[Avodah] Nistar laws?

[Steven J Scher]

On Tue, 27 Jan 2009, R'Akiva Miller wrote:
> I'll close with two examples of laws which AFAIK are still in the nistar category: Leaving a sefer open causes forgetfulness, and a woman walking on fingernails causes a miscarriage. (If you don't like those for any reason, feel free to substitute the red rotel or your favorite bubba maaseh.)
>
> Who's to say that these are metaphysical? Perhaps the day is not far off when we'll learn their workings. Maybe we could at least demonstate them statistically today, if only we could isolate the interference and get a truly double-blind test. (Well, causing miscarriages is pretty dangerous, but you know what I mean.)

In general, the points made by R'Miller seem to make sense to me.  I write 
only to point out, as a research psychologist, that the first of these 
'bubbe maasehs' would be easy to test.  I don't hold out much hope for it 
being confirmed, but conducting the test would not be difficult.



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