Volume 57 Number 21
Produced: Tue, 08 Sep 2009 15:06:47 EDT
Subjects Discussed In This Issue:
Hareidi line (3)
[<FriedmanJ@...> "I. Balbin" Ken Bloom]
Hotels and Shabbat
[Daniel Cohn]
Minhag Eretz Yisrael - Baruch Hashem Leolam ... (2)
[Carl Singer Meir Possenheimer]
Nusachim
[Martin Stern]
RH on Shabbat
["Baruch J. Schwartz"]
Tashlich
[Eitan Fiorino]
Viddui (Confession) (3)
[Martin Stern Akiva Miller Ken Bloom]
Welcome Home to the New Olim (and 307 photos)
[Jacob Richman]
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From: <FriedmanJ@...>
Date: Tue, Sep 8,2009 at 06:01 AM
Subject: Hareidi line
> For the sake of argument, what's wrong with this halachically or morally?
That this person has no clue is that this is morally reprehensible is
outrageous. Period.
jeanette
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From: "I. Balbin" <Isaac.Balbin@...>
Date: Mon, Sep 7,2009 at 10:19 PM
Subject: Hareidi line
> From: Ariel Ozick <ari@...>
> For the sake of argument, what's wrong with this halachically or
> morally?
It's Naval Birshus HaTorah [something disgusting with the permission
of the Torah] at best, Gneivas Daas [stealing of the mind/knowledge]
in the middle, with a clear Chilul Shem Shomayim [Desecration of Gds
name] at the worst end of the spectrum.
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From: Ken Bloom <kbloom@...>
Date: Tue, Sep 8,2009 at 10:01 AM
Subject: Hareidi line
See http://www.torah.org/advanced/business-halacha/5757/vol1no04.html
who explains why cutting ahead of people in line without their
permission is an issur d'oraita. Perhaps in this case there's room for
leniency, since by taking a two numbers, there was an unused number in
the queue, The people who came after that unused number expected that
that occupied by a person, so when a person came later, maybe it wasn't
really stealing.
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From: Daniel Cohn <4danielcohn@...>
Date: Tue, Sep 8,2009 at 03:01 AM
Subject: Hotels and Shabbat
From: Daniel Cohn <4danielcohn@...>
> If a person checks out after 8 PM, the hotel will very often lose out by not
> being able to accommodate another guest in the same room for that day. This
> is true for every day of the week, including Shabbat. That is why hotels
> around the world charge "late check out" fees in such cases, which depending
> on the hotel and on the season varies between 50-100% of the daily rate.
> So can you explain the rationale behind demanding that Israeli hotels should
> absorb this cost on Shabbat?
The standard package for a Shabbat guest at any (kosher) hotel in Israel
is:
- Check in from a few hours before Shabbat begins. (Some hotels from
midday Friday, etc)
- Check out on Motzei Shabbat up to an hour or so after havdalla.
(Usually no one would make a fuss if the guest was a few minutes later
than this.)
This is the way Israel hotels can attract religious Shabbat guests, and
this is a substantial part of their business.
Thus whatever world standards are, is not relevant here. Moreover, there
have been cases that a hotel has tried to oust a guest during shabbat,
and this has become news worthy enough that one can read the story in
the newspaper.
Of course, if a hotel is not interested in religious Shabbat guests,
then they have to say so up front.
David Ziants
Ma'aleh Adumim, Israel
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From: Carl Singer <carl.singer@...>
Date: Tue, Sep 8,2009 at 06:01 AM
Subject: Minhag Eretz Yisrael - Baruch Hashem Leolam ...
In massei rav it says the Gr"a did not say B.H.L.
Logic is same reason he does not say vsomro - that it is a hefsek [interruption
-MOD] between geula(shema) and tfila (shmoneh esre)
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From: Meir Possenheimer <meir@...>
Date: Tue, Sep 8,2009 at 01:01 PM
Subject: Minhag Eretz Yisrael - Baruch Hashem Leolam ...
> I am not so certain that the Gr"a intended, or would have agreed, to
> abolish
> recital of "Baruch Hashem Leolam..." (the "fifth Beracha" of Arvit now
> almost universally omitted throughout Israel), as his student proceeded to
> do.
>
It has always puzzled me why the so-called Minhag Sefard omits BHL on
Motzaei Shabbos yet says it on other days of the week. This is pure
conjecture on my part, but the tefillah is preceded (in "sefard" siddurim)
by the letters: bes ches, vov, lamed which, of course can mean bechol, i.e. on
weekdays. Or is it perhaps possible that some printer, somewhere along the
line, missed out the " between the vov and the lamed, and rather than
meaning that it is said on weekdays, it should really mean "bechutz
la'aretz", as it is commonly omitted in Israel.
Any takers?
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From: Martin Stern <md.stern@...>
Date: Tue, Sep 8,2009 at 03:01 AM
Subject: Nusachim
On Mon, Sep 7,2009, Rabbi Meir Wise <Meirhwise@...> wrote:
> Who says that "am ha-aretz" is a pejorative term meaning country
> bumpkin? The biblical term does not have this connotation.
