[Avodah] Haleiv HaCompanies

[kennethgmiller at juno.com]

R' Zev Sero wrote:

> Neither the USDA nor any government agency is a proxy for a Jewish
> witness. Nor does he rely on some leniency of a Jew merely having
> to be in the vicinity. Rather, his position in the original
> teshuvah is that "anan sahadi" is a full eidus *for all purposes*.
> His proof is .... From this he derives a rule that certainty is
> just as good as physically seeing something.

This is my understanding of RMF as well.

The reason this sticks in my mind is that his psak of "knowing is as good as seeing" contrasts very sharply with the common English saying, that "seeing is believing".

In the English phrase, we mean that if one has seen something with his own eyes, there's no way to deny that it happened. But the way RMF explains it, if one acquires a strong knowledge of a situation (such as the knowledge of this milk's source, based upon pages and pages of logical arguments about government supervision and such), that knowledge is equivalent to having seen it with his own eyes.

In the English phrase, the knowledge is the ikar, and seeing it is merely a means to acquire that knowledge. In RMF's view (AIUI) seeing is the ikar, and knowledge of the event is an acceptable substitute.

I get the feeling that I've pointed to a difference between Jewish and nonJewish ways of looking at the world. I suppose it has something to do with the importance of eidus and testimony, but I sense that it goes beyond that. Anyone else have any thoughts on this?

Akiva Miller


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