[Avodah] netilat yadaim

[Micha Berger]

On Wed, Apr 29, 2009 at 08:27:55AM -0700, Saul.Z.Newman at kp.org wrote:
: http://www.atranet.co.il/gordon/netilat.pdf
: http://rationalistjudaism.blogspot.com/2009/04/netilat-yadayaim-shel-shacharit-ritual.html

: hygeinic netilah kabbalistically transformed to something else again; like 
: sfira, which we know is counted , as the tora tells us, to remove 
: zuhama....

Only if you assume zuhama is a hygienic issue rather than some
metaphysical one. When Chazal speak of the zimah that descended on Adam
and Chavah with eating from the eitz hada'as, I don't think that was a
physical gas.

But the first link is to the article I mentioned from Gesher, in which
there is a contrast made between nigleh's attitude toward tum'ah (must be
removed as a precondition to certain mitzvos) and nistar's avoidance of
tum'ah and urge to remove it ASAP. As I wrote then (in response to RZS),
more of neigl vasr comes from the latter. You can now check the article
to see if I recalled it correctly. (It was 13 years ago, so perhaps I
should have said "... to see how significantly my recollection drifted
from the original.")

The blog entry points to a second article by R' Martin L Gordon on one of
my perennial problems. "Mezuzah: Protective Amulet or Religious Symbol"
<http://www.mesora.org/mezuza-gordon.pdf>.

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             Today is the 20th day, which is
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