[Avodah] Fiat Money & Halachah

[Richard Wolpoe]

On Wed, Jul 9, 2008 at 1:16 PM, Zev Sero <zev at sero.name> wrote:

>
>
>
>  Fiat money, like life insruance is an astraction.
>>
>
> No more than silver-as-money was an abstraction in Chazal's time and
> through most of history.
>
> --
> Zev Sero



This is nonsense to me.  Can you make a menorah out of $50.00 bills? You Can
make a
menorah out of 50 dollars of silver.

Paper money is merely money TO YOU because you grew up with it. If it wer
new to you as it was to the fisrt generattion you would be shreing
Gevaltabout unprecednt halachic innovations.

At any rate see today's Kitzur Yomi re: pidon habein [145] and that silver
is kosher but banknotes are not. Today we do NOT have US governmnt money. We
had Federal Reserve Banknotes.  Banknotes are fiat money but not Intrinsic
money. The distinction is signifcant in many halachic issues.  Can you gie
machaztis hadhshekel with fiat paper moneyh?

And if in Chazal's times silver was an abstraction, how does the requirement
for Kolbon work?! The whole point is that any coin might be missing some
minor amount of silver [probably from usage]. If the money is an abstraction
a Kolbon is sillly. What's the point? So we see in Halcha that Haazl deemd
silvber coins NOT as fiat money for the purpose of Sheklaim but a wieghted
monetary instrument with sintrisic value. [money=monetary, etc.]


-- 
Kol Tuv / Best Regards,
RabbiRichWolpoe at Gmail.com
see: http://nishmablog.blogspot.com/
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