused until after Yetzias mitzrayim.
Baked, yes. But that's not relevant. The point was that at the Exodus
the bread had had not enough time to rise for it to be baked. In the
days before packaged yeast, dough would rise only from yeast spores in
the air, and so could take days to do so.
>From Israel Caspi:
> Looking at a Bible Atlas, it seems that it would take substantially
> more than 18 minutes to get from Rameses to Succoth and then to set up
> the ovens and make the necessary arrangements to bake "unleavened
> cakes."
Yes, but the dough would nonetheless not have become chametz because it
was being shaken on the journey. See the mefarshim quoted in the Taz.
>From Stephen Phillips
> I was always under the impression that ALL shemura matzos were made
> with whole wheat flour due to the fact that ordinary flour is
> processed (e.g. bleached) in some way.
Don't know, but our local shmura matzoh bakery sells two kinds, one
labeled whole wheat and the other regular. They are the same price and
since they are both burnt to a crisp I can't tell which is darker.
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From: Carl Singer <casinger@...>
Date: Thu, 12 Apr 2007 06:24:46 -0400
Subject: Quoting others
From: David Neuman <daveselectric@...>
>> Regarding Meir Shinnar's post that:
>>> Recently, R David Cohen, a well known major posek, came as a scholar
>>> in residence to Teaneck, and talked at length about how gezel akum
>>> and cheating and stealing from the government and nonjews is
>>> perfectly mutar if one can get away with it - and yet he is still
>>> considered a major posek with no wide outrage. After all, he is a
>>> posek...
>> Was there any listmember at this talk of RD Cohen?
>
>I had a friend who is a Talmid of HaRav Cohen discuss this posting with
>HaRav Cohen. HaRav Cohen was upset with the posting and states that he
>has did not say this.
Thanks first of all to David for following up on this.
In general I've found the quoting and mis-quoting of psak to be very
troublesome. It may be epidemic. Whether well intentioned errors or
malevolent attempts to get one's point across it seems that despite
living in an age of great communication capability we suffer (and I use
that word advisedly) from significant miscommunication.
It's almost to the point that when someone says to me that "Reb Moishe
pasekened" I, personally, turn up my skeptic antennae and question
whether the source is to be considered (a priori) accurate.
Avi -- not to further burden an already busy moderator -- but perhaps we
(the list members) need a discussion focusing on "standards" for quoting
others: (1) from written sources -- must we, for example, cite chapter &
verse as opposed to I don't have the sefer handy right now -- and (2)
from verbal sources (first hand, and secondary.)
Carl
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From: Frank Reiss <freiss47@...>
Date: Tue, 10 Apr 2007 20:17:54 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: Re: Talking in Schule
the best solution is to establish a non-talking minyan in your
community, sometimes called a Yeshiva minyan, where the rules are set
re:no talking is tolerated.
Frank Reiss
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From: Ken Bloom <kbloom@...>
Date: Thu, 12 Apr 2007 08:42:57 -0500
Subject: Unmarried women and kippot?
Does know of teshuvot that discuss women (either unmarried women or
married women in private) wearing kippot or otherwise covering their
head when davening and making berachot? (Particularly in light of the
practice of Conservative and Reform Jews in this regard.)
Thanks for any information.
--Ken
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End of Volume 54 Issue 62
