@IsaacMoses Titchadeish on your new Tallit.

@IsaacMoses, תתחדש!

@DoubleAA Wha-?

@msh210 Rama OC 223:6 he.wikisource.org/wiki/…

@DoubleAA I'm familiar with that; my question was how you know he has a new one.

@msh210 Oh. I got an email announcing it.

@DoubleAA Huh?

@msh210 Relevant excerpt:

@DoubleAA Ah.

(there are 8 more prizes that I omitted, fwiw)

@DoubleAA 2nd through 9th?

@IsaacMoses tischadesh

@msh210 yes

@DoubleAA Good guess.

I wonder why they don't do it at parashas Sh'lach.

I mean, I know the relevance of t'cheles to T'ruma, obviously, but they're not making a m'il, are they?

@msh210 They announced it this week.

That way they get both Parshas

@DoubleAA Oh, they're based in Israel?

@msh210 Yes (as is the Jewish calendar).

... yes, apparently so, according to their contact-us page

@DoubleAA I don't know what that parenthetical statement means in this context. What does it mean to say that the calendar of parashiyos is "based in Israel"? It's entirely dependant on local custom.

@msh210 just that most americans get the sense that israel is off a week nowadays, when if anything it's they who are off. you just sort of suggested this week isn't parshas shlach. Now you are correct that in some sense weeks aren't assigned to parshas because torah reading cycles are a matter of custom not calendar, but in any sense in which weeks have objective parshas, the "israel way" is the primary way and everyone else is just flailing about trying to fix themselves.

related halachik nafka minah judaism.stackexchange.com/a/15612/759

@DoubleAA @NoachMiFrankfurt @msh210 Thanks! I heard it here first. This, despite actually seeing that email an hour ago, since I didn't bother to scroll down through the email. If not for you mentioning it here, I may have never noticed and collected.

@IsaacMoses Now I feel bad that I had that conversation with @msh210. Would have been much more fun to have the confused conversation with the actual recipient of the prize!

@DoubleAA I think this would have been enough to clue me in. :)

@DoubleAA Whether a given act accomplishes teshuvah is aggadic. After all, the halachic end of teshuvah is rather straightforward.... say vidui and mean it (tzerikhah kavanah) when you do teshuvah. See Hil' Teshuvah 1:1 "... כשיעשה תשובה וישוב מחטאו חייב להתודות לפני הא-ל ברוך הוא..." What is effective to get your account cleaned, or the damage off your soul, or get rid of the blockage between your soul and G-d... all that is aggadita.

@IsaacMoses , do they choose the number of tekheiles strings and how to tie them? If not, how do you decide? (I can tell you what I ended up doing, but I don't think my solution is authoritative enough to warrant discussion.)

@MichaBerger I'll let you know when I hear back from them. I assume they'll ask me what I want. I first purchased and tied my own strings years ago, but haven't been wearing that tallit for a few years due to some snapped strings. I've been wearing my backup tallit with all white strings and putting off doing something about the primary since then. So, most likely, I'll ask them to provide the same as what I used to wear until the snappings.

... Then, it'll be even harder to stop putting off repairing that one.

@MichaBerger How did I decide when I tied them the first time? "(I can tell you what I ended up doing, but I don't think my solution is authoritative enough to warrant discussion.)"

@MichaBerger I hear what you are getting at but I think I'm going to disagree on your application of the strict bifurcation of Halakha and Aggada here, as well as your strict bifurcation of the different parts of the Teshuva process. In grayer areas like these one must be very careful with their terminology so we don't end up arguing semantics.

I think I would prefer to place "What is effective to get your account cleaned, or the damage off your soul, or get rid of the blockage between your soul and G-d" in Halakha as it is practical instruction, but how that works definitely borders on Aggada.

Of course it's not entirely clear why one categorization is more important or not.

If you are trying to get at that "how can we trust Psak Halakha about this because what if what Psak Halakha tells us to do doesn't actually metaphysically fix the problem" leads to a similar argument I present above about metaphysical reality viz-a-viz the Ikkarei Emunah, then I posit that God told us to follow Psak Halakha and He will fix any metaphysical problems such that one is no punished for following Psak Halakha.

I agree it's an interesting borderline case. In any event at the end of the day we don't really know how God's judgment is weighed, so it's always just a best guess estimate on our parts.

@MichaBerger Is it unique enough to prompt interest?