Volume 11 Number 54
Produced: Mon Jan 31 22:25:40 1994
Subjects Discussed In This Issue:
Administrivia
[Avi Feldblum]
Dreams
[Danny Skaist]
Hospitals and Pastoral Care in Israel
[Sam Gamoran]
Joseph and his Father
[Rabbi Eli Shulman]
LOR and Gadol
[Michael Broyde]
R. Yaakov Emden - Lecture
[Eric Safern]
Rabbanut 'heter' to plant trees
[Shimon Lebowitz]
Singing and Repeat-Singing
[Bob Kosovsky]
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From: mljewish (Avi Feldblum)
Date: Mon, 31 Jan 94 21:26:57 -0500
Subject: Administrivia
Nysernet had some sort of problem over the weekend, that resulted in
many groups being wiped out and then being recovered from tape back-up
from Jan 19. This means that people who joined or dropped during the
period Jan 19 through Jan 30 will not be on the list or will still be on
the list. I will be trying to recover the listserv activities for this
period, while also getting the regular issues out.
Avi Feldblum
mail-jewish Moderator
<mljewish@...>
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From: DANNY%<ILNCRD@...> (Danny Skaist)
Date: Sun, 30 Jan 94 05:58:32 -0500
Subject: Dreams
>Aryeh Blaut
>I take issue with this answer to the question as to why Yosef did not
>try to contact Ya'akov. If one looks at Rashi (Bereshit 37:10 beginning
>words "viyegar bo" (and he scolded him)), he states that Ya'akov scolded
>Yosef in order to reduce the hatred of the brothers to him. This is
>supported by the next pasuk which says that the brothers were now
>jealous of Yosef and his father guarded the thing. Again Rashi explains
>that he (Ya'akov) waited for the thing (dream) to take place.
The Gemorrah (in Brachot) says 2 things about dreams.
1) A person dreams about whatever he has been thinking about during the day.
2) A dream follows its interpretation.
In Va'yeshev Joseph tells his brothers the first dream and they accuse
him of being preoccupied about wanting to rule over them and so they
hate him. They do NOT interpret the dream.
The second dream is told to Yaakov also, who interpretes it. Only now that
the dream has been interpreted, and will follow the interpretation, is
hatred replaced by jealousy.
Why did Yaakov interpret the dream ? Did he try to reduce the hatred, by
presenting the brothers with a "fact" that Yoseph will be the ruler and that
the dreams were not because of Yosephs own desires ?
Did Yoseph see this as the prime cause of his problems ?
danny
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From: gamoran%<milcse@...> (Sam Gamoran)
Date: Sun, 30 Jan 94 01:57:21 -0500
Subject: Hospitals and Pastoral Care in Israel
My father-in-law underwent serious surgery 3 weeks ago. This entailed
a week's delay before the operation in Belinson Hospital (Petach Tikvah)
so his stay was almost two full weeks. B"H it went well and he is home
recovering rapidly.
Both my in-laws remarked on something they saw in hospitals in Israel
different from the States. Unfortunately, my father-in-law is no stranger
to hospitals - he has had 4 or 5 operations in his lifetime, most of
them in New York. In hospitals there, he was regularly visited by
Rabbis of all sorts. Certainly *his* shul Rabbi made a point of visiting,
but it seemed that any Rav who came by asked for a list of Jewish patients
and many times "jus stopped by".
When I was hosptalized 14 years ago, I too was visited by Rabbis who
saw that I was a Jewish patient and stopped by.
In Israel, it seems, the situation is quite different. There aren't very
many Shul Rabbis who are paid to care for a Congregation (and therefore
have the "obligation" of visiting the sick) and patients don't get very many
such visits. My father-in-law said that the only "rav" who visited him was
somebody going around Thursday night to see who would be there for Shabbat
and interested "mehadrin kosher" food. He took his name, room number and
moved on.
I mentioned my in-laws comments to a neighbor who is an Army Rabbanut
Chaplain in an army prison (and therefore no stranger to pastoral care or
serving the religious needs of a confined population) and he simply said,
"It's [Rabbis visiting the sick] just not done in Israel."
I'm sure there are many patients who would benefit from and enjoy visits,
and we know that visiting the sick is one of the listed acts of gmillut chesed.
Are there organizations (not necessarily Rabbis) that do this on a regular
basis and is something missing at Beilinson that is found at other hospitals?
