[Avodah] the cohen gadol and marriage to a pubescent girl

[Micha Berger]

On Thu, Jul 03, 2008 at 02:37:33AM +0000, kennethgmiller at juno.com wrote:
: R' David Riceman asked:
: > Just to back up a bit, is the age of majority prescribed in
: > halacha d'oraysa or d'rabbanan? Logically it should be
: > d'oraysa, since that's the age when hiyuvim d'oraysa begin.
...

: I once heard that adulthood for mitzvos is a "shiur", just like a
: kezayis of matza, or techum Shabbos -- and as such it is a Halacha
: L'Moshe MiSinai.

There are two questions, shenei sa'aros and age. Bar/t mitzvah ages are
definitely deRabbanan, enacted based on rov, presumably so as to avoid
embarassing and un-tzeniusdik checking. Besides, how could you know they
weren't there once?

So the question is whether shenei sa'aros was an earlier derabbanan or
halakhah leMosheh miSinai. It was explained to me lema'aseh that a geir
qatan would have to have qabalas ol mitzvos within tokh kedei dibbur of
shenei sa'aros. Since this is impossible to arrange, we instead use the
fact that he was living as a shomeir Torah umitzvos during the duration
that includes that moment as an implicit proof of qabalah. Implying
shenei sa'aros is a shiur deOraisa.

Checking the MB 281 s"q 3, it says that only someone with 2 sa'aros could
be motzi another in dinim deOraisa. Which would also seem to imply that
age is a shiur derabbanan, and therefore only usable for dinim derabbanan.

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             Nearly all men can stand adversity,
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