[Avodah] shelo asani isha

[Chana Luntz]

RMB wrote:

> On Fri, Aug 12, 2011 at 06:05:24PM +0100, Chana Luntz wrote:
> :> No, I am assuming R' Yehudah, who wrote the currently used triad of
> :> berakhos, set it up because /he/ holds that way.
> 
> : Which is fine.  But then you have to justify why we say it today if
> we do
> : not hold like this position.  (I am not saying that is the case here,
> you
> : can, presumably, hold l'halacha that avadim are not chayav in any
> more
> : mitzvos than women, but if you do not hold vadai that is the case...)
> 
> Perhaps we shouldn't aske whether or not we hold that avadim would be
> chayavim in more mitzvos than women, and simply take the berakhah's
> continued existence in the siddur as a raayah that we do.

But that is a huge leap about a very complicated issue.  I know hilchos
avadim are not exactly halacha l'ma'ase today but still - are you totally
comfortable, just based on this bracha, to say that, for example, avadim are
patur from the obligation re payos and prohibition on shaving (remember
according to this, their bracha total has to be kept down to that of women,
so in order for that to work, avadim can't have more even negative
obligations that women don't have, you are boxing yourself into a halacha
l'ma'ase corner if you ever do have to come and posken hilchos avadim) if
one turned up in front of you and asked you a halacha l'ma'aseh question?

> ...
> : But this isn't just about taamei hamitzvos and aggada.  As you
> correctly
> : quoted, the Magen Avraham used this reason for the bracha to posken
> halacha
> ...
> : So it would seem that if you posken like Tosphos, the Maged Mishna or
> the
> : Turei Even, or are even mesupik that they are correct, then this
> reason
> : cannot be the reason for the bracha today, otherwise you may be
> prohibited
> : (either d'orisa or d'rabbanan) from saying it....
> 
> Why? These are birkhos shevach. The notion that you can't praise HQBH
> in zu ve'ein tzarikh lomar zu format isn't necessarily a given.

Not with a repetition of shem and malchut!  Look, you can't even say the
bracha over thunder twice in the same thunderstorm, and that is
unquestionably a bracha  of shevach.  Repeating shem and malchut for the
same shevach is just as much a brocha sheino tzricha as for the classic
birchas hane'nin.  (Now you might be able to make one brocha which went
shelo asani eved v'isha without fussing too much about the order of the
final words, but not a double use of shem and malchut).

>The Granikim try to repurpose the phrase by (awkwardly IMHO)
> moving the period to make it:
> 
>     Vehasheiv [two things:]
> 	- es haavodah lidevir veisekha,
> 	- ve'ishei Yisrael.
>     Usefilasam teqabel beRatzon...
> 
> Keeping the matbeiah by changing its meaning, and where one pauses.

The issue for the Graniks is that one should not be praising HaShem who is
emes with sheker, it is a pretty strong taina - because while praising him
twice for the same thing maybe a bracha sheaino tzricha and a machlokus
about whether it is d'orisa or d'rabbanan, praising him for something that
is not true would seem on the face of it to be a bracha l'vatala, and a
d'orisa prohibiton according to everyone.   Note of course that the GRA is
the one who most famously recommended saying sheasani yisroel (and the Sde
Chemed said shelo asani goy k'goyei aratzos, because simply to say shelo
asani goy is a sheker, since Israel is a goy (albeit gadol v'kadosh)).  If
RYK (for example) is to this extent a GRAnik and does not believe in the
truth of shelo asani isha, ie that it is indeed a shvach to HKBH, then
arguably by saying it with shem and malchus he is actually over on an issur
d'orisa, and he would be better off not saying it.  (Query what the
obligation is really - clearly to say some shevach to HKBH, but that would
be covered by lots of other brachos.  To say 100 brochos a day, that can be
covered by eating more fruit and the like.  The gemora in Menachos does seem
to suggest some level of obligation to say these brochos, but if you are a
GRAnik and hold that a bracha must be true to be said, otherwise you are
over on an issur d'orisa, then an at most rabbinic obligation would need to
be pushed aside by way of shev v'al ta'aseh if faced with a balancing issur
d'orisa).

The alternative to the GRA's position on the question of emes that you seem
to be taking is that if the rabbis introduced a matbeiah, then it does not
actually matter if it is true or false (of course we know that if we say
these in lashon hakodesh, we don't have to understand what they mean to be
yotze, but it is a huge step that we are fulfilling an obligation with a
statement that we both understand and genuinely believe is (now) false and
that we should keep on doing so).  That seems to be the position you are
justifying here - but it seems to destroy emes as a halachic principle (I
know, I know, angels being pushed down to earth etc etc, but vis a vis a
praise of HaShem??).  The alternative position vis a vis rotzei that I think
most people adopt is to say that it does mean something true, just maybe the
grammatical phrasing isn't quite the way the purists would like it and that
doesn't matter - a bit like the Sephardim who have held on to the old nusach
where HaShem is always referred to in what we today know as the feminine, ie
lach, rather than the lecha etc that presumably the maskilim changed it to
in the Ashkenazi nusach.  I don't think the Sephardim consider themselves
therefore to be making feminist statements about G-d's feminine side, they
are just using the traditional nusach that wasn't that hung up on gender
grammar, perhaps because of contact with other era Hebrew and/or Aramaic and
don't worry about the fact that is sort of sounds feminine.

> But I have been arguing until now with the assumption that the matbeiah
> proves the aggadita, without assuming repurposing. And as you have yet
> to convince me that we repurposing is actually needed, I am sticking
> with my default assumption.

You could still stick with your original assumption, but can you at least
understand this as a reason why others might prefer to repurpose, so as not
to cut off unresolved halachic argument on practical halachic matters
without any valid halachic authority to support it (because once you
repurpose, you don't need to cut off the argument).

> Tir'u baTov!
> -Micha

Regards

Chana