@SethJ :) though I think discussion of pronunciation of Hebrew and understanding two gemaras in shabbat and one in megillah is more on topic than the other conversation that was in here.
Congratulations to @MonicaCellio on being appointed pro-tem mod over at Writers.SE. Monica will still be a mod here on Mi Yodeya, but we wish her much success over there as well.
@DoubleAA thanks! I encourage y'all to bring your writing questions there; while a lot of the questions are about fiction, all kinds of writing are on-topic -- technical writing (my specialty), poetry, journalism, academic writing, blogs, screenwriting...
The rebuke-tochacha tag, q.v., currently has four questions:
two are about rebuking one's fellow Jew when he sins,
one is about a verse in the tochacha in parashas B'chukosay (and also has the bechukosai tag), and
the last is about a verse in the Torah reading of 9 Av, in Vaeschanan (and a...
The custom among all Jews (as far as I know) is to spill a drip of wine for each of the plagues as they are mentioned in a list in the haggadah. This custom is not mentioned anywhere in the Talmud (as far as I know). What is the earliest source to mention this custom? Does it encourage or discour...
I have often seen reference to the Four Holy Cities: Jerusalem, Hebron, Safed and Tiberias. What is the earliest source to reference this? Why these four cities? Has there ever been a different count? What are some Nafka Mina (relevant applications) of the status of these cities?
I have seen a custom (it seems to me primarily among Chassidim) to eat matza on 14 Iyar (known as Pesach Sheni). What is the earliest source for this custom? What are the reasons given for following it?
As an aside, I always found this custom odd, as the matza that was eaten with the Korban Pesa...
The earliest I can find for calling the abreviated Halel "Half Halel" is the Levush (c. 1600):
לבוש אורח חיים סימן תפח
וכשאומרים חצי הלל כגון בראש חודש וחול המועד
Even after him, it is not the standard way of referring to it. Everyone else calls it "Halel BeDilug" which means "Halel ...
The earliest I can find of those four categories being mentioned together is in the writings of Rabbi Moshe Alshich (a kabbalist from Tzefat; 1508 - 1593). He writes in his commentary to Genesis 1:27 as follows:
וכל זה על ידי קיום התורה אשר גם בה ארבע בחינות אלה שקשורים זו עם זו, הפשט כנגד עו...
Hi I'm looking for different traditions (and sources!) about how to properly sing these very rare trop found in the Torah exclusively in Bamidbar 35:5 Does anyone have any idea which version is better / closer to the original?
@Ali it's also important to know that some aspects of chat are global to the network. I don't know for sure, but I think if you get kicked out of one chat room for a flag you get kicked out of all of them. So whatever happened might not have even happened here. (Or maybe it did; I don't know as I didn't see it happen.)
@Ali ok, sorry. Wasn't trying to dredge up an old hurt or anything.
The network is big and has many moving parts; I don't know exactly how all of them work. So I'm glad you got a useful notification, and now I know that that happens.
Aww, @MonicaCellio, I was driving and missed all the fun!
@Ali, since this question asks about a Muslim slaughterer (and process), I've mostly removed the material that talks about a Jewish shochet. I'm now going to clean up obsolete comments. — Monica Cellio1 hour ago
@DoubleAA I do too. And I agree that it's useful, or at least interesting:
What is the Talmudic source for Ḥanukah?
In discussing candles for Shabbath, the Talmud (Shab. 21b) goes into a discussion about candles generally, touching upon Ḥanukah candles, and ultimately asks, "Mai Ḥanukah?" - "What is Ḥanukah?" - and from there goes into a brief discussion of the origins...
@DoubleAA Exactly. I don't reject your view, I just might be looking for something more authoritative. However, replace your name with for example R' Kanievsky shlita. It's not about age, it's about authority.
If a person rejects any insufficiently aged source flat out, that is a problem in my opinion.
Thus, what about yeridas hadoros? It's nothing to do with the rejection we were discussing.
@DoubleAA yes, even if I think it's fairly pointless, because who cares how old the source is as long as there's an answer? Mesorah is mesorah.
It's interesting intellectually - just not practically, at least to me.
@DoubleAA heck, it's okay by me if you call Natan Slifkin more authoritative than the Mechaber. I think it's a nonsense statement and I totally disagree but it's not up to me to pick an approach to avoda for you.
