[Avodah] Tfillin?chol hamoed

[Micha Berger]

RJR wrote:
:> Question- How could it be that the earlier rishonim were unaware of
:> the severity of the "prohibition"?

Someone answered on Areivim (typo? attempt at saving reputation?):
: Default answer: the "Zohar" hadn't been found yet. Cough.

Let's assume the most "frum" position, that the Zohar we have today is
as RaShBY wrote it.

Even if known to the intelligentsia, no one would have made it a basis
of pesaq until more widely available. The publication of the Zohar
radically changed Yahadus simply by making it possible to give these
ideas center stage.

Until then, it was pretty much a straight machloqes: the Behag, Rambam,
Rashba and Ri say don't wear them. The Rosh, Or Zarua and Maharam
miRutenburg say one must.

R' Yosef Karo only uses the Zohar to decide between existing shitos.
And it may be even less - he followed the Sepharadi trend; the text only
justified a conclusion he would have had to have reached anyway.

This is actually a textbook case: The Ashkenazi trend is aliba
deYerushalmi. The Y-mi (MQ 82a) has a machloqes whether in the case of
a tefillin shortage one should write tefillin for someoneone who doesn't
have any, or one may only write for oneself -- so lend him yours and write
your own. Presumed is that people would need tefillin on chol hamo'eid!

As I mentioned in Avodah back in vol5, my great-great-grandfather, R'
Yisrael Avraham Abba [Meir Simchah (added upon his rebbe's petirah)]
Krieger, pasqened that the machloqes over writing on ch"m is the same
machloqes here. Which is why when his son, my grandfather a"h, made
aliyah, he stopped writing on ch"m. He felt it was implied by minhag
hamaqom WRT tefillin.

SheTir'u baTov!
-micha

-- 
Micha Berger             "Man wants to achieve greatness overnight,
micha at aishdas.org        and he wants to sleep well that night too."
http://www.aishdas.org     - Rav Yosef Yozel Horwitz, Alter of Novarodok
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