It means "peasant" and, in Rabbinic usage, does have such a connotation, as
also does the English word. This does not mean that followers of the baladi
rite are country bumpkins but, perhaps, their opponents used such a term as
a subliminal part of their propaganda for its replacement by the 'more
correct' shami rite. This would parallel the sort of propaganda used rather
successfully by the 19th century urban Reformers against the rural Orthodox
Jews.
On another topic on which Rabbi Meir Wise might wish to comment, it is
claimed that Ashkenazi Jews tend to shift the stress on Hebrew words from
the last syllable (milra) to the previous one (mil'el) because of the
influence of European languages which largely do not have the stress there.
The Sefardim preserve the correct Hebrew stress patterns yet Arabic, which
is the vernacular of many of them, normally puts the stress on the
penultimate syllable. Why are they immune to this linguistic influence?
Martin Stern
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From: "Baruch J. Schwartz" <schwrtz@...>
Date: Tue, Sep 8,2009 at 01:01 AM
Subject: RH on Shabbat
Several years ago I put together a small file with a collection of liturgical odds-and-ends pertaining to "When Rosh Hashanah Comes on Shabbat" -- which will happen again this year. Some of these have also been seen in mj. This file, which is in Hebrew, includes: discussion of some of the prayer melodies (at which points to use RH nusah, shabbat nusah, and weekday nusah), the explanation of the switch from YOM teruah to ZICHRON teruah, and a clarification of the rearrangement of the piyyutim in shaharit. Another brief file, in English, regarding Tashlich on Shabbat, appeared in mj--six years ago. If anyone is interested in receiving these files (or, I guess I should say, receiving them again), please email me at <schwrtz@...> Shana tova to one and all,
Baruch
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From: Eitan Fiorino <afiorino@...>
Date: Tue, Sep 8,2009 at 11:01 AM
Subject: Tashlich
As a tashlich non-performer, I've not been following this thread closely, so I apologize if these two references were already cited. Ari Zivotofsky had a nice piece in Jewish Action a few years ago (http://www.ou.org/pdf/ja/5768/fall68/62_65.pdf) and Jacob Lauterbach wrote very long piece in the HUCA in the early 20th century. If I recall, Lauterbach linked the origin of the practice with some kind of pagan ritual that had become Christianized and was practiced in medieval Germany. It has been a while since I poked around this issue, so perhaps there is some other source for this idea. Clearly there has been much made of the relatively late first written documentation of the minhag (15th century) and Ari writes "it is hard to believe that such a widespread custom originated in the fifteenth century without an earlier basis" but I think the numerous examples from tefila that have recently been mentioned on the list (e.g. kabbalat shabbat) thoroughly dispatches argument tha
t just because a minhag is widespread, it must be ancient.
-Eitan
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From: Martin Stern <md.stern@...>
Date: Tue, Sep 8,2009 at 02:01 AM
Subject: Viddui (Confession)
On Mon, Sep 7,2009, Russell J Hendel <rjhendel@...> wrote:
> As a Chazan I always recite the entire Viddui.
> However as an individual I only recite those portions of the Viddui that are
> applicable to me. In other words I will skip such confessions as "incest,
> adultery, theft etc" since they don't apply to me. The purpose of the Viddui
> as I understand it is to provide a TEMPLATE so those who have particular sins
> should know what to say.
I always understood that the viddui is phrased in the plural so that each
individual confesses on behalf of everybody in case s/he could have
prevented others from committing the particular sin and had not done so
(even if they were unaware of that opportunity).
Martin Stern
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From: Akiva Miller <kennethgmiller@...>
Date: Mon, Sep 7,2009 at 10:19 PM
Subject: Viddui (Confession)
Dr. Russell J Hendel wrote:
> I only recite those portions of the Viddui that are applicable
> to me. In other words I will skip such confessions as "incest,
> adultery, theft etc" since they don't apply to me.
Are you really sure that theft does not apply to you? Are you really sure that
over this past year you did not take even one tiny thing that you weren't
entitled to -- even by mistake? If this is so, then you have amazing powers of
control, awareness, and memory, and I truly admire you.
As regards incest and adultery, I suppose the great majority of people can
safely be confident that they did not actually have complete and total sexual
relations with forbidden people. But if so, then why were these sins included in
the confession? My understanding is that the confession does not only refer to
blatant and obvious violations of Torah law, but also to lesser violations. For
example, if at some point during the year, I had looked at another woman in the
wrong way, or I had wrong thoughts about her, isn't this included in the general
category? What's wrong with mentioning the name of the main category as listed
in the machzor's version of the confession, even if my only violation was in one
of its subcategories?
Finally, let's say that I really am innocent even of minor violations of one (or
more) or these categories of sin. Let me remind you that the wording of the
confession is in the PLURAL. It does not say "*I* did this sin", but rather
"*WE* did this sin." Even if I truly did not even come close to doing this sin,
at least one of my fellow Jews, I regret to admit, did stumble and violate that
law. I accept responsibility for this, because all Jews are responsible for one
another. We must all work together to raise the observance-level of our fellow
Jews. When we succeed, then we will be able to say that "such confessions don't
apply to me". But until then, such confessions most certainly do apply to all of us.
