[Avodah] Forms of Bitul

[Chana Luntz]

R' Micha Berger writes:

>Deep down, under all the differences in shiur bitul deOraisa vs
>deRabbanan, between real taaroves and the "taaroves" of doubt, of "'isah'
>lashon safeiq hu", I believe there is one mechanism being invoked. As
>per the single pasuq from which they all derive, the use of common
>language by chazal, etc...

But you see, it is not as simple as this.  For a start, the different forms
of bitul we have been discussing do *not* appear to derive from a single
pasuk.

While the three pieces or Yoreh Deah siman 109 case of bitul is derived from
acharei rabim l'hatos, the milk falling into meat stew min b'aino mino Yoreh
Deah siman 98 type case of bitul appears to be derived from Bamidbar 6:19
(which allows/requires cooking of the kohen's portion of the leg in with the
rest of the nazir's shlamim, meaning that it will give taste to the shlamim)
(see Chullin 98a).  And even though Tosphos appears to understand this as
not being a drasha gamura, they, and the rest of the majority who hold that
bittul b'shishim for min v'aino mino is min haTorah clearly do not base this
assessment on acharei rabim l'hatos (And of course Rashi, who holds that
bittul b'shishim for min v'aino mino is d'rabbanan, and that min b'aino mino
min hatorah is batel b'rov, based on the pasuk of acharei rabim l'hatos,
holds that like Rabbi Yehuda the case of min b'mino, ie that it is aino
batel).

So, as I have been trying to argue from the beginning, I just don't see how
you can bring any proofs or include in the discussion the Yoreh Deah siman
98 type case of taste bitul.  At most your discussion would surely have to
be limited to comparing the Yoreh Deah siman 109 type case of bitul, and
rov.  And even there, I am not sure you get the same results for a rov
de'iqah leqaman and deleisa leqaman.

And your linking up to regular forms of safek seems very difficult too.
Those who understand the principle of safek d'orisa l'chumra to be d'orisa
(the Rashba, the Ran and Tosphos), do not, as far as I am aware, link it to
any of the psukim referred to above.  And clearly the majority (according,
inter alia, to Rav Ovadiah Yosef) who hold that the principle of safek
d'orisa l'chumra is d'rabbanan basically are holding that once there is a
safek, according to the Torah the matter is completely mutar (but of course
of those who hold this as a general principle, there are a number of
exceptions eg the Rambam, who holds that safek d'orisa l'chumra is rabbinic,
hold in the case of one piece out of two being treif, that one brings an
asham talui (see perek 8 hilchos shoggegos halacha 3) but in the case of a
piece which is safek chelev, safek shuman, one does not bring an asham
talui.  There are other examples though, eg in connection with an issur
kares and possibly others).

Do note that the one piece out of two leading to the requirement to bring an
asham talui is not very far from the one piece out of three where one has
rov - and yet this is an *exception* to the Rambam's principle and not
consistent with it.

>So, I expect parallel shitos between rov and taaroves. So, someone who
>holds that you can eat each piece one after the other is really saying
>that batul is batul, and we don't redo the math after the situation ends

But only in the very limited case connecting the three pieces and acherai
rabim l'hatos, where we already know there is a connection from the gemora,
because we are told that the pasuk applies to both.

>Of course, as you noted, the rishonim in question wouldn't have discussed
>a reversal of a taaroves. But at the time I dreamed up the centerfuge,
>it was in response to your assumption that bitul is somehow more real,
>more manifest, than ignoring mi'ut. And an example you brought was the
>possibility that one may not eat all three pieces in a row.

I think you misunderstood me if you thought I brought this is an example.
What I was trying to do was to explain the completely different nature of
the two types of ta'arovos and bitul, the siman 98 kind and the siman 109
kind.  With the siman 109 kind being the case that was similar to the ones
you were discussing, and the siman 98 kind being totally different.  I don't
have any problem saying that the siman 109 kind is very similar, the gemora
and halacha uses, as you say, the same pasuk.  What I was objecting to was
the jump to assume the same thing about the siman 98 kind, as that to me is
totally different (and, to get back to the original conversation, the kind
of bitul that an approving authority might use, not the siman 109 kind).  As
I have indicated above, they appear to be based on totally different psukim,
and to my mind, are totally different concepts.