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From: Rabbi Eli Shulman <shulman@...>
Date: Sun, 30 Jan 94 12:46:23 -0500
Subject: Re: Joseph and his Father
Regarding the question why Yosef didn't inform Yaakov of his
whereabouts: To which period of time is the question addressed? If the
question regards the long years when Yosef was a slave and later
interned in jail, then the obvious answer is simply that he had no means
of communicating with Yaakov. There was no postal service, (much less
e-mail), and Yosef was in no position to commission a special
expedition. The question could only arise in regard to the short time
between Yosef's ascension to rule and the brother's arrival (remember
that Yaakov arrived in Egypt only two years after the onset of the
famine). But at this time Yosef knew that the famine was imminent, and
that his brothers would be arriving, and he had no doubt already
conceived of the plan of action which he would eventually carry out.
What Yosef's motives were in that regard is a seperate issue; but that
he had some motive is self-evident, and his purpose would have been
confounded had he sent word to Yaakov.
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From: Michael Broyde <RELMB@...>
Date: Sun, 30 Jan 94 16:16:12 -0500
Subject: Re: LOR and Gadol
One of the writers indicated a difference between a LOR and a "gadol" and
indicated that the "LOR" is lower in level. I disagree. If one has a LOR
whom one regularly asks questions to, one *must* follow that persons
answers on halachic issues. To the questioner, assuming this person is
generally cabable of answering *shalot*, that LOR is the single and only
person whose halachic opinion matters *at all. Torah giants, in the
abstract, do not bind any given person to their opinion, unless that
person happens to be a *talmid* of this particular *gadol*. To the
typical congregant (who is unlearned in halacha), the LOR is the single
rabbi whose opinion is binding and who must be followed. In halacha,
this is called a *rebi muvhak*, who until the student himself is worthy
of answering questions, must be followed so long as his opinion is
tenable (I leave aside the issue of how we define tenable).
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From: <esafern@...> (Eric Safern)
Date: Mon, 31 Jan 94 09:20:30 -0500
Subject: R. Yaakov Emden - Lecture
Since R. Emden's name has been mentioned on this forum recently, I
thought I would let everyone know that Rabbi Jacob J. Schacter, Mora
De-Asra of The Jewish Center in Manhattan (my shul :-) will be speaking
on
The Autobiography of Rabbi Jacob Emden: Self Disclosure and Communal
Controversy
at the Leo Baeck Institute, 129 East 73rd St (in Manhattan).
Wednesday night, February 2, 7:00 PM
I believe admission is free, but you may wish to call for reservations anyway.
Eric
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From: Shimon Lebowitz <LEBOWITZ@...>
Date: Fri, 28 Jan 94 17:50:00 -0500
Subject: Re: Rabbanut 'heter' to plant trees
Yoni writes:
> I heard today from Israel radio that the Rabaanut has allowed the JNF
> to plant trees in the Shmita year. Can anyone provide me with info on
> this Heter?
i heard on the news yesterday that the keren kayemet had made this claim,
and that the rabbanut had denied it.
shimon
Shimon Lebowitz Bitnet: LEBOWITZ@HUJIVMS
VM System Programmer internet: <lebowitz@...>
Israel Police National HQ. fax: +972 2 309-888
Jerusalem, Israel phone: +972 2 309-877
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From: Bob Kosovsky <kos@...>
Date: Fri, 28 Jan 94 02:56:17 -0500
Subject: RE: Singing and Repeat-Singing
Danny Geretz's question of when it is appropriate to repeat words during
davening is a question that has been raised in my shul (K'hal Adath
Jeshurun, i.e. "Breuer's" in Wash. Hgts.) since we have a choir which
often sings florid music. On occasions when a question arose (usually
from indignant congregants who feel the singing unduly lengthens the
service), our conductor asked our rabbi, Rabbi Shimon Schwab.
From what I understand, Rabbi Schwab explained that to repeat words
within a posuk was to be avoided. He was a little more lenient when
it came to concluding words or phrases, but he explained that it is best
that these should occur at the end of a stanza or paragraph.
So for a real example, let's take "Uvnucho Yomar." We could not repeat
the line "Etz chaim hi" twice because it was in the middle of that
stanza. Yet, we can repeat "chadesh yomeinu k'kedem" because it occurs
at the end of the phrase.
Interestingly, a book of music from my shul's German predecessor was
published in the 19th century ("Shire Jeshurun"), edited by the
shul's hazzan Yisroel Mayer Japhet, and with an introduction by Rabbi
Samson Raphael Hirsch. There is NO instance of repeated words in
the entire book.
Bob Kosovsky
Student, PhD Program in Music Librarian
City University of New York The New York Public Library
<kos@...> kosovsky@nyplgate.nypl.org
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End of Volume 11 Issue 54
