V'dibarta Bam

Isaac Moses

1:38 AM

@DoubleAA Amen!

@DoubleAA (Shouldn't that be "Korbenot"?)

Isaac Moses

1:57 AM

@namer98, is it a coincidence that you showed up here and Reddit_Rabbi showed up on Mi Yodeya on the same day?

MoriDoweedhYa3gob

2:12 AM

@IsaacMoses conspiracies

Seth J

2:27 AM

Have you heard this:
http://clal.org/911cd/Track06.mp3

Background: huffingtonpost.com/rabbi-irwin-kula/…

Isaac Moses

3:20 AM

@SethJ Gives me chills.

Monica Cellio

@SethJ whoa.

Daniel

4:03 AM

@DoubleAA Amen!

@SethJ Do you know the story behind that? That's not real, is it?

Oh is that a collection of voicemails?

@SethJ Oh man. Definitely a bit of a jolt at "Liz, it's me Dan." My kallah's name is Liz

Shmuel Brin

@HodofHod I heard that R' Ovadya Yosef said that to R' Berel Soleveitchik (I think that Briskers also have that Ey)

Seth J

4:19 AM

@Daniel It's tough to listen to.

@Daniel Yeah.

@MonicaCellio A friend complained on Facebook about it trivializing one or both of the events (we had some debate, and I'm still not sure), but I think it works.

Daniel

@SethJ I don't see it as trivializing anything. I think the usage of eicha melody draws an interesting comparison

They are two events that are hard to compare

They are tragedies for different reasons

9/11 for massive loss of life, and the destruction of the Temple for the beginning of our exile

But both are events of enormous significance

Double AA

@Daniel The destruction of the Temple was also accompanied by massive loss of life in addition to famine, disease and forced servitude; there were no Geneva conventions back then.

Seth J

4:36 AM

@Daniel I agree with @DoubleAA. The reason I think it works, as I told my friend, is that it make 9 Av - a very abstract concept to most people, especially today - tangible and accessible to the modern ear. People can relate to the tragedy, and it suddenly makes stories of invading armies, mass murder, starvation, and exile, more relatable as well.

@Daniel I don't really think they need comparison, per se. I think it is hard to relate to something abstract, and time and distance make things abstract. Consider MTV's Holocaust-Subway campaign.

►

@Daniel I just think it works because it bridges that gap.

msh210

4:58 AM

@SethJ I had not. Thank you for linking to it.

Monica Cellio

12:33 PM

@SethJ I agree. The events are not the same; in particular, 9/11, while tragic, did not lead to exile, further destruction, and personally-relevant war -- it certainly led to other losses that touched us in a more-distant way, but we weren't left running for our lives. But at the time, it wasn't so clear what was happening. That evening I wrote in a private journal "I wonder if I have just seen the start of WW III".

Isaac Moses

2:34 PM

Someone linked one of our questions as an educational resource (recently, if my Google search for "past week" is to be believed)

Monica Cellio

@IsaacMoses nice! I wonder if someone suggested the link or they found it on their own?

Isaac Moses

@MonicaCellio They could easily have found it by googling. We get pretty good search ranks

Monica Cellio

2:50 PM

@IsaacMoses we do, yes.

Isaac Moses

I submitted the following to their contact page:

Thank you very much for linking to an interesting question from Mi Yodeya on your page on "Additional Resources for The Jewish Understanding of God." I hope your readers find it useful.

Would you be interested in linking to Mi Yodeya more generally in other of your resource lists, perhaps including "Online Learning Platforms," or maybe writing a blog post about Mi Yodeya? I believe that our online Jewish Q&A community offers a unique platform for massively collaborative learning, an excellent place for people with all levels of background to bring (non-pesak!) questions, and a rich reposit…

...

Their website has a lot of excellent-looking curation of online resources, by topic. Looks well worth returning to.

And if you sign up, you can get free online access to the Bar Ilan project.

msh210

3:31 PM

@IsaacMoses One of yours, to be precise. :-) Y'yasher kochacha.

Isaac Moses

@msh210 Baruch Tihyeh. :)

Daniel

@msh210 How do you pronounce "Y'yasher kochacha"? Do you actually say it that way?

Or do you just write it that way because you prefer to be medakdek, but when speaking, you always give a hearty "shkoyach"

msh210

@Daniel When I say the whole thing, which is often, I say it that way. But often I slur it to "shkoyich" or the like.

Isaac Moses

@Daniel I do, though sometimes I say "Yasher Koach"

msh210

@Daniel But, yeah, I am more m'dakdek in my writing than in my speech, as a rule.

