[Avodah] Forms of Bitul

[Micha Berger]

On Tue, Dec 20, 2011 at 11:04:39PM -0000, Chana Luntz wrote:
:> Becuase if so, then the stuff the centrifuge brought to the
:> top isn't actually "milk", from a halachic perspective.

: That is what I would suspect.  Ie if initially you are able to recognise it,
: then this is prior to the bitul happening.  Once bitul has happened, I
: believe the language used by the various rishonim is that it is "keino".  I
: don't know that they contemplate somebody being able to centrifuge the
: mixture to thereby re-separate what has previously been mixed and
: undetectable by our taste test....

On Wed, Dec 21, 2011 at 05:27:49PM -0000, RnCL added:
: Further though to my earlier post because otherwise it might be misleading
: - there is of course the concept of hozer v'niur, which kind of does
: what you are looking for....

My expectation is different. I would expect the various rishonim would
have held leshitasam parallel positions to those they said by bitul berov.
To expand:

Deep down, under all the differences in shiur bitul deOraisa vs
deRabbanan, between real taaroves and the "taaroves" of doubt, of "'isah'
lashon safeiq hu", I believe there is one mechanism being invoked. As
per the single pasuq from which they all derive, the use of common
language by chazal, etc...

So, I expect parallel shitos between rov and taaroves. So, someone who
holds that you can eat each piece one after the other is really saying
that batul is batul, and we don't redo the math after the situation ends

Of course, as you noted, the rishonim in question wouldn't have discussed
a reversal of a taaroves. But at the time I dreamed up the centerfuge,
it was in response to your assumption that bitul is somehow more real,
more manifest, than ignoring mi'ut. And an example you brought was the
possibility that one may not eat all three pieces in a row.

My first response was the centerfuge... who said that those who don't
recombine minorities to produce a majority wouldn't recombine the
mi'ut, 1:60, 1:100 or 1:200 (even if the supermajority is only required
derabbanan) of a taaroves if it were all brought to the end you're
eating? This was an assumption that I simply didn't share.

My second response was to draw a parallel to eating all three pieces
from the difference between touching and carrying taaroves with tum'ah
in it. A person is metamei through carrying, which would parallel the
case of eating all three pieces of fat at once -- unlike WRT touching,
you carry the entire taaroves at once. You know the original cheilev is
in the mix, why would the bitul matter?

I hear chazal talking about safeiq as though it were a mixture. Why not
take that at face value, rather than imposing statistics on a model that
predates the field by just under 3 millenia (Sinai to Pascal or Fermat)?


My emotional stake is that this touches to the core of my hashkafah
about how mitzvos work.

As I wrote on another thread (on the 6th, recently in non-internet scale,
but a long time ago as email lists go)
<http://www.aishdas.org/avodah/vol28/v28n244.shtml#01<:
>                                   ... Chassidus asserted an illusory
> tzimtzum, and thus emphasized Hashem's Immanence, which fits their
> focus on acheiving deveiqus.

> In contrast, R' Chaim Volozhiner asserts that there is only one thing
> that spans multiple olamos, that is the union of all the kochos --
> the human soul. See NhC 1:6 ... To RCV, the way physical actions,
> eg mitzvos, influence higher worlds is via their effect on the soul....

> In Chassidish thought, therefore, physics can influence metaphysics
> directly. A person who eats treif unknowingly could still suffer timtum
> haleiv. A mezuzah that is pasul doesn't have the same power to protect.
> Etc...
...
> But (eg) Mussar takes a more rational approach in the relationship between
> the world and the soul, the whole reason why Mussar sees sheilumus in such
> psychological terms. I would think the more rationalist understanding
> of the Litvisher position would require physics to have psychological
> impact in order to have metaphysical impact.

If we ever knew where it was from, then the din was qavu'ah, and the
safeiq isn't in the metzi'us, but in identifying what that din was.
But where rov can be invoked, the question is in the metzi'us. (This
chiluq is from shu"t R' Aqiva Eiger.)

But, given my loyalties to mussar and the rationalist end of Litvishkeit,
I see the metzi'us of a given piece of fat not as determined by whether
it on an ontological level came from a part of the animal that would
make it cheilev or not, but in how we relate to it.

Thus, when we have doubt, we entertain both possibilities, and therefore
a safeiq in metzi'us is not just idiomatically being called a kind of
taaroves or isah. It actually is a mixed identity.

RYBS uses the notion of mixed identity, or as he put it, that halakhah
doesn't use a bivalent (black-and-white, true-vs-falase) logic in Ish
haHalakhah, as well as in a yarchei kallah shiur I attended one Elul in
the early 80s. Bein hashemashos is a safeiq yom safeiq lailah, but it's
also when the two days overlap (eg it extends the esrog's status as a
devar mitzvah to the subsequent day).

So, I am saying doubt isn't P chance of yes, and (1-p) chance of no,
but an actual shade of gray. Some liken it to quantum mechanics and
superposition of state (here and in Higayon, a journal edited by R'
Moshe Koppel). I am suggesting it's pyscholigical-existential, which
then moves the soul, which is where physical and metaphysical connect.


: On the other hand, and to mix two separate threads, it may be that at heart
: this is the macholkus between the machmir and meikil stream when it comes to
: bugs.  The point about these bugs is that it is, at least theoretically,
: possibly to see them and separate them, even if it takes much effort (and
: the use of chemicals)....

In the above existentially-focused model of halakhah, this wouldn't
matter, since only bugs that can be directly percieved that matter. That's
how we think about bugs on a gut level.

(Which is why I suggested that it could be that as our eyes and normal
lighting levels improve, the definition of bugs shifts.)

If you have the time and the patience to put up with my quality (or lack
thereof) of writing, you might wish to see my longer presentatin of this
worldview as a series of blog posts at
<http://www.aishdas.org/asp/category/phenomenology>.

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger                 Life is complex.
micha at aishdas.org                Decisions are complex.
http://www.aishdas.org               The Torah is complex.
Fax: (270) 514-1507                                - R' Binyamin Hecht