[Avodah] Ta'am of eating matzah

[Micha Berger]

On Mon, 5 May 2008 23:43:15 +0300 "R Simon Montagu"
<simon.montagu at gmail.com> wrote:
>> As the CI writes, even if we found Ezra haSofeir's seifer Torah, we
>> would still be halachically bound to use the text the halachic process
>> mandates us to. Weave in the standard tanur shel achnai reference
here.

> I very much doubt the Rambam would agree with that, though. Tanur shel
> achnai is a pure halachic question; the facts are known, and the only
> question is what to do about them. But this is a question of fact. AIUI
> the Rambam would say known facts override any mistatements that have
> been mistakenly transmitted over the generations, and their halachic
> consequences.

First, it's not an issue of facts in the real world, it's an issue of
what to do given incomplete information about the facts. To return to
the core discussion:

R' Yosef makes a statement about fact -- we don't know cheseiros and
yeseiros anymore. That doesn't mean that any Torah is just as kosher
as one with any other set of spellings.

Now we're going to another topic: What if, hypothetically, the doubt
were resolved? I didn't take the Rambam with me when I went there, and
RSM accurately points out that I shouldn't assume he would come along.

Nefesh haRav pp 52-54 discusses RYBS's presentation of R' Chaim
Brisker's position, including our topic of R' Yosef and malei
vechaseir. To quote the relevant part of my summary at
<http://www.aishdas.org/avodah/vol05/v05n073.shtml#12> (since
cut-n-paste is easy:
> 1- R' Yosef (Kiddushin 30a) asks whether the vuv of "gachon" is the
>    last letter of the first half of the Torah, or the first letter
>    of the second half. (Presumably: or the middle of an odd number
>    of letters). He holds that the question is unanswerable, because
>    we aren't beki'im in chaseiros viyseiros. We don't have a seifer
>    Torah that you can count out the letters and check.

>   The Rama (O"Ch 143:4) holds that if a missing or extra semivowel
>   is found in a Torah scroll, we do not put it away to read from
>   another. After all, we aren't all that accurate on the topic
>   anyway. R' Chaim Brisker says that today we are accurate and malei
>   vichaseir, and therefore we can't hold like the Rama on this -- the
>   Torah must be replaced with a kosher one.

>   R' Moshe Soloveitchik then asks, but what about our gemara which
>   says the knowledge was lost?

>   RMS explains that there is a difference in kind between the
>   original knowledge as to which side of the middle the vuv is on
>   and the same knowledge if recreated through counting. The first,
>   being part of masorah, is Torah, the latter is a clever trick.

(Other examples follow: orez being identified as rice, techeiles,
Megillah 18a relying on Rebbe's matron for the definition of a word.)

The same data is usable to establish halakhah or not depending on
whether it was cleverly deduced or produced by mesorah. Our Torah is
the correct Torah, and thus the only beqius becheseiros veyeseiros
that is relevent is beqius in the mesorah as it now exists.

So, the question is whether the Rambam would hold like the opinion
later held by the Rama or that of RCB and the CI?

My instinct is that RCB echos the Rambam's weltenschaung.

And the Rambam has a more constructionist view of halakhah than most,
being explicit that most derashos were used by Sanhedrin to construct
new dinnim -- even though those dinnim are deOraisa because they are
deduced from the Oraisa. (With the exception of derashos mequbalos,
all or some of which date back to Moshe Rabbeinu. I'm not clear if he
means they are derashos leMoshe miSinai or that they are mequbalos
from batei din of long ago.)

But that is far from really knowing what the Rambam holds.

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."
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