[Avodah] WTG

[Richard Wolpoe]

On Tue, Apr 8, 2008 at 6:02 PM, Micha Berger <micha at aishdas.org> wrote:

>
>
> And thus RRWolpoe's notion that one of the greatest things C lacks in
> their decisionmaking is yir'as Shamayim has some truth. When motivated
> to find what I find good rather than what Hashem finds good, the system
> is badly abused. (Although there are more blatant problems in C legal
> process.)
>
>
>
> Tir'u baTov!
> -Micha
>

Tangentially I was on SOY 1974-1976 and the BIG issue of women coming to the
Purim  Party came up.

It was a REALLY big political hot potato and I gave a very serious speech on
the topic.  My salient point was probably missed by all because the righies
wanted to asser and th lefties wanted to be mattir but I called for one sole
[soul?] criteirum viz:
"What is best for PURIM"

I simply lacked the hubris to decide what is the mostly good for God or
Israel at large. I only pleaded that the voters decide on the ONE issue what
is best to make Purim the best at YC/YU. Period.

Also teagntially I once got a she'eilah from a congregant:
"is it true that they can keep my son out of a Jewish Cemetery?"

I never answered THAT question. I asked a few more questions and found out
that he was with-holding a GET from his wife!  I completely demurred from
responding and inveighed over and over again to the fellow's Mom - "Why
isn't he giving her a GET?"

Remember the Soloveichik [Rav Chaim or his father?] story about 4 kossos on
milk?  Sometimes the shei'lah need NOT be addressed directly.

A friend of mine wnated to know about making up p'suki d'imra during hazaras
hashtaz. [BTW Aruch hashulchan says  making it up is assur anyway] he asked
me I said No way Jose!  one MUST listen to hazaras hashatz! he then asked a
Dayyna at Breuer's who said that as long as 10 were definitely listening to
Hazaras Hashatz it was OK, I was a bit flabbergasted but what can I say?

I once Asked Rav Alpert ZTL about davening Ma'ariv Saturday night:  Do we
need to START after tzeis or FINISH after Tzeis?  He never was 100%
committed but DID say there are many reasons to START after tzeis.  [perhaps
kri'as shema is one reason] at any rate this can be tough during the summer,
but he did not want to be meikel. AS we know the minimum halacha is a minyan
MAY daven after plag, but he wasn't going there.

A local Rav gave a teshuva to an uncle of mine:  kashering a dishwshwer for
pesach is OK but NOT ffrom milk to meat and vice versa.

RMF in IM TWICE says the exact opposite. I tried to convince my uncle to
heed RMF and NOT the local Rav, Go figure, but I was only a young bachur at
that time...

I'll end on a very personal embarrassment. I offered to kasher an oven on a
goods/services auction on behalf of the Hebrew Academy of Greater Hartford.
Someone bid for my services and pledged $$$. I then asked my rebbe that
year, R. Yosef Weiss Shlita "how can I kasher an oven for Pesach?"  He
answered: "You can't!"  Now I was bound by a pesak of my own rebbe and I had
a VERY hard time convincing people that I was not trying to dodge my
original offer but I really was stuck! It was a real embarrassment for me.

I later went to my Rebe muvhak "Rav Gorelick" later on and he seemed to
think that my sevara of heter bala was reasonable and that it might be OK to
kasher an oven after all. [he himself used one of those separate ovens that
works on TOP of the stove] But of course I would not go against a pesak at
that point EVEN if Rav Gorelick had say it was 100% OK.

Anyway pesak can be a very tricky thing at times.



-- 
Kol Tuv / Best Regards,
RabbiRichWolpoe at Gmail.com
see: http://nishmablog.blogspot.com/
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.aishdas.org/pipermail/avodah-aishdas.org/attachments/20080415/03aad09e/attachment-0002.htm>