Volume 55 Number 74
Produced: Wed Sep 12 4:51:14 EDT 2007
Subjects Discussed In This Issue:
Halakhic reasoning vs. reward/punishment calculations (5)
[Janice Gelb, Alex Heppenheimer, Alex Heppenheimer, Chana
Luntz, Robert Rubinoff]
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From: Janice Gelb <j_gelb@...>
Date: Mon, 10 Sep 2007 22:44:28 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: Halakhic reasoning vs. reward/punishment calculations
Keith Bierman <khbkhb@...> wrote:
> On Sep 7, 2007, at 4:02 AM, Janice Gelb <j_gelb@...>
> > Daniel Wells <wells@...> wrote:
> >
> >> We have the Conservative movement allowing on Shabbos, the driving to
> >> Shul but forbidding the driving to the football match thus hoping to
> >> engender allegiance to their heritage. What actually happens in many
> >> C homes is that shul is missed and the football or golf gets that
> >> allegiance.
> >
> > This is a ludicrous statement. Do you honestly think that someone who
> > feels that a teshuva is necessary in order to drive on Shabbat would
> > also be someone who would skip shul and go to football or golf and use
> > a teshuva as their rationale for being able to do so? People who do
> > not attend shul in order to go to football or golf are not people who
> > would take teshuvot seriously, assuming they'd even heard of them at
> > all.
>
> Both Daniel *and* Janice have good points.
>
> *Serious* Conservative Jews do not leap from one limited leniency to
> outright abrogation of the mitzvot (Janice's point). And there *are*
> serious committed jews in the Conservative movement.
>
> Sadly, most people are neither that serious nor that well educated (and
> the movement does it's members a disservice by not focusing on such
> issues more) and thus there are people who fail to realize that driving
> on Shabbat is assur (forbidden) *except* for a very limited heter.
I certainly agree that C Jews, even serious C Jews, are not necessarily
familiar with or abide by the limited nature of the driving heter. (Nor,
by the way, do I support the heter, as you know.)
Had Daniel's point been that many C Jews take the heter to only drive
directly to the closest synagogue and return home as blanket permission
to drive anywhere on Shabbat, I would sadly have had to agree with him.
However, I objected to his statement that the driving teshuva led
directly to C Jews skipping shul altogether in order to go to football
or golf. Nothing you've said appears to disagree with my statement that
the C Jews who would know about and use a heter would almost certainly
not use the heter as permission to skip shul altogether in favor of
sports.
-- Janice
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From: Alex Heppenheimer <aheppenh@...>
Date: Tue, 11 Sep 2007 07:33:15 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: Re: Halakhic reasoning vs. reward/punishment calculations
In MJ 55:72, Stu Pilichowski commented on a post by Shimon Lebowitz:
>>I wanted to invite a family of non-observant Jews to my Shabbat table,
>>but they were staying at a hotel a considerable distance from where I
>>live (about an hour's walk). I could not bring myself to extend the
>>invitation as long as I knew they would be driving back (actually they
>>were going to take a taxi, just like the way they arrived).
>>
>>I discussed it with them, and expressed my sincere desire to invite
>>them, on the condition that we all walk together back to the hotel.
>>They agreed, they came by taxi, and my wife and I had a 2-2.5 hour walk
>>friday night, to their hotel and back.
>I thought this question was asked and answered by poskim years and years
>ago as kiruv became more popular and "turn Friday night into Shabbat"
>programs became more plentiful. If you offer a place for your guests to
>stay overnight, you, the host, have fulfilled your obligation and need
>not worry anymore, i.e. you have done yours.
>
>Why be "frumer" than the poskim?
>
>By being frumer and being more machmir than the poskim aren't you
>thereby "insulting" or "attacking" the credibility of the poskim? Aren't
>you also taking away from possible kiruv opportunities?
But surely these poskim would agree that if you can convince your guests
to come but not to drive/ride, that would be better? If they won't be
convinced, then indeed this psak would apply - but it's not "being
frumer" to try to get to the ideal situation (and avoid having to apply
this psak), which the OP was successfully able to do.
Kesivah vachasimah tovah and a good sweet year,
Alex
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From: Alex Heppenheimer <aheppenh@...>
Date: Tue, 11 Sep 2007 07:46:22 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: Re: Halakhic reasoning vs. reward/punishment calculations
In MJ 55:72, Daniel Wells wrote in response to Chana Luntz:
>> Secondly, as mentioned, the kiddushin and the first biah may well be
>> hours, days or months apart, you just don't know. Particularly if
>> your non frum couple, does not, as frum couples do, hang around for
>> sheva brochas, but catches the evening flight out to that beach
>> resort, then the chances of the first swim preceeding the first biah
>> might be quite high.
