[Avodah] Yom Kippur x 2

[kennethgmiller at juno.com]

R' Jonny Dickson (welcome to the list!) asked:
> My question is, why is there no second day Yom Kippur? The
> usual answer to this is because people can't fast two days,
> but if that's the case, why not at least have an issur
> melacha on 11th Tishri? Or perhaps allow people to eat after
> nightfall on the 11th, because of pikuach nefesh, and then
> (having removed the risk) require them to fast for the rest
> of the 11th?

Such rules make sense to those who are very learned, but the average person would all too easily have concluded that if a snack is okay on the night of the 11th, it is also okay on the night of the 10th. And if I can eat a snack, why not cook it too?

It is a great example of "Tafasta meruba lo tafasta" (biting off more than one can chew) or "Yatza s'charo b'hefsedo" (you lose more than you gain). D'rabanans are supposed to strengthen the Torah law, and something such as you suggest could end up weakening it.

Besides, how would you phrase such a law? How much can one eat on the night of the 11th? How early? How late?

Your suggestions fit in very well with current ideas of taking "some of this and some of that" to effectively compromise different goals in an attempt to accomplish as much as feasible when those goals conflict with each other. Two examples which come to mind are visitors to Eretz Yisrael who "go l'chumra" on the second day of Yom Tov (a/k/a "a day and a half"), or eating the afikoman after chatzos "al t'nai".

I do not mean to demean those procedures in any way. They are good and valuable, and they solve a real problem. But let's be very honest and clear about exactly which problem they solve. Namely: We don't know what the halacha is. If one wishes to wax philosophical and refer to the problem as "galus" or "lack of Sanhedrin" or whatever, that's fine; it still boils down to the same thing: We don't know whether Sof Zman Afikoman is chatzos or alos, and we don't understand the concept of Yom Tov Sheni And Visitors as well as we'd like. And so on.

Chazal did not suffer from this problem. At least not to the degree that we suffer from it. Of course there were things they disagreed about, but it's not wrong to say that a great deal of their efforts went into *establishing* the halacha, not merely *clarifying* it. When disagreements arose, or when values conflicted, they were able to decide what was more important than what, and the clear halacha emerged.

Here's an example which might illustrate my point: Shmini Atzeres in Chutz Laaretz. This is the one case where one Yom Tov conflicted with another Yom Tov, and Chazal had a difficult debate on what to do about it. Yom Kippur was really no problem; the only reason to have a second day was "lo plug" (as you wrote), but that is easily answered by the difficulty and danger of a second day. (It just now occurred to me that all the arguments against having Yom Kippur fall on Friday or Sunday would be equally effective against a second day.) But Shmini Atzeres is a much bigger problem. We really ought to have an eighth day of eating in the Sukkah, and Chag Bifnay Atzmo is not as strong of an argument as Sakanas Nefashos. So they discussed and came to a decision.

I'm not going to say exactly what their decision about Shmini Atzeres was. Suffice it to say that it is merely to illustrate what a no-brainer Yom Kippur was. Yes, they could have legislated something about 11 Tishrei. But for what purpose? It just wasn't worth it.

But what do I know? I'm the sort of am haaretz who gets confused by all this stuff. I fully expect that someone more learned than me will come along soon and cite mesechta and daf, and tell us that "The reason we don't have a second day of Yom Kippur is explicit in gemara such-and-such..."

Akiva Miller

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