[Avodah] a troubling halacha

[kennethgmiller at juno.com]

R'n Toby Katz wrote:
> ... throughout the  centuries, Jews were /constantly/ on
> the move, either traveling for  business, or traveling to
> learn in a yeshiva in another city (e.g., Rashi learned
> in Germany), or they were running away from war or from
> pogroms, or they were expelled from here and had to go
> there, but then they were expelled from there and had to
> go somewhere else.  Our whole history is a history of
> moving, moving.  Wherever Jews landed they tried hard to
> achieve stability and permanence, but inevitably after a
> while they had to pull up roots  again.  "A while" could
> be anywhere from a few months to a few years or  even a
> few generations, but nothing was as inevitable as Jews
> moving.

Yes, but I'll note two points:

First, you concede that the time between moves was very variable, and could have been very long. This makes me suspect that most Jews throughtout history *did* live close to their family, and *were* in contact with them.

Second, in the situations you describe, I think the community tended to move en masse, together. This would tend to keep families together even when the moves were frequent.

She also wrote:
> And speaking of shidduchim, my grandmother and my
> grandfather were cousins who lived in Polish towns a day's
> travel away from each other (before cars, obviously) and
> they never met each other until they were  adults. When
> they met they got married.

And similarly R' Arie Folger wrote:

> ... it seems that shidukhim between shtetls that were at
> least one day solid walking away, or even several days
> walk, was a standard occurence. FWIW, in each successive
> generation, my ancestors on the paternal line (the
> Galicianers) lived in a different city, ostensibly because
> their respective wives were from different cities. My bet
> is that they saw each other rarely.

Okay, I asked for some anecdotal evidence, and you gave it to me.

But still... Do you think that over the course of history, 80-90% of Jewry was so far out of touch with their parents that a deception would not be discovered? Even these stories don't claim the figure to be much higher than 50%, and my guess is that it was far less --- when averaged out over many centuries.

Let's take another look at the words used by the Mechaber, in YD 402:12 -- "Mi she'mes lo mes, v'lo noda lo... - One whose relative died, and he doesn't know about it..." Why is the language so straightforward? In this paragraph of 45 words, how difficult would it have been to add two more words, to specify that this is only where the relative was "b'eer acheres - in another city" or "b'mdinas hayam - overseas".

Okay, I give up. I am willing to presume that even if the great majority of Jews have always lived near their parents, the answer to my question is that the Mechaber left out the words "in another city" simply because his audience understood that that is what he meant.

Moving on, I'd like to point out something that I had not noticed before. This halacha which we are referring to -- YD 402:12 -- is the last se'if of that siman. ALL ELEVEN of the prior se'ifim concern shmuah kerovah and shmuah rechokah (timely and delayed news). This would suggest that the concern here is (as I guessed previously) that people in general prefer having the lesser restrictions of delayed aveilus, and would prefer not to have the stronger restrictions of timely aveilus.

I had previously asked how and why this sociological change occurred, given that most people nowadays would be offended at being denied the full, normal amount of aveilus.

I now suggest that the change was not so much in our emotions, but in the definition of "normal amount of aveilus". If the reality was indeed that most people got the news after thirty days, then that was probably perceived as "standard", and I can see how the minority, who got their news quickly, might perceive the full aveilus as burdensome. In contrast, we who get news quite quickly, have come to see this as the normal -- and expected -- course of events.

Akiva Miller

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