[Avodah] fasting for rain

[Micha Berger]

On Tue, Nov 30, 2010 at 09:51:32AM +0200, Eli Turkel wrote:
: It obviously does since every beit din has their perspective of when to add the
: prayer for rain and when to fast as per the remarks of R. Moshe Lichtenstein
: who did not feel that rain today is as critical as in the days of chazal.

RMF's opening question was that the halakhah (SA OC 575:2) gives a
mandatory line, one that we apparently aren't following even if your BD
did declare yesterday a taanis. R"C Kislev came and went a while ago,
and this is one day, not baha"b.

I was answering RBW's question about how that halakhah would apply
without a centrla beis din. Since the criterion given is pretty objective,
it would in effect be all-or-nothing.

Afterwards I went back to the original question:
:> As for RMF's question... Does the fact that import-export is common,
:> albeit costly, and that agrarian income is only a small piece of Israel's
:> overall economy, give BD more room to wait for rain before declaring
:> taanios?

It would seem from RML's position that the answer is "yes".

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             Man can aspire to spiritual-moral greatness
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