TRiG

6:03 PM

orthopraxy

[Sorry. I meant to type that into the search box, not the comment box.]

Anyhoo,

2

Q: Is Orthodoxy more important than Orthopraxy?

Orthopraxy is the application of orthodox beliefs in the form of rituals and customs. Approved practices are all orthopraxic. I’ve been told (and I can’t unsee it now) that most Protestant groups focus on orthodox requirements often at the expense of orthopraxic requirements. Examples of Mandate...

I suspect the equivalent question here would look very different.

Daniel

@TRiG Within Judaism, the two seem to be somewhat conflated

TRiG

@Daniel Yes but no but yes but no.

Daniel

@TRiG right

TRiG

@Daniel My impression was that orthopraxy was distinctly more important in Judaism, but reading this site for a while has made me doubt that; I've come to suspect that it's rather complicated.

Daniel

@TRiG We definitely talk about practice more often than we talk about beliefs, but that does not necessarily mean it's more important

ou.org/torah/rambam.htm

msh210

6:13 PM

@Daniel That lists them, but doesn't explain their importance. :-)

Daniel

@msh210 Right

TRiG

@msh210 Also, what on earth is "perfect faith", anyway?

Daniel

Jewish principles of faith

The concept of an explicit, paramount definition of faith does not exist in Judaism as it does in other monotheistic religions such as Christianity. Although Jews and religious leaders share a core of monotheistic principles, and there are many fundamental principles quoted in the Talmud to define Judaism (often by what it is not), it has no established formulation of principles of faith that are or must be recognized by all observant Jews. The various "principles of faith" that have been enumerated over the intervening centuries carry no greater weight than that imparted to them by th...

msh210

@TRiG Affable's answer is what I suspected, give or take.

@TRiG Ask the page's authors. It's their translation.

Daniel

@TRiG That sounds like a good question to ask

TRiG

6:18 PM

@Daniel Worth asking if "perfect faith" is a standard formulation in Jewish writings and thought; not worth asking if it's an idiosyncrasy of that particular web page.

Daniel

@TRiG Those are Rambam's words

msh210

@TRiG Worth finding out what that page is a translation of and asking what those words really mean, perhaps.

Daniel

more like "complete faith"

TRiG

@msh210 This page gives a source but doesn't use the phase "perfect faith".

> Shloshah Asar Ikkarim

msh210

@TRiG That's not a citation.

@TRiG Note that "faith" here is in its "trust, belief, reliance" sense, not in its "religion, devotion" sense. (I'm almost completely sure.)

Hmm... en.wiktionary.org/wiki/faith#Noun

Daniel

6:22 PM

@TRiG That page gives a summary, but not a direct translation

TRiG

in The Upper Room, Oct 7 '12 at 21:54, by TRiG

@DavidStratton I have a short list of words I never use, because they mean different things to different people, and always lead to talking at cross purposes. One of them is faith.

msh210

1. A feeling, conviction, or belief that something is true or real, without having evidence.
2. A religious belief system.
3. An obligation of loyalty or fidelity and the observance of such an obligation.
4. A trust or confidence in the intentions or abilities of a person, object, or ideal.
*(see also example sentences there)*

TRiG

in The Upper Room, Mar 14 at 18:56, by TRiG

@El'endiaStarman The actual question is specifically about making amends for a wrongdoing, but the chat has mainly been about works/faith. (But then, @MonicaCellio, any discussion at all of what Chrisitians "should do" is going to lead to a faith/works debate.)

msh210

@msh210 I think the intent on that Web page was sense 1.

@TRiG Can you read Hebrew?

TRiG

Well, the first search result for Shloshah Asar Ikkarim was hebrew4christians.com, but it did at least get me a citation:

> The Thirteen Principles of Faith (Sheloshah-Asar Ikkarim) constitutes the most well known Jewish creed; it was formulated by the great Jewish medievalist Rabbi Moses ben Maimon (Rambam), better known as Maimonides (1135-1204 CE), in his commentary on the Mishnah (Sanhedrin, 10). Maimonides claimed that he distilled these Thirteen Principles of Faith from the Taryag mitzvot (613 commandments) enumerated in his exegesis of the Torah.

msh210

6:28 PM

@TRiG The Wikipedia link @Daniel posted also has the citation.

TRiG

@msh210 D'uh, of course it does. *me stupid*

Daniel

@TRiG What is the meaning of this comment?

TRiG

@Daniel Orthodoxy/Orthopraxy: faith/works.

> Any discussion at all of what Chrisitians "should do" is going to lead to a faith/works debate.

Daniel

@TRiG So the point is that it's not really on topic on C.SE?

