[Avodah] YT Sheini Shell Golah and the Internet

[Zev Sero]

Micha Berger wrote:

> I was taught as a child that YTSSG was about knowing what to do when
> we go back to al pi re'iyah.

Ah, that explains it.  I believe you were taught incorrectly.
The reason is explicitly given in the letter itself, which is quoted
in Beitza 4b.  "Sometimes the government might make a decree, and
you will come to get confused", i.e. if Torah is suppressed everyone
who is capable of doing his own calculations will have to do so, and
someone might make a mistake.


> The real answer to his question is that it's a derabbanan, and therefore
> until you gather another Sanhedrin gadol mimenu bechokhmah uveminyan,
> that's the law. I am not sure, but I /think/ that's what RSZ is saying;

Yes.  It seems to me that things *have* changed, and that today it
would be impossible for any government to suppress the Jewish calendar,
and if the Sanhedrin had known this would happen they might have
limited their decree.  But they didn't, and we are bound by that
decision (or, according to the Rambam, by the fact that it was
universally accepted at the time).

-- 
Zev Sero                      The trouble with socialism is that you
zev at sero.name                 eventually run out of other people’s money
                                                     - Margaret Thatcher