[Avodah] Superstition and Good Fortune

[Micha Berger]

On Sun, Dec 20, 2009 at 10:56:39AM -0500, Yitzchok Levine wrote:
: Personally, I wonder how this relates, if at all, to reliance on Segulos
: in light of the following comments from The Mezhbuzher Rav, Harav Avraham
: Yehoshua Heshel Bick, shlita:
:     [Segulos] are nothing more than bubbe maasos, eitzas yetzer hara
:     that give people a license to spend money way beyond their means
:     and then ask for a yeshuah. All these formulae saying Shir Hashirim
:     forty times, Tehillim HaChida, etc. are methods used by the yetzer
:     hara to take from us the little [spirituality] we have left. ...

Aside from Avos 1:3 and Atignos ish Sokho's "al menas shelo leqabeil
peras..."

More condemning: I'm reminded of BB 10b on Mishlei 14:34. The pasuq says
"vechesed le'umim chatas", and the gemara says that it's because they
do chesed lehisyaheir. R' Elchanan Wasserman in Qoveitz Shiurim brings
a long line of rishonim starting with Rabbeinu Bachya showing that this
is the defining feature of paganism. To be a pagan is to do good only
in order to get favors from the gods.

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             With the "Echad" of the Shema, the Jew crowns
micha at aishdas.org        G-d as King of the entire cosmos and all four
http://www.aishdas.org   corners of the world, but sometimes he forgets
Fax: (270) 514-1507      to include himself.     - Rav Yisrael Salanter