Akiva Miller
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From: Ken Bloom <kbloom@...>
Date: Tue, Sep 8,2009 at 11:01 AM
Subject: Viddui (Confession)
Russell J Hendel <rjhendel@...> wrote:
> However as an individual I only recite those portions of the Viddui that are
> applicable to me. In other words I will skip such confessions as "incest,
> adultery, theft etc" since they don't apply to me. The purpose of the Viddui as
> I understand it is to provide a TEMPLATE so those who have particular sins
> should know what to say.
You're arguing against the poskim who give many reasons why each
individual needs to say the whole vidui.
In particular, Ben Ish Chai Parshat Ki Tetze (for the first Year)
Halacha 1:
It's written in Sefer Chesed L'Alafim that an individual should say all
of the specific sins in the vidui, even though he didn't do some of
them, because all of israel is one body, and they're all guarantors for
one another (In Hebrew, he specifically says "areivim zeh lazeh"),
specifically if it was in his power to rebuke someone but did not, the
sin is considered to be his [he justifies this from Gemara Shabbat 54b]
And also, a person needs to confess for himself about sins he may have
committed in a previous gilgul. What person knows what sins he committed
in a previous gilgul? It's possible he committed all of these sins.
(That's why the nusach of the vidui says "we and our ancestors have
sinned".) ...
There's another reason to say the whole vidui, and that's becuse "adam
nidon l'fi mah shehu" (I don't have a good translation for this, but the
examples he gives for this principle are Reuven being considered by the
Torah as if he slept with Bilhah, when he really moved his father's bed,
and Eli's sons being considered as if they slept with mens' wives when
their sin was delaying their offerings an extra day preventing them from
returning home so quickly.)[perhaps, "each person is judged at his/her
subjective level" - MOD]
Lastly, there are many small sins that a person tramples on with his
heels that are considered as severe sins, for example embarrassing a
person is compared to bloodshed (Bava Metzia 48-49), anger is compared
to worshiping avodah zarah (Zohar), and pride also is compared to
worshiping avodah zarah (Sotah 4-5).
Ad kan Chesed L'Alafim and Ben Ish Chai.
I'll add my own as well, the wording of the vidui for some sins is very
broad, and for others one must be a talmid chacham to know what some of
these terms entail. For example, shichatnu (hashchata) is defined by
various midrashim, and the zohar, to be the sin of spilling seed. This
and other forms of promiscuity were what caused the destruction of
Noach's generation. But you would only know this by having a knowldege
of the aggadot on this subject, and that's only one of the 29 sins
listed in the vidui.
> Rambam in the Laws of Repentance makes it clear that the Viddui is not
> sufficient. You can't say the language of the Viddui "On sins involving theft"
> and complete your obligation. You have to provide details - e.g. I made up a
> deduction on last years Tax return of such and such an amount...and this is
> wrong and I thank God for not getting caught but I will not do it again."
This is definitely true, but this has nothing to do with the vidui
that's said during tefillah. (Though I think there are opinions that
should add their own specific sins at the appropriate place in
alphabetical order in this vidui.) The Rambam isn't talking about saying
vidui during the prayer service when he discusses this, and the vidui
that he's discussing is said when one is aware of a specific sin and
they want to repent a specific sin.
It seems to me that the vidui during the tefillah is supposed to be a
catch-all that covers things that we wouldn't otherwise know to confess
(for the various reasons stated above), and that its function is *not*
to fulfill the requirement stated by the Rambam in Hilchot Teshuva.
> Anyway those are my views. I am cognizant that some authorities try to "justify"
> the individual recitation of the entire viddui. But in my mind the arguments are
> very weak and contradict the sources above.
Nevertheless, the halacha for those who have the minhag to say vidui is
that you need to say the whole vidui, and you're likely considered a
rasha if you decide to prioritize your own understanding of the reasons
for the halacha above the clear psak handed down by our poskim.
Do you say the vidui in the plural as it is written when you're saying
it on your own? According to your reasoning, one should say it in the
singular.
--Ken
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From: Jacob Richman <jrichman@...>
Date: Tue, Sep 8,2009 at 02:01 PM
Subject: Welcome Home to the New Olim (and 307 photos)
Hi Everyone!
On Tuesday morning, September 8, 2009, I was at Ben-Gurion
airport to greet the new olim that made aliyah from
North America to Israel.
There were 204 olim on the flight including 81 singles.
I took 307 photos of the exciting event and posted them online at:
http://www.jr.co.il/pictures/israel/history/2009/a535.htm
During the welcoming ceremony there was an unexpected
marriage proposal. See photos 7192-7201
The 307 photos have, also, been uploaded to Facebook for
name tagging. There are two sets of photos and you can
access the albums via:
http://www.facebook.com/jacobrichman?v=photos
If you have a Facebook account, and you are in the photos,
or see someone you know, please feel free to name tag
the photos.
May the aliyah from all over of the world grow and bring
more Jews back to their homeland, Eretz Yisrael.
Have a good day,
and Shana Tova,
Jacob
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End of Volume 57 Issue 21
