[Avodah] [Areivim] "Blei Gissen" should we believe in this?

[Celejar]

[redirected from Areivim, as per moderator request]

On Sun, 6 Jan 2008 13:23:09 EST
T613K at aol.com wrote:

> From: "Marty Bluke" _marty.bluke at gmail.com_ (mailto:marty.bluke at gmail.com) 
> 
> >>In last week's English Hamodia there is a whole story printed  about a
> Rebbitzen who neutralizes ayin hara through "blei gissen"  that  is
> pouring of lead.....
> What have we come to? Is this what we believe in,  magic and
> superstition? Is this really al pi torah? This is printed in  a
> mainstream Charedi newspaper.<<
> 
> >>>>>
> I don't know what we've come to but in those circles where one is required  
> to believe in the absolute literal truth of every medrash, where one must  
> believe in spontaneous generation of lice, believe in mermaids, believe that  
> Moshe Rabeinu was 20 feet tall or whatever -- well, once it's a mitzva to  believe 
> impossible things, I guess there's no end of impossible things to  believe 
> in.  Vechol hamarbeh harei zeh meshubach, I  guess.

Here's the Rambam , "who teaches wisdom to the foolish" [0]:

--- Begin Quote ---

The first [group], and it is most of what I have seen and whose works I
have seen, and about whom I have heard, believe them [the words of the
sage] literally, and they do not interpret them to possess any hidden
meaning at all, and the impossibilities are to them all necessarily
existent.  But they do this for they have not understood wisdom. and
they are far from understanding, and they do not have completeness in
order to understand on their own and they have not found an arouser to
arouse them.  They think that the sages ob"m did not intend, in all
their upright and correct statements, but what they have understood
according to their understanding, and [they believe] that they are all
literal, even though what is apparent from some of their statements
contains libel and that which is distant from logic, to the point that
if it were told, in its literal sense to simple people, certainly to
scholars, they would be amazed at their understanding, and they would
say "how can there exist in the world a person who thinks this or who
believes that this is a correct belief, a fortiori that it would appeal
to him.

And we should be saddened over the foolishness of this mentally
impoverished group, for they think that they are honoring and elevating
the sages, but they are really lowering them to the utmost lowliness,
and they do not understand this.

By the life of Hashem Yisbarach, this group is destroying the glory of
the Torah, and darkening its shine, and placing Hashem's Torah opposite
to its intent, for Hashem Yisbarach said in the complete Torah "that
they shall hear all these laws and they shall say 'but a wise an
understanding nation is this great folk'", whereas this group relates
the sentences of the sages ob"m in such a way that when the other
nations hear them they say "but a foolish and vulgar nation is this
little folk" ...

--- End Quote ---

It would be intellectually dishonest, however, to refrain from
mentioning the Rambam's continuation, that those who understand Hazal
literally but instead smugly ridicule them for their unsophistication
are even more foolish than the previous group, since they are
cavalierly ridiculing great scholars whom they do not have the
background to understand.

[0] Commentary to the Mishnah, Sanhedrin, Helek s.v. Ha'ri'shonah

> --Toby  Katz

Yitzhak
--
Bein Din Ledin - bdl.freehostia.com
An advanced discussion of Hoshen Mishpat