[Avodah] Seeing G'zeiros Everywhere

[Micha Berger]

On Sat, Jan 02, 2010 at 10:43:44PM -0000, Chana Luntz wrote:
: RAF writes:
: >                                           RRW is quite 
: > obviously intentionally misusing the term gezeirah, as he 
: > himself stated. He is not investigating the creation of 
: > mitzvot derabbanan, but investigating whether any legislation 
: > binding on at least some people can be created nowadays 
: > lemigdar milta.
...
: I do think that it is an extremely interesting question, and one that it is
: valuable to explore.  What I am trying to say is that exploring the question
: is not helped by misuse of terminology, rather it is severely
: hindered...

For example, our opening case. The question of whether bicycle riding is
prohibited on Shabbos. If ROY would say it is permitted because we can
not make gezeiros today, it's because he feels that such a ban would be a
din derabbanan designed to avoid violation of a deOraisa due to accident
or habit; ie it would be a gezeirah in the technical, narrow sense.

Those who believe it is assur are arguing that while this is
sociologically a new prohibition, from a legal perspective the methodology
by which it came to be is not that of gezeirah.

Neither side is arguing that new gezeiros, in the technical sense of the
word "gezeirah", are permitted.

And both agree that these new prohibitions due to change in pesaq,
metzi'us, spread of a minhag, and perhaps even charamim (like Rabbeinu
Gershom), as well as other mechnisms are possible.

I feel that by using the term loosely RRW is obfuscating the entire
topic originally under discussion!


BTW, we get into similar confusion when discussing hilkhos shemiras
halashon. People use LH both to mean the specific issur of telling
something that is true but negative and unnecessary for the person to
know, but also to mean shemiras halashon in general. Now, when a writer
says "XYZ isn't LH" is he saying that XYZ is not the specific issur of
LH, but might be avaq LH or rechilus or... Or, is he using LH loosely,
to mean that XYZ is altogether mutar?

Gut Voch!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             Strength does not come from winning. Your
micha at aishdas.org        struggles develop your strength When you go
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