[Avodah] K.P. vs P.A.

[Micha Berger]

On Thu, Jul 03, 2008 at 09:17:20PM -0400, Cantor Wolberg wrote:
: The examples you give have to do with relative things. Tumah is tumah
: and can be overlooked for the greater good, but I don't see how that is
: the same as voltage, mountain height or polar ice caps.
: Tell me what I'm missing.

I am playing with the idea that tum'ah hutrah betzibur might not be an
issue of "greater good". That would be dechuyah, not hutrah.

Nor is altitude a relative thing. The mountain is objectively tall.
How tall? Something has to define the scale by which you measure it.
Similarly, one object could be far down the scale of tum'ah, but whther
or not it actually has a halachic statis of tamei depends on where in
that scale you set your zero point -- is it more tamei than zero or less?

Let's follow through with RSRH's rationale for tum'ah (since I have bits
of his commentary to Vayiqra 11:47 at hand for easy cut-n-paste):
     A dead human body tends to bring home to one's mind a fact which
     is able to give support to that pernicious misconception which is
     called tum'ah. For, in fact, there lies before us actual evidence
     that Man must -- willy-nilly -- submit to the power of physical
     forces. That in this corpse that lies before us, it is not the
     real human being, that the real human being, the actual Man, which
     the powers of physical force can not touch, had departed from here
     before the body -- merely its earthly envelope -- could fall under
     the withering law of earthly Nature; more, that as long as the real
     Man, with his free-willed self-determining G-dly nature was present
     in the body, the body itself was freed from forced obedience to
     the purely physical demands, and was elevated into the sphere of
     moral freedom in all its powers of action and also of enjoyment,
     when the free- willed ruling of the higher part of Man decided to
     achieve the moral mission of his life;

R. SR Hirsch portrays the tamei object as one that causes the illusion
that man is nothing more than a physical object, an animal, a helpless
subject to physical forces and physical desires. In reality,
    death only begins with death, but that in life, thinking striving and
    accomplishing Man can master, rule, and use even his own sensuous body
    with all its all its innate forces, urges, and powers, with G-d-like
    free self-decision, within the limits of, and for accomplishment of,
    the duties set by the laws of morality; ...

This notion that tum'ah is evidence of the idea that we must submit
to the power of physical forces implies that once the evidence becomes
the water in which the fish swims, we, like the fish, wouldn't notice
the background.

But this is just a second layer of extrapolation of an idea to play
with. ("Lulei Sorasekha Sha'ashu'ai" should be made Avodah's motto!) No
need to like either, nor do problems with possibly connecting step 1 to
RSRH imply a problem with step 1 (tum'ah is relative) itself.

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             Our greatest fear is not that we're inadequate,
micha at aishdas.org        Our greatest fear is that we're powerful
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