@TRiG I think the question of, what does Emunah Shlema (complete faith) really mean is a legitimate question for M.Y.

TRiG

(It's also the lens through which they view other religions, particularly Judaism. So Christians project back onto Judaism the faith/works discussion which is actually endemic to Christianity, and frame Judaism in terms of that debate, which probably isn't a debate Jews themselves are actually much interested in. This has implications for intrareligious dialogue.)

Daniel

6:33 PM

@TRiG Which debate is this, exactly?

Which is more important?

TRiG

@Daniel Huh? I dunno. I'm an atheist.

Daniel

@TRiG I mean is that what they mean by the faith/works debate?

TRiG

@Daniel Kinda, yeah. Not really. Ish.

Some Christians will say that works are completely irrelevant. (I'd say that these Christians clearly haven't read the book of James, but I'm an atheist, so what do I know?)

Isaac Moses

@Daniel Definitely.

Monica Cellio

7:08 PM

@TRiG context: the question referenced there was this one that I asked on C.SE. (Which I asked because I was trying to understand what appeared to be unrepentant wrongdoing from a knowledgable Christian, so I wondered what that religion's expectations are.)

Seth J

7:33 PM

@MonicaCellio Interesting. I wonder about their approach to the following:

@MonicaCellio Apparently the Hafetz Hayim was adamant that in order to achieve true atonement for gossip/slander, one has to apologize, even if the person who was harmed does not know he was harmed, does not know who harmed him, and may, in fact, not have actually suffered any harm at all - just a nasty comment made by one party to another about a third, that ultimately went nowhere.

@MonicaCellio If I recall the story correctly, he sought the approbation of a widely regarded rabbi in the Musar movement, who disagreed with this approach and felt that this would lead to unnecessary discord. If the aggrieved party wasn't actually aggrieved, the apology would create the discord rather than settle it.

@MonicaCellio He did not receive the approbation.

Monica Cellio

@SethJ yeah, my understanding of Chofetz Chayim is that you need to apologize too, and maybe he's especially stringent and not everyone does that (if it opens old wounds, for instance), but it's part of the background I'm coming from. That plus Rambam on t'shuva.

@SethJ I had not heard that. Interesting.

I was once in a situation where I'd unintentionally maligned an ex-coworker in front of then-current ones, for something that had happened 10+ years ago, and I had to figure out whether to hunt this person down and apologize even though he'd never know. I wussed, and you know what happened? I ran into him on the street for the first time in all those years a few weeks later, and he said "I heard you said not to hire me", and we talked.

Seth J

@MonicaCellio According to this thread, it was R' Yisrael Salanter (which is as I had heard it, too), but there's no source given.

Monica Cellio

@MonicaCellio (should clarify: the maligning was intentional but in retrospect incorrect; doing it in front of people who didn't need to hear wasn't.)

Seth J

8:02 PM

@MonicaCellio Wow.

Monica Cellio

@SethJ yeah, blew me away.

Isaac Moses

@MonicaCellio This is not the first story you've told here of unexpected circumstantial feedback on past decisions. (See also classmate recalling inspiration from a chance Shabbat encounter in the past at Pennsic.)

Monica Cellio

8:21 PM

@IsaacMoses yeah. I wasn't always a believer (spent much of my life not really caring about religion), but it's really hard to ignore things like this, y'know? It was such a divine nudge (that's the only way I can interpret these things) that got me to re-examine the whole religion question in the first place. And I know that to some people that sounds all woo-woo and stuff, but I really can't not see HKBH in my life.

Isaac Moses

@MonicaCellio As I said before, such instances are blessings. Taking personal inspiration from them and responding with gratitude is, IMO, the right response. OTOH, the law of large numbers, confirmation bias, etc. make it hard to use such episodes as watertight evidence of anything. But we don't generally experience the world and make our decisions about how to behave based on watertight evidence.

^^^ Fumbling around a personal formulation of emuna.

Monica Cellio

@IsaacMoses exactly. I can't prove anything from any of this, but if it helps me lead a better life, it's done its job. A relative once asked me why I believe in God and what I said was, roughly, I've seen things for which I can find no other explanation, but I can't prove it to you. (Which, surprisingly, he found satisfactory.)

Daniel

I'm trying to remember what the changes to davening are for Tisha B'Av

I know no tefillin at shacharis

Monica Cellio

@IsaacMoses yeah, now that you point it out... I've rambled around this some too, but I don't think I've ever gotten past "ramble".

Daniel

And no tachanun/lamenatzeach

no shir shel yom (I think)

Isaac Moses

8:32 PM

@Daniel Do you have access to an Ezras Torah Luach?

