Volume 55 Number 97
Produced: Thu Dec 6 6:15:15 EST 2007
Subjects Discussed In This Issue:
Chatan not going to Shul
[Joel Rich]
Frum Network
[Aliza Berger-Cooper]
Sedros (2)
[Dr. Ben Katz, <chips@...>]
The sentence "yihiyu leratzon imrai phi..." printed as part of
[David Ziants]
Symmetry and asymmetry between the periods AH-Honetz and Sh'qioh-Tzais
[Sammy Finkelman]
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From: Joel Rich <JRich@...>
Date: Wed, 5 Dec 2007 05:35:43 -0500
Subject: Chatan not going to Shul
> R' Shlomo Zalman Auerbach zatza"l explained that the Mishna Brura (O"H
> 131/20) ruling of the chatan not going to shul during the shiva y'mei
> mishteh (as opposed to the three brit-associated people) was because
> there are those who say that a chatan is patur from tefilla all seven
> days. He added that it wasn't an issue of skipping or not skipping
> tachanun, since the tzibbur is encouraged to daven in a beit avel, even
> though they thereby avoid saying tachanun, even if the avel already has
> a minyan.
see MB 131:26 which specifically states reason is due to not saying
tachanun
KY
Joel Rich
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From: Aliza Berger-Cooper <alizadov@...>
Date: Wed, 05 Dec 2007 16:03:09 +0200
Subject: Frum Network
Chaim Shapiro wrote about supporting frum businesses via his LinkedIn
Frum Network. I don't understand– why should one support a frum
business over a non-frum Jewish business? For example, wouldn't there be
opportunities to be mekarev non-religious people through getting to know
them by doing business with them?
Aliza Berger-Cooper, PhD
Director
www.statistics-help.com
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From: Dr. Ben Katz <bkatz@...>
Date: Wed, 05 Dec 2007 10:42:53 -0600
Subject: Re: Sedros
>Simcha wrote:
> > (iii) in certain leap years he [Avudraham] says that in some places
> > mishpatim is split, and in others ki tisa.
>If you look in the Seifer haChinukh you will see that it considers
>Mishpotim and Im Kesef Talve to be two distinct sedros.
>Perets Mett
I believe Taimanim have 1 different double parasha than Ashkenazim and
Sephardim, and I think it is related to Yitro-Mishpatim.
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From: <chips@...>
Date: Wed, 5 Dec 2007 07:28:31 -0800 (PST)
Subject: Re: Sedros
> Simcha wrote:
>> (iii) in certain leap years he [Avudraham] says that in some places
>> mishpatim is split, and in others ki tisa.
> If you look in the Seifer haChinukh you will see that it considers
> Mishpotim and Im Kesef Talve to be two distinct sedros.
How many sedros did he have for Sefer Shmos?
And to repeat the question in the OP - when did the present splits become
the norm? I thought it was after the crusades but there is a Rashi in Sota
that mentions a Sedra name instead of just perek number.
-p
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From: David Ziants <dziants@...>
Date: Tue, 04 Dec 2007 23:00:17 +0200
Subject: Re: The sentence "yihiyu leratzon imrai phi..." printed as part of
I would like to come back to this subject of the selichot, as I still
don't have a full answer to why "yihiyu leratzon" is not said at all -
not even quietly - in the non-hareidi communities in Israel. (Are there
any hareidi communities that also don't say this even quietly?)
I have had private correspondence with a number of people on this topic
that has given me feedback as well as more corrections to some of my
postulations from my postings.
A subscriber to mail-jewish referred me to the Shulchan Aruch (SA),
Orech Chayim 116:1 a one clause chapter that talks about the Repha'enu
b'racha in the Shmoneh Esray. There it very specifically relates to the
subject of changing the reading of pesukim that exist in the singular,
to the plural, and says that it is only permitted if done for the
purpose of prayer and supplication, as obviously in this case. [In the
case of a whole psalm chapter, the Ram"a doesn't allow this, even as a
prayer.] The payatan (poet) was permitted to compose shema kolainu,
based on individual verses, using this law as a precedent.
It was suggested to me by this subscriber, that maybe "yihiyu leratzon"
has a lesser public supplication level then the other verses. The
phrases "my thoughts" and "my heart" in the singular first person seem
to be far from being a collective supplication. Could this be the reason
for the custom here to omit it completely? This suggestion does have a
problem though, that we seem to be telling the payatan that he might be
treading on halacha. (On the other hand, I have heard that there are
sources that are against the piyutim which give references to kabbala
and the Zodiac - so are these piyutim that are part of our fixed liturgy
treading on halacha?)
I mentioned in my previous posting that I asked a Mara D'Atra's (LOR's)
on whether it should be said quietly or not at alI, and he said "not at
all". I am still not sure whether his remark to me about this being a
"convolution of a pasuk", was referring to the way I asked the question
- as I called it a "pasuk" and it isn't - or he was thinking of
something on the lines of the suggestion above. BTW, this is a Mara
D'Atra that often bases his halachic decisions on the Israeli
"litvasher-chareidi" School of Rabbanimam and since I am now told that
in hareidi circles it is generally said quietly, his answer makes less
sense. Maybe his rationale was that I should just "go along" and do it
the same way as everyone else in the community.
Are there any original early manuscripts of "Shema Kolainu", so we can
see what the payatan actually wrote?
I was corrected by my knowledgeable friend that Avraham Rosenfeld didn't
change any of the Order in his selichot (as I thought he did - see my
previous posting), and his order is that of the Bohemian (nothing to do
with hippies!!) minhag, which was the most commonly followed minhag in
Franco-Germany and Austria-Hungary, and is used by most Nusach Ashkenaz
congregations in the UK. This custom is almost unheard of in Israel,
which I realized when I first came to Israel almost 30 years ago, and
was there for the Yamim Norayim.
