[Avodah] Consumer Alert: Minhog Scams On The Rise!

[Simon Montagu]

On Fri, Jun 24, 2011 at 5:56 PM, Zev Sero <zev at sero.name> wrote:
> On 24/06/2011 10:28 AM, Saul Guberman wrote:
>>
>> I am not sure how this footnote explanation is any more of a stretch than
>> a piece of paper falling from heaven.
>
> We start with the tradition that there was a piece of paper.  That's not
> a stretch, that's what the Or Zarua says.  Then the Keter Shemtov comes
> along with an explanation about how it doesn't really mean what it says,
> and they really made a goral, but then they made up a story about a piece
> of paper falling from heaven because they were so confident in the goral
> that it was "as if" that had happened.

That's not how I understand the KST. I think he means that "pitka
nafal min-hashamayim" is a metaphorical expression, not that anybody
made up a story. When I say that I found a shidduch min hashamayim,
I'm not making up a story that a bat kol came and told me who to
marry.


>  Come on, how is that *not* a
> stretch, compared to taking the Or Zarua at his word?  What exactly is
> difficult about believing that the Anshei Knesses Hagdolah saw a piece
> of paper fall from heaven?  Again I come back to the basic question: are
> we Jews or Protestants?  Do we believe that there is a Higher World and
> there are miracles or not?  What kind of Jew believes such things to be
> impossible?

I agree with what you said in a different context in another recent
message: one would have to be a kofer to believe that it *couldn't*
happen, but as I implied above wrt to shidduchim, I also believe that
the Higher World can work miracles in this world without dropping
pieces of paper from heaven, and entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter
necessitatem.