[Avodah] Birkat Kohanim

[Micha Berger]

On Sun, October 28, 2007 5:54 pm, Richard Wolberg wrote:
:> In both cases Hashem created something and let it obey rules that
:> allow harm to come to people.
:
: That certainly cannot be denied; however, there are miracles and
: exceptions, if and when HaShem wishes to employ them - many times far
: beyond our comprehension.

In bayis rishon, this miracle was daily. How is asking it to be defied
substansively different than asking the law of nature by which people
die from some poison to be defied.

My point was more that G-d inheres in nature no less than in the
supernatural. Lehefekh... getting the world to run according to a plan
is a far greater display of His Greatness. But we tend to ignore
those. So He is more "there", He is doing something greater to impact
that moment, but less visibly so.

Jumping ahead to another part of your email on this topic:
:> I disagree with your point. Poison /is/ equally "with Hashem."

: I cannot see how you can equate the two. HaShem made the poison
: available,
: just as HaShem created "evil" - Yotzer or uvoreh hara.  Chazal changed
: the
: word RA to HAKOL for the very reason that Hara is /NOT/ equally "with
: HaShem." Likewise Poison is /NOT/ equally with HaShem.

Hashem made the light available, and one can choose whether or not to
look at it.

Chazal changed ra to hakol because people can't have kavanah if they
are asked to praise Hashem for creating ra. But the navi didn't err...
the word should be "ra" -- this is just a euphamism, not disagreement.

Evil is a vacuum that wasn't yet filled with tov. By parallel (drawn
by the Ri ben Yaqar and Avudraham) to the first part of the pasuq --
"uvorei choshekh", beri'ah in this verse refers to making a hole to
fill. It's therefore hard to say G-d is with evil, what is "with
nothing"?

The poison and light are things, things that serve a purpose that
justify their hazards (or perhaps because H' specifically wants us to
avoid their hazards).

Skipping back and going to the other topic:
:> You err in your description of the tannaim. Hillel and Shammai rarely
:> disagreed. It was batei Hillel veShammai who had all the machloqesin.

: If you are saying that the machloqesin were initiated and generated by
: the batei Hillel and Shammai, it seems you are putting a negative take
: on it.

Not I, the gemara. The gemara says that machloqesin proliferated in
Israel when they weren't sufficiently meshamshin their respective
rabbeim.

: What happened to eilu v'eilu....

As the Maharal models it (to stay consistent with other threads; I
have a more survey treatement based on earlier Avodah threads on my
blog), it means that both are modeling the same Supernal Truth, the
same Divrei E-lokim Chaim.

With the reduction of the generations, the models capture less and
less complete pictures.

With the loss of Hillel and Shammai, the students lost much of the art
of balancing or finding a synthesis from chessed and din, and that
therefore shows in the quality of their modeling. The pair of models
that each captures less will be more likely to contradict.

: Secondly, even if it were the batei who had
: them, they nevertheless reflected their respective Rebbie....

As I wrote, the Maharal says on Avos that this lack of shimush means
they captured their rebbe's *job*, and didn't get to his essence. And
so the students of the nasi, whose job was to order society, picked up
on his chessed, and the students of the av beis din picked up on the
din. But the teachers had a healthier balance of both, and therefore
were less prone to machloqes.

: Thirdly, I
: thought is was an accepted fact that Hillel treated people much more
: kindly than Shammai. Two cases in point: the goy who asked to learn
: the Torah al regel achas and the bride on her wedding day who Shammai
: said was ugly and Hillel said was beautiful.

This fits knowing their jobs.

BTW, Shammai says that one should praise a bride truthfully, and
Hillel says to praise her to the skies. The question lehalakhah,
beyond the wedding hall, that is discussed by rishonim is whether
Hillel is advocating tactful lying, or it he permitting one to
describe the kalah to the chasan the way the chasan sees her.

One would hope that to any chasan at his wedding, he looks in her eyes
and sees a kallah na'ah vechasudah.

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SheTir'u baTov!
-micha

-- 
Micha Berger             One who kills his inclination is as though he
micha at aishdas.org        brought an offering. But to bring an offering,
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