This brings me to a short anecdote: I was very resistant in changing my
nusach from what I used in the UK (with exception to what is normative
ashkenazi practice in Israel), although Nusach Sepharad seems to be more
prevalent than Nusach Ashkenaz in Israel.
When it came to selichot, I understood that the order was different to
what I was used to, and a well known exercise was to build cross
reference page indexes between Rosenfeld and the others, but there are a
number of Selichot that I couldn't find in Rosenfeld so this didn't
always help in trying to "catch up". Dispite this I wasn't easily going
to let go of Rosenfeld which I considered "Nusach Ashkenaz" , but all I
had was the heavy weight version and I wanted to buy a lighter weight
version, and the lighter weight that used to be available in the UK was
already out of print.
Thus I went around Me'ah She'arim looking for a "Nusach Ashkenaz"
Selichot and was getting very frustrated because all they could offer me
was the more common Polin (Polish), or Lita (Lithuanian) with a strange
look as if to say "do you really want Lita because not many places use
it". (There is of course also aidot hamizrach, but they say the same
thing everyday throughout Ellul.) I think, in the end I bought Lita,
only to see that although different to Polin was also as different to
what I had.
Nowadays, I use the Rinat Yisrael Polin selichot, which is the standard
here.
Back to the topic at hand: With respect to the position of "yihiyu
leratzon", together with "amarainu", both Lita and Rosenfeld place these
sentences (using the plural) in the section that is said silently. It
was reported to me that the siddur that follows the Gr"a minhag also
does likewise.
So, to summarize, I would be interested to hear whether the more
personal nature of the pasuk "yihiyi leratzon" has anything to do with
it being omitted and not even being said silently in many communities?
Is this documented anywhere and how did this start?
David Ziants
Ma'aleh Adumim, Israel
<dziants@...>
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From: Sammy Finkelman <sammy.finkelman@...>
Date: Tue, 4 Dec 2007 15:47:05 -0500
Subject: Symmetry and asymmetry between the periods AH-Honetz and Sh'qioh-Tzais
> I have also seen it asserted that there is at least a physical
> symmetry between the two (i..e that they should take the same amount
> of time to achieve the same amount of darkness-light transition) this
> is clearly not true - at least in principle. this for at least two
> reasons, one of them fairly trivial.
> The first, trivial reason, is that there is a delta in time between
> the two events in a single day....a 12 hour delay translates into
> about a five second intrinsic difference. not a lot to be sure, but
> enough to establish the principle of asymmetry.
This is actually not a practical difference. When someone gives times or
gives tables they never try to be more accuyrate than the nearest
minute. If we were trying to be that accurate, we'd have to take
accounbt of the fact that candle lighting time on a Friday is about 4
seconds earlier for every mile you go east. (One minute for every 15
miles, 4 minutes for every 60 miles - which is approximately 1 degree
longitude and 15 degress longitude is one hour)
Some place I read something about adjust 2 minutes from any time, to
take account of bad watches and clocks and these small differences - of
course for Shabbos we are anyway adding 18 minutes or 20 minutes and so
on.
> a more significant reason lies in the role of the atmosphere. the
> degree of refraction of MF> sunlight when below the horizon depends on
> the thermodynamic state of the atmosphere. published tables are never
> really "true" since they must >assume some averaged atmosphere,
> whereas random variations may contribute up to >a few minutes
> variation in actuual, observed refraction.
> Riding on top of the random variation in this case is a systematic
> variation. i.e. in the morning, the atmosphere is colder, denser, and
> lower. I have no data in hand to estimate this effect - nor have i
> seen it remarked in published works >- but simple comnsideration of
> the physics involved convinces me it must be a real >effect and might
> well MF> amount to a couple of minutes variation between >the morning
> and evening transiiton periods.
To get the same degree of light?
> I assume such considerations are folded into the navy tables, but in
> any event, it is clear that the morning and evening transition times
> cannot be the >same.
One question - if we are taking these things into consideration, then
what about cloudy days?
It seems to me that clouds should overshadow any effect due to
differences in temperature of the atmosphere.
Now I never heard about any difference based on cloudy days. It seems
then, therefore, that either we have to use the actual "me sheyyaqir" -
can you, in fact see, and then might depend on whther you are standing
indoors or outdoors or near a window - or you use a standard time.
I think we generally use standards - otherwise someone indoors could
maybe never put on Tefillin all day if he was in a place without
windows.
Do we use when people outside could see - and use that a means for
determining the time?
I can see a lot of questions here.
> Burn thise Luchos; a modest halakhic suggestion Basically a luach
> publisher can do whatever he wants. in Israel where z'manim
> calculated by R.Y.M. Tokachinsky were popular, i wonder how many were
> disturbed in the 1920s when he suddenly switched qall his tzais
> calculations from on ebased on the appearance of three stars to one
> based on a fully dark sky. so a general complaint i have about luchos
> is that no one ever really knows their provenance. there are so many
> different shitos related to z'manim that are possible - we have
> recounted only a few of the possible variations here - that it is
> practically impossible to tell what some essentially anonymous luach
> is based on
Sometimes they tell you, or you can see if the time is identical with a
certain shitoh.
> and perhaps we wouldn't much like that shitoh if we knew. here q"q
> silver spring MD, the Chabad calendar and luach are >particularly
> poplar. Not because anyone has the slightest idea of how >any of the
> z'manim were arrived at, but because of the nice artwork and >it's
> just the right size for posting in the kitchen and scrawling notes >in
> the individual day-boxes.
Well, we could say that maybe any set of times that a reasonable numbe
rof people use is good, unless someone definitely is following a
different Psak. But this is a good point.
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End of Volume 55 Issue 97