[Avodah] On Pilpul (was: Chezkas Kehunah)

[rabbirichwolpoe at gmail.com]

Micha:
> Someone recently posted a side-comment that was disparaging of pilpul.

I think I posted something but was not offering my personal take but
paraphrasing complaints of others

Piplul to me depends. Like many things - it can be abused

The usual case is
Since X is true in context A it is also true in context B

EG
A rebbe in yeshiva used the concept of first 3 brachos in amida are one
[re: hamelech haqadosh] and pilpulistically applied it to Kavvanah
as follows

Since 
A Avos requires kavannah
And since 
B the first 3 brachot are really one
 Therefore 
C really all 3 brachot require kavvanah

A similar point might be made about requiring 4 times for negel vasser

Since
A it takes 3 washings to remove ruach ra'ah
And  since 
B the third washing still leaves one's hands wet
Therefore 
C a 4th rinse is needed

[Never mind that Hazal MIGHT have figured that the third rinse already
does that trick!]

It's a kind of bootstrapping

EG halachos are established about not eating or learning before b'diqas
hametz

Late Acharonim applied these to hadlaqa ner Hanukka:
AISI, a bit pilpulistic

Whether this pilpul is good, bad or ugly is after all quite subjective.
I'm only trying to illustrate it as I understand it.

The mother sugya iirc is found in tosafos on "kaffus v'yashein", I forgot
exact mar'eh maqom

KT
RRW
Sent via BlackBerry from T-Mobile