[Avodah] Al petach beito mabachutz

[Zev Sero]

Micha Berger wrote:

> Where is it clear the sakanah they were describing is over?

Look around you.

> I think the saqanah is whenever we're living in a country in which
> people might not want to see us celebrating overthrowing the gov't.

Where did you light?  In a place not visible from the street, or in
a front window?  AFAIK most MO, and probably the vast majority of
non-O Jews who do light menorot (including electric ones), put them
in the window.  Bish'at hasakana, one doesn't do that!  Bish'at
hasakana, madlik al shulchano vedayo (or, as chasidim do, in an
internal doorway where there's a mezuzah and where the goyim won't
see it).  Then go to any place where there are seasonal decorations,
and the chances are good that you'll see some sort or representation
of a menorah, or some nod to chanukah.  The fact that so many people
light in windows, and put up menorot (whether "real", electric, paper
cut outs, drawings, etc) in public places, and especially in privately-
owned-but-publicly-visible places, and not only has no pogrom resulted
but the possibility simply doesn't occur to them, proves that the
sakana is over.



> Which is why I didn't think it would be a problem in Medinat
> Yisrael (at least, not until Yossi Feiglin's talk about really
> doing it...)

I think you mean Moshe.

 
> Do we know that's not what the gemara meant, just because their
> saqanah was so much more acute?

Sakanah is sakanah.  It has a meaning, and it clearly doesn't exist
now.  In this case, we *know* what sakanah they were living under,
we don't have to speculate; and we know that nothing like that exists
today, in most countries where Jews live.  But in many places, for
many centuries, there was and is a *different* sakanah, that of cold,
and the same heter can be applied to that too.  After all, "hakol
cholim etzel tzinah".  But where this sakanah also doesn't exist,
meheicha teisei to light inside?

-- 
Zev Sero               Something has gone seriously awry with this Court's
zev at sero.name          interpretation of the Constitution.
                       	                          - Clarence Thomas