Daniel

@IsaacMoses I lost mine :(

I don't know how, either, since I keep it in my tefillin bag

Isaac Moses

@Daniel ezrastorah.org/calendar5773.php?page=download asks for a donation if you download

@Daniel Here's Chabad's listing, but it doesn't look comprehensive

Daniel

@IsaacMoses Ah thanks

Isaac Moses

@MonicaCellio Emuna is not trivial to understand or explain, especially if you come at it from a rationalist perspective.

TRiG

@IsaacMoses True.

Monica Cellio

8:37 PM

@IsaacMoses yeah, I don't think I understand yet; maybe I just undersrtand a little less badly than I did before. I came at it from an engineering perspective -- once I had that "hey wait, maybe there's something there that matters..." moment, I decided to hypothesize the existence of God, do what I understood torah said to do, and see what happened.

(And yeah, before too long I realized that I really really needed to make for myself a rav instead of trying to do that on my own.)

Isaac Moses

@TRiG The Hebrew word you encountered earlier translated as "faith"

@Daniel This Torah Tidbits PDF from Phil Chernofsky at the OU Israel Center has a listing starting on p. 36.

@MonicaCellio ... and unlike Avraham Avinu, you fortunately had rabbanim to turn to.

Monica Cellio

@IsaacMoses indeed. And written-down torah to start with. (And the internet. :-) )

unforgettableid

Hi all. :)

@Daniel Why do you want to remember what the changes are?

Monica Cellio

The text tells us that God approached Avram (already impressive enough), but the midrashim that say that Avram figured out there must be a Master of the World first are inspiring to me.

Daniel

@unforgettableid Because tomorrow is Tisha B'Av

Monica Cellio

8:48 PM

@unforgettableid hi and welcome to Bam.

Daniel

so I need to remember how I have to change my davening

Isaac Moses

@MonicaCellio I can see why.

Monica Cellio

@Daniel no minyan? Or ar you the Sh"tz?

Seth J

@unforgettableid Hi.

unforgettableid

@Daniel do you own an ArtScroll kinot? I do, and IIRC it might include a list of changes in the "Laws" section at the back.

Daniel

8:49 PM

@MonicaCellio Ah, now I understand the question. I need to leave for work early in the morning

before any of the minaynim are done

And I can't get out of work tomorrow, unfortunately

unforgettableid

@MonicaCellio and dear SethJ: Wow: people really are serious about returning greetings here.

Monica Cellio

@Daniel ah, so you're on your own. I hope you find answers.

unforgettableid

I wasn't expecting or hoping that anyone would say hi back. :)

Daniel

@unforgettableid Ah, Yes I do own it. I will check that later

Isaac Moses

@MonicaCellio I've heard very interesting classes on interpreting those midrashim and the philosophical nuances implied by the differences between them

Daniel

8:50 PM

@MonicaCellio Ezras Torah has it all.

unforgettableid

@Daniel No fun. :( If I may ask -- what's your work, and what time in the morning does it start?

Monica Cellio

@IsaacMoses I'm interested in hearing more.

Isaac Moses

@MonicaCellio I'm not sure if I've heard his take on this topic in particular, but I've heard very interesting stuff from R' Ezra Bick on the Akeida. This series, especially the first episode, looks quite relevant.

Daniel

I love that luach. Sometimes just for the comedic unsubtle solicitation of donations for example "The foremost Rabbis of past generations
instituted a wonderful practice
whereby, on Shabbos Shekolim Shuls all
over America conduct appeals for Ezras
Torah, which is a holy bastion of relief
and succor for thousands of families of
Torah scholars, including Gedolim, Tzaddikim,
widows, and children, whose
poverty is relieved, by the work of Ezras
Torah. This practice must be maintained,
because these appeals are a major source

@unforgettableid Software engineer. I start work at 8:00 A.M., but I live over an hour away and I have an important meeting first thing in the morning

unforgettableid

@Daniel oh. It's truly no fun having to start at 8:00a.

@Daniel Is there a synagogue near your office?

Daniel

8:56 PM

@unforgettableid No. I live near one of the biggest Jewish communities in the country outside of New York, but out where I work, there is nothing

Isaac Moses

@Daniel yuck.

unforgettableid

@Daniel Ah. Also, is there a sunrise ("K'vasikin") minyan in your city? Sunrise tomorrow in my city is around 6am. Perhaps you could at least say Shemoneh Esrei together with the minyan, then leave before Kedushah.

Daniel

@IsaacMoses you're telling me

Isaac Moses

@MonicaCellio bio of R' Bick

Monica Cellio

@IsaacMoses thanks! (Filed for later; blocked here at work.)

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