>My first response was the centerfuge... who said that those who don't
>recombine minorities to produce a majority wouldn't recombine the
>mi'ut, 1:60, 1:100 or 1:200 (even if the supermajority is only required
>derabbanan) of a taaroves if it were all brought to the end you're
>eating? This was an assumption that I simply didn't share.

And my objection was to the mixing up of the kinds of bitul, the siman 98
kind and the siman 109 kind, this centerfuge was clearly aimed at the siman
98 kind, and I thought all the discussions which arose out of the siman 109
kind didn't apply.

>My second response was to draw a parallel to eating all three pieces
>from the difference between touching and carrying taaroves with tum'ah
>in it. A person is metamei through carrying, which would parallel the
>case of eating all three pieces of fat at once -- unlike WRT touching,
>you carry the entire taaroves at once. You know the original cheilev is
>in the mix, why would the bitul matter?

This is exactly the problem of the Rosh.  He solves it by distinguishing
between tumah and eating.  But again, we are only talking about cases which
are clearly linked by the gemora to acharei rabim l'hatos.

>I hear chazal talking about safeiq as though it were a mixture. Why not
>take that at face value, rather than imposing statistics on a model that
>predates the field by just under 3 millenia (Sinai to Pascal or Fermat)?

So how about the really classic safek - the timtum, or the koi?  As I
understand the debate, some hold that the tumtum is a beriah in and of
itself, and some hold it is a safek, but those who hold such a person is a
safek hold that "really" such a person is a man or a woman, we just don't
know which, it is not as though essentially and to the Torah such a half man
half woman exists.  Ditto a koi - we practice the halacha giving it the
chumras of behama and chaya, but the options appear to be that it is an
independent creation of its own, or it is *really* in the eyes of the Torah
one or the other, but we don't know which.  Look at the way the psukim are
interpreted whenever these come up.

Secondly, if you hold that safek d'orisa l'chumra is a rabbinic precept,
then clearly this doesn't work.


>Thus, when we have doubt, we entertain both possibilities, and therefore
>a safeiq in metzi'us is not just idiomatically being called a kind of
>taaroves or isah. It actually is a mixed identity.

>RYBS uses the notion of mixed identity, or as he put it, that halakhah
>doesn't use a bivalent (black-and-white, true-vs-falase) logic in Ish
>haHalakhah, as well as in a yarchei kallah shiur I attended one Elul in
>the early 80s. Bein hashemashos is a safeiq yom safeiq lailah, but it's
>also when the two days overlap (eg it extends the esrog's status as a
>devar mitzvah to the subsequent day).

But the esrog's status is rabbinic - and therefore the fact that the rabbis
extended it because *we* are not sure, doesn't mean that there is anything
intrinsically a mixed identity about bein hashmashos, just that we don't
know what it is.

To postulate a genuine mixed identity eg in the case of bein hashmashos, it
seems to me you have to be saying that safek d'orisa l'chumra is d'orisa, ie
the concept of safek really exists within the ultimate truth of the Torah.
And while there are achronim who appear to take this position (ROY
attributes this position to  the Shach, on the basis of which he understands
the Shach's ruling that one cannot make a safek sfeka l'kula unless we have
a masorah to that effect, which is what enables him to disagree with the
Shach) ROY disagrees and argue that the majority disagree, so it seems to me
that if you posit this position, you are writing out of your hashkafa
(assuming ROY is right) the *majority* of rishonim and the Shulchan Aruch.
And the basis on which most of ROY's psak is based.

Thus no matter how intellectually attractive your mixed identity thesis
might be it doesn't seem to me to do the job if it only explains half of the
known world, and possibly the less dominant half at that (although that does
not mean that there could not be other ways of maintaining a Litvishe,
rather than a chassidishe approach to aspects such as timtum halev - nor do
I see a chassidishe approach as necessarily precluding the position of the
Rosh.  If the entire world is being recreated every day, then is it not
possible that a piece of meat that may have its source from a piece of
nevila could, through it perceived mixing with two other kosher pieces and
the application of the divine law of bitul b'rov not be recreated as a piece
of kosher meat, indeed turned into kosher as the Rosh understands it with
all the necessary kosher sparks within it).

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

Regards

Chana