[Avodah] VeHaGita - Proof....sources and quotes

[Micha Berger]

On Fri, Jan 19, 2007 at 08:18:03AM +0200, Shoshana L. Boublil wrote: : >
Proof?....sources and quotes).

: > As if that's gonna make the slightest difference..

: And this is highly insulting. And PUBLIC.

I approved the post because I didn't see the line as insulting. Rather, the
debate the two of you are having is an old machloqes, and one that is part of
how the O world subdivides itself into communities. A division that RSBA and
yourself have very different positions within.

No post from RSBA is going to get you to change your mind and self-identity,
to resolve a long standing machloqes that gedolim mimenu found heated. So, to
that extent no proof is really going to resolve the debate here.

: > Which shows us that
: > 1) the baal hamemreh himself, Rashbi holds that it is a bedieved
: > and therefore should not be publicised.

: Actually -- it doesn't.  We'll get to that in a moment.

I don't think it's relevant. The gemara's conclusion is like R' Yishmael, not
Rashbi, that one is supposed to earn a living.

That's a different subject, Torah vs parnasah as opposed to Toorah vs chessed.
However, if we reject RSBY's priorities when such rejection is a bigger
chidush, how can we assert them when the gap is the lesser one of Torah to
another mitzvah?

: A. All sides agree that "VeHaGita Bo Yomam VaLayala" is fully kept by
: saying Shma morning and evening.
: Interestinly enough, NONE of the opinions you bring disagree with this.
: This means that MeLeChatChilla -- VeHagita IS indeed halachically
: fulfilled by saying Shma morning and night.

I think part of what you're disputing is the meaning of "bedi'eved" WRT
mitzvos that are "kol hamarbeh harei zeh meshubach". That too is dividing the
world into an ideal and a pragmatic fall-back position. In colloquial sense,
the fall-back is bedi'eved; however, it doesn't qualify on the technical
definitions.

Bedi'eved is a case where the pe'ulah shouldn't have been done. Now that it
was, is there a chalos? Were you yotzei the chiyuv?

Here there is no "should not have". Learning close to the minimum is a lack of
doing what one could, not a presence of ought-not. In a technical sense,
that's not "bedi'eved".

The important distinction for the original topic... Does fulfilling talmud
Torah more than the minimal shiur outweigh other mitzvos? Which, and when?

And of course none of this touches on RSBA's opening claim on Areivim, that
since the chiyuv of talmud Torah only applies to men, it means that women
should end up with more time on their hands for chessed. That is true
regardless of exactly where one decides to divide their learning vs chessed
time. The relative value of chessed must be higher for women than for men.

And, of course, none of this applies to a man who learns as much as his
tzitzfleish allows, and skipping the chessed doesn't mean he would be
necessarily spending the same time learning. Pushing learning over other
mitzvos is often just a tefisah merubah.

: B. Now we have an educational issue: We want people to learn Torah and
: to send their children to learn Torah.

Veshinantam would require making sure those children learn a lifestyle in
which chessed is central. It's not limited to book learning; rather, that
particular pasuq (see RSRH's Chumash on it, I have the older English edition)
is about learning values.

: Many use the sentence of "VeHagita" to demand that men learn day and night
: as much as possible as an halachic imperitive.  The situation is not that
: people won't learn, but rather, this idea is used in an almost abusive form
: to force people who are tortured by this demand of full time study for years
...

Chanokh lenaar al pi darko. The decision of how much time one should dedicate
to various mitzvos has to do with knowing one's strengths and weaknesses, and
knowing to balance playing one's strengths and working to correct one's
weaknesses.

Giving someone a job to which they are not suited is not "almost abusive", it
is abusive. In fact, it's the very definition of "avodas parech" (as per the
Chazal quoted by Rashi).

I am not sure anyone in the chareidi world is actually giving out such jobs,
though, and no one is being forced. Such attitudes which minimize personal
autonomy underly non-O complaints about how halakhah is used by a bunch of men
to control women. No, people choose to buy into the system. Women wear long
sleeves on hot summer days because they choose what they believe will help
there AYH over comfort, and men choose learning when it means a day of
squirming in their seats because they believe it's the only way to their
qedushah. Same dynamic, and denying it is the same problem.

It's a matter of accepting expectation without thinking it through. The
extreme cases opt out of the community, and usually that means Yahadus
altogether. But the borderline ones won't pay the social cost, and instead
could feel compelled to fake it. The same is true of someone who is raised to
believe that the only derekh that leads to AYH is the DL one, and is actually
better suited for Chassidus.

The walls between us are too high, so that the social cost of switching is
high enough to motivate people to fake it, and that others feel that once they
leave their community they might as well opt out of it all. But this is not a
one-sided problem.

:-)BBii!
-mi

-- 
Micha Berger             One who kills his inclination is as though he
micha at aishdas.org        brought an offering. But to bring an offering,
http://www.aishdas.org   you must know where to slaughter and what
Fax: (270) 514-1507      parts to offer.        - R' Simcha Zissel Ziv