[Avodah] Dead-Letter Halakhoth

[Micha Berger]

On Tue, Mar 13 at 8:45pm EDT, David Riceman wrote:
>> Consider another halakha that has, de facto, been defined out of  
>> existence, the halakha that you aren't allowed to mourn for a suicide.

> The poskim discuss this case in some detail: they require extremely  
> strict evidence to conclude that someone is a suicide.

This is arguably a change in metzius. Families today are more likely to
be hurt by judging the niftar as guilty rather than sick. Therefore, we
require more proof before risking that hurt.

But in any case, as REMT notes, the assumption is wrong. There is no
such issur; it's a lack of chiyuv.

A similar issue was the death of the *minhag* of mourning someone who
r"l intermarried. This was minhag, not din. I understand it was to make
the issur clear and socially inviolate. But as baavonoseinu harabim,
intermarriage becomes more thinkable, it scared off fewer and fewer
potential intermarriages. And we have more or more children of women
who intermarried, or people who may yet return (divorce, geirus of the
spouse). And so the calculus changed; letting the minhag lapse could
save *more* Jews overall. New umdenua, new minhag.

I think those two factors cover the entire inital list: either the din
wasn't what RJS assumed (REMT's answer), or the original din really
depended on umdena, and the new ruling is appropiate for the new umdenia.

On Fri, Mar 9 at 12:20pm, Lisa wrote:
> Back in biblical times, bamot were the classic example of the kind of
> dead letter halakhot you're talking about.

I think this thread blurs two topics: laws we ignore despite the fact
that no one says we should, and laws we take a different approach to,
and therefore do something very different than in the past.

AIUI Lisa is just mentioning a common sin whose popularity persisted
throughout bayis rishon. This is a different topic than RDR's and what
I thought was the initial discussion -- dinim we somehow wrote off the
books and do not consider binding even in theory.


(Bamos were mutar before bayis rishon, during galus Bavel, and if one
would say -- as they did in Alexandria and R' Yitzchaq holds on Taanis
20a -- "qedushah sheniyah lo qidshah le'asid lavo" bamos would have been
mutar today. Alexandria had Beis Chonyo, the Temple of Onias, a full
operating clone of bayis sheini. From Chonyo, son of Shim'on haTzadiq,
until churban bayis, it was more problematic.)

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             "Man wants to achieve greatness overnight,
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