(As a disclaimer, I am not saying that you or anybody would say such a thing)
@DoubleAA nu... I still don't see how that's a question on what I wrote. I said I think it's a problem if they reject a source by virtue of its age. You're talking about somebody who prefers an older source but doesn't reject a newer one outright.
The issue here is not "I want the oldest source possible", it's "if a source comes later than such and such a date, I reject it no matter what"
@DoubleAA I'm not sure I can authoritatively answer that question.
No pun intended.
I guess I would have to say "it depends".
Obviously if it were absolutely true, it would be a big problem on, for example, the Besht or the GR"A, so it really can't be absolutely so in all cases.
@DoubleAA Depends. If later authorities agree that it does, then it does. If the Gemara is closed, then it's closed. If the RaM"A and virtually every other major Posek in history agrees with the Mehaber (or doesn't explicitly disagree), and Rabbi Avi Weiss of the Hebrew Institute of Riverdale states that a ruling of the Mehaber is incorrect, I'd say that he has no standing to make such an assertion. But that has nothing to do with Yeridath Hadoroth.
@DoubleAA That's not a personal attack against him. I was just trying to think of a contemporary Orthodox Jewish leader who might take issue with an assumed norm. I don't think R' Kanievsky, to borrow another name already dropped here, or R' Slifkin, for that matter, would challenge such a norm. I did not mean to impugn the integrity of R' Weiss, though I'm certainly not a follower of his model.
@DoubleAA It's not individualized. R' Pam is not less of an authority than R' S"Z Auerbach just because he was born and died later. If he is less of an authority, it's because of their relative stature among Torah observant Jews, as well as their roles in matters of deciding Halachah.
(My point was to deliberately compare apples to oranges. Now I'm trying to compare apples to apples. Does that make sense?)
@DoubleAA Because it does. Yeridath HaDoroth would be a reason (among others, I'm sure) why R' S"Z Auerbach - or R' Kanievsky - would not challenge the Mehaber. But it would not be the reason why we should reject R' Weiss if he did (which I don't think he would, either, for what it's worth).
@HodofHod Because it hasn't gotten the votes and the mods haven't deemed it worthy of closure.
I still haven't earned a badge for Nice Question or Nice Answer, both of which require I get scores of 10 or more. I hit 9 once, but that was a while ago. Can someone suggest ways I can improve my questions and answers?
The Jewish community in my university was looking for ways to convince the university to provide more and better kosher meal options as part of the general dining scheme. We decided to contact the Muslim campus community to see if they had related desires with respect to Halal food and whether we could get more from the university by combining our interests and numbers together and making a joint proposal. ...
... In our early discussions with our Muslim counterparts, the question came up of whether Kosher food in general, and Kosher meat in particular, count as Halal. We learned that according to some Mulsims, it does, while according to others, it doesn't. ...
... Naturally, it could have been more convenient for us if one could simply call Kosher food also Halal, since we could then potentially make a united case for kosher facilities that would therefore satisfy all our needs. A Hillel official, in an email chain that included all of the Jews and Muslims involved in the discussion, suggested that we collectively examine the Muslim and Jewish sources to determine ...
... whether, in fact, all Muslims could indeed eat Kosher meat. I responded (to all) something along the lines of that I thought we should all work together on whatever cooperation we could achieve on the basis of our respective religious requirements, rather than trying to re-evaluate each others' requirements.
<end of story>
Epilogous notes:
- I don't think too much concrete ended up coming from that particular initiative, but I understand that eventually (after my time), the university did add a real kosher meal option to its dining plan, around the time that it made subscription to dining plans compulsory for some large number of undergrads.
- There were some individual Muslims who occasionally partook of the kosher dinner scheme we had at the time, which involved communally-ordered takeout meals from local kosher restaurants.
- I don't recall if it was before or after the story above, but a bunch of us Orthodox Jews once went out for dinner at a Kosher Chinese restaurant with a bunch of Muslims, for the sake of purely informal cultural exchange. A good time was had by all. Some of the Muslims ordered meat dishes, and some could not.
The rebuke-tochacha tag, q.v., currently has four questions:
two are about rebuking one's fellow Jew when he sins,
one is about a verse in the tochacha in parashas B'chukosay (and also has the bechukosai tag), and
the last is about a verse in the Torah reading of 9 Av, in Vaeschanan (and a...
I still haven't earned a badge for Nice Question or Nice Answer, both of which require I get scores of 10 or more. I hit 9 once, but that was a while ago. Can someone suggest ways I can improve my questions and answers?