>
>As the RaMBaM wrote even if all the seas of the world would cover her, if
>she has not cleansed herself as required, she remains tameh
Miderabbanan, yes - see below. But not necessarily de'oraisa. (The
Rambam's expression about "all the waters in the world," anyway, is
referring to something else - bathing in a bathhouse or the like, that
is definitely not a kosher mikvah.)
>>> As far as sometime later "that she might go swimming unintentionally
>>> in a vadai mikvah, such as the sea)" is a not a consideration since
>>> its highly unlikely there will not be a hatzizah between her body
>>> and the sea.
>> I see you disagree with Rav Moshe.
>****quote from the internet****
>
>Rav Moshe Feinstein: In many cases we can't be certain the mother was
>truly a niddah mide'oraita, because maybe she went swimming after her
>period in a body of water that qualifies as a mikvah, and thereby became
>tehorah. (Rav Moshe does not discuss the fact that she would most likely
>have been wearing a tight-fitting bathing suit at the time.)
>
>******end of quote***
Surely, though, R' Moshe was quite well aware that most people don't go
skinny-dipping, let alone cleanse their bodies thoroughly before
swimming. Presumably he's basing his position on the Rambam's statement
(Hil. Mikvaos 1:13) that on a Biblical level, a chatzitzah is a problem
only if both (a) covers most of the body, and (b) is something about
which the person is "makpid" (loose translation: "objects to") and
wishes to remove. (Rabbinically, either of these criteria is enough to
require a chatzitzah to be removed before immersion.) Also, ibid. 1:7
the Rambam states that bedi'eved, immersion wearing clothing is
permissible, "because the water enters through them"; this is true even
of the most tight-fitting bathing suit, as it's not waterproof.
Kesivah vachasimah tovah and a good sweet year,
Alex
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From: Chana Luntz <chana@...>
Date: Tue, 11 Sep 2007 23:21:40 +0100
Subject: RE: Halakhic reasoning vs. reward/punishment calculations
Daniel Wells writes:
> What I was suggesting is that in the case of chuppas nidda,
> yichud is forbidden and they have to sleep in separate rooms.
> After the initial biah, yichud is permitted even if she is niddah.
>
> >Firstly, my guestimate of the time between introduction
> >(which is the key matter we are discussing) and kiddushin in
> >the case of a pair of nonreligious is probably in the
> >vicinity of two years.
>
> Two years or two minutes, whats the difference? The person
> who created that illicit relationship bears the responsibility.
I believe you were the one who said that it was highly unlikely that a
couple would do teshuva in the time available between introduction
because we were only talking about a limited number of minutes or hours.
My point in response was merely to note that a more typical elapse of
time would be two years - over which period you appear to still be
determined to discount any possibility of teshuva.
>> > As far as sometime later "that she might go swimming
>> > unintentionally in a vadai mikvah, such as the sea)" is a not
>> > a consideration since its highly unlikely there will not be a
>> > hatzizah between her body and the sea.
>
>> I see you disagree with Rav Moshe.
>
> ****quote from the internet****
> Rav Moshe Feinstein: In many cases we can't be certain the
> mother was truly a niddah mide'oraita, because maybe she went
> swimming after her period in a body of water that qualifies
> as a mikvah, and thereby became tehorah. (Rav Moshe does not
> discuss the fact that she would most likely have been wearing
> a tight-fitting bathing suit at the time.)
> ******end of quote***
Well, I can't speak for Rav Moshe Feinstein of the internet, whose
knowledge and reliability can perhaps be doubted, but Rav Moshe
Feinstein in Iggeros Moshe Even HaEzer chelek 4 siman 14 and again in
siman 23 does indeed discuss the fact that she would have been clothed
at the time - and in fact in siman 23 after stating "and even though she
is dressed in certain clothing [kusot] which are called garments
[begadim]" he explicitly transliterates the English words "bathing suit"
into Hebrew so there should be no doubt as to what he is talking about
(and, I am afraid to say, the bathing suits in our day almost certainly
cover *less* of the body than in Rav Moshe's time). And in both simanim
he then goes on to say explicitly that this is not a chatiza [ha ain ze
chotzetz m'dina]. He also states explicitly that for tevila of a woman
to be tahor to her husband you do not need the woman to have kavanna.
> Leaving aside any question of marriage being a mitzvah, the issue of
> at what point one is forbidden to aid a person to do an aveira is a
> halachic topic dealt with under the rubric of lifnei iver. It is
> dealt with extensively in the halachic literature. You seem to be
> extending that issur well beyond its normal halachic definition.
