[Avodah] Pre-Sinaitic conversions

[Micha Berger]

So, I suggested that "geir" means "stranger", which is ambiguous --
could be geir tzedeq, geir toshav, someone new to the neighborhood, or
historically speaking, someone who joined beris Avraham before other
berisim existed. (There are no recorded cases of someone joining the
beris at har Sinai before the one by the Yardein.) And we simply need
mesorah and context to disambiguate from the general idea to specific
halachic category.

Another thought hit me that I posted in earlier iterations but haven't
mentioned in a while.

Gid hanasheh bechalav is two lavin. We do not say "ein issur chal al
issur" because the issur of gid hanasheh is different in kind than
those first given at Sinai.

The case in Beitza 12a-b is someone who cooks and eats gid hanasheh in
milk on YT. He violated the 5 issurim: (1&2) cooking and eating GhN,
(3&4) cooking and eating BbC, (5) hav'arah. R' Yochanan objects to
hav'arah. But lemaskanah, both assume issur chal al issur.

Unfortunately, it has been 22 years since I learned the inyan with
RDLifshitz. I do not recall who explains it in terms of allowing issur
chal al issur because GhN is pre-Sinaitic.

I also do not know how the Rambam explains the gemara. Since he says
that beris Sinai replaced previous berisim, and so the issur of gid
hanasheh today is different than that of Yaaqov and his sons, I do not
see how the line of reasoning works leshitaso.

However, it would seem that the first rishon holds that in a
fundamental way, Yoseif and his brothers weren't what we would call
today "Jews". OTOH, since the issurim we have today are from a beris
that didn't exist yet, I see nothing shocking. It's only when you try
to map 4 or more berisim to two states -- Jew vs non-Jew -- that
confusion emerges.

SheTir'u baTov!
-micha

-- 
Micha Berger             "Man wants to achieve greatness overnight,
micha at aishdas.org        and he wants to sleep well that night too."
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