[Avodah] Time and Emunah

[Richard Wolpoe]

On 9/6/07, Micha Berger <micha at aishdas.org> wrote:


> On Sun, August 5, 2007 7:55 pm, Moshe Y. Gluck wrote:
> :>From http://discovermagazine.com/2007/jun/in-no-time:
> : "Efforts to understand time below the Planck scale have led to an
> : exceedingly strange juncture in physics. The problem, in brief, is
> : that time may not exist at the most fundamental level of physical
> : reality....
> : "The trouble with time started a century ago, when Einstein's special
> : and general theories of relativity demolished the idea of time as a
> : universal constant. One consequence is that the past, present, and
> : future are not absolutes."
> (Going off on a tangent: This is useful metaphor for questions of
> science and Torah. Science explains how the world works, Torah, to
> provide meaning, purpose and values. The expectation when dealing with
> historical claims that they seem to contradict on is that that both
> are fundamentally right, there is only a minor lack of understanding
> on our part that creates an illusory contradiction in a corner case
> that neither was designed for. If scientists can live with a
> contradiction and engineers can use the data to design devices, why
> can't we simply shelve our question without having a crisis of faith?)
>
>
> Tir'u baTov! -mi


Going off on a tangent to Micha's tangent - in 1972 I took Physics at
University of CT in West Hartford.  The professor - a non-Jew but fairly
religious man - often waxed philosophical.  he discussed the concept that
photons were considered either/neither paritcles or waves, but rather had
properties of both. This was a paradiox taht sicentists at the time really
could not explain.

Nevertheless, this paradigm ws use to explain subsequently discovered
phenomena that had the same kind of paradox!  So after photons there came
oother particle/waves that were explained as photon-like.

================================================================

My point?  Back to Torah.  Sometimes a teirutz to a question or a stirah
maybe difficult to comprehend. But ONCE discovered, this chiddush may be in
turn used to explain OTHER Cases unforesen by the original metareitz!
Hiddush gorreres Hiddush!

We know the story of bringing down a chiddush on to the earthly plane that
sometimes becomes commonly known very quickly.  Simlarly, a paradigm - a
dugma - can come down and even if a bit fuzzy can be used to understand even
newer  problems!

I even have an example.
My daughter's school taught - based upon the chiddushim of R. Menachem
Mendel Kasher iirc - that Hametz was an Egyptian delicacy.  And that Semites
traditionally ate Matzah- [hence how Lot served matza to the mal'achim.]

Follow this thinking a bit to antoher case. Sefer haHinuch struggles with
the prohibition of dvash and s'eor on a korban minhah.  But following the
above hiddush it is easy to explain.  Se'or - as noted - was an Egyptian
bread enhancer.  And similarly, Egyptians had a bread and honey delicacy!

A simple explanation for this issur is that we are to avoid Egyptian rituals
in the process of Korbanos! [Simlar to Rambam's meat/milk explanation as an
avodah Zoro ritual!]]  This COULD explain how Hametz is ONLY assur on Pesah
- it is aftera ll Zecher yetizas Mitzrayim And Dvash/se'or in korban Minha
has a problem - because it would be like k'maaseh eretz mitzrayim!

How about lot baking matza BEFORE yetizas mitzrayim?  My best explanation is
that despite Lot's sojourn in Egypt with his uncle Avraham, he stuck to a
Semitic diet and this constituted conceptually OWN  mini-Yetzias
mitzrayyim.   IOW, maettaphorically Lot did not carry with him ma'aseh Eretz
Mitrayim.  But, unfortunately he DID learn from Sodom and Amorahh...

-- 
Kesiva vaChasima Tova
Best Wishes for 5768,
RabbiRichWolpoe at Gmail.com
Please Visit:
http://nishmablog.blogspot.com/
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