>
> Perhaps you can explain why I have been "extending that issur
> well beyond its normal halachic definition"?
Because, as Nachum Klafter has already written - the biblical concept of
lifnei iver [putting a stumbling block before the blind] which is the
halachic term that forbids someone giving assistance to somebody else in
doing an issur, applies where the person is unable to do the issur
without help (the case in the gemora is when a nazir is on one side of a
river, and the wine he needs to drink or touch to perform the issur is
on the other, and the only way he can get to this wine is by you
assisting him get to the wine). If he can do the issur without needing
help from you (ie the wine is on the same side of the river), then the
issur of lifnei iver does not apply. There is a d'rabanan consideration
of mesaye leh, which also need to be considered where the biblical
prohibition does not apply, but where and when that applies involves
getting into a machlokus rishonim. As Nachum Klafter has written -
Rabbi Michael Broide has written extensively on this topic, in English,
in ways that are accessible to the general reader. This is important
because there are lots of cases in modern society that require one to
examine the sources on lifnei iver, and there have therefore needed to
be quite extensive writings on the subject. One topic that Rabbi Broide
has written on and that happens to stick in my head is the situation for
a lawyer who is consulted by a client who wants him to do something that
is halachically prohibited (take a case to the secular courts in
circumstances where that would be forbidden, for instance), but there
are many many other applications of this halacha in the modern world.
However, you appear to be applying the halachos of lifnei iver beyond
its usual scope. Perhaps I can most easily illustrate the point by
giving an analogy. Let's say that you are an auditor, and you audit the
accounts of your client. And you do it well and accurately. But your
client is both somebody of a fraudulent turn of mind and also somebody
who without your skilful audit, would not have the capability of truly
understanding what he owned and where. And therefore your client used
your audit of his assets to work out how to defraud the revenue. Now
according to your stance on this, auditing this client would be assur,
because you have enabled him to perform an averah that he might
otherwise not have performed (although he might, because somebody else
might well have audited his accounts, there are a lot of other auditors
out there). This is despite the auditing of client accounts generally
being mutar (if not a mitzvah assisting him in complying with dina
d'malchusa dina). Perhaps a more straightforward case would be if you
frequent a shop and do business with somebody, and in doing so enable
him to generate an honest profit, which he then uses to do some sort of
an averah. According to you are responsible for that averah, at least
if you suspect that he might. Or even, if you give food to somebody who
then does an averah, since he uses the food you gave him to give him the
energy to do the averah, then you are responsible for the averah.
But in each of these cases I give above it is a two stage process, you
are helping with something which then enables him to do an averah. So
too with this. You are helping him meet a potential spouse, but even if
that meeting enables him ultimately to do an averah with her - that
meeting is not an averah, any more than feeding somebody or auditing
their accounts or whatever is an averah. While the lifnei iver cases
deal with helping someone do an averah directly, not indirectly in this
two stage way - that is why I said you were extending the issur well
beyond its halachic definition. It is also why I said that arguably the
rabbi performing the marriage should be worse off than the introducer
according to you. Because performing the marraige is closer to the
actual act that is the issur. A marriage does not necessitate an issur
(obviously), but it is one step closer than an introduction that might
(or might not) lead to a marriage that might (or might not) lead to an
act b'issur. This is all before you even get into the standard
questions in lifnei iver cases about whether or not the person could
have or would have done the issur even without your involvement and
whether there are sufficient other people who could or would step in if
you don't act.
Regards
Chana
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From: Robert Rubinoff <rubinoff@...>
Date: Tue, 11 Sep 2007 12:04:45 -0400
Subject: Re: Halakhic reasoning vs. reward/punishment calculations
> From: Daniel Wells <wells@...>
> What I was suggesting is that in the case of chuppas nidda, yichud is
> forbidden and they have to sleep in separate rooms. After the initial
> biah, yichud is permitted even if she is niddah.
Yichud [the couple being alone together] is only prohibited if the woman
is niddah and *they have never slept together*. If they have slept
together, even before they got married, then there is no problem with
yichud. (At least, that's how I've always understood the rule.)
Since nowadays I think it's safe to presume that the majority of
non-religious couples have in fact slept together before marriage (many
of them are already living together when they get married), yichud
should not be an issue. (And even if it were, it would still not be a
mitzvah haba b'aveirah [a mitzvah that is the product of a
transgression], rather it would be a transgression that is the product
of a mitzvah. The marriage is not being made possible by the yichud -
they couple is already married at the time of the yichud. And note that
that yichud is prohibited if they're not married also, so in fact it's
really a mitzvah that is followed by a separate act that may or may not
be an aveirah.
Robert
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End of Volume 55 Issue 74
