[Avodah] Consumer alert:minhog scams on the rise!

[Micha Berger]

On Wed, Jul 06, 2011 at 03:03:09PM -0400, Zev Sero wrote:
> On 6/07/2011 2:49 PM, Micha Berger wrote:
>> How do you get from "musar haskeil" to "proof"?

> R Pinchas ben Yair's story is constantly brought as proof.

Yes, such as this recent blog post from R' Chaim Brown (former listmember)
<http://divreichaim.blogspot.com/2011/07/r-pinchas-ben-yairs-donkey.html>:

    Today's [July 3 2011 -mb] daf (Chulin 7) tells the famous story
    of the donkey of R' Pinchas ben Yair that would not eat dmai. The
    gemara asks: We learned in the Mishna (Dmai 1:3) that animal food is
    exempt from dmai -- why would the donkey not eat? The gemara answers
    that the food was purchased fo human consumption and was therefore
    obligated to be treated as dmai. Only food originally set aside for
    use as animal food is exempt.

    The Yerushalmi gives a different answer (Dmai 1:3; 4a in the Vilna
    edition). According to the Yerushalmi, R' Pinchas ben Yair said,
    "What do you want from me -- my donkey is a frummie."

What's that a raayah of? As the mishnah says, the din isn't like the
donkey!

But in any case, any raayah from a story can be from the fact that
tannaim (or amoraim) repeated the story and found it sensible, not from
the historicity of the story.

The same could be said about stories about figures from Tanakh. Since
chazal would never circulate a story that besmirches the name of someone
Tanakh gives us as a positive archetype, we can derive that things as
told in the story are positive. IOW, the raayah something is mutar isn't
that Moshe rabbeinu (eg) did it but that chazal were willing to retell
a story that has MRAH doing it.

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             A wise man is careful during the Purim banquet
micha at aishdas.org        about things most people don't watch even on
http://www.aishdas.org   Yom Kippur.
Fax: (270) 514-1507                       - Rav Yisrael Salanter