[Avodah] Theoretical and Practical Shiurim

[kennethgmiller at juno.com]

There is currently a thread titled, "Theoretical and Real Shiurim". The comments there have pushed me to ask a related question that's been bugging me for a while. But to keep the threads distinct, I've changed the subject line. Those who respond are urged to take note of the exact subject line, to avoid confusion.

In that the other thread, R' Micha Berger wrote:

> A kezayis is a third of a revi'is, which is 2x2x2.7 etzba'os (10.8
> cubic etzba'os), and each etzba is 1/24 ammah.
> Let's take a ballpark number of the amah of an even 44cm, yielding
> an etzba of 1.83 cm, or a revi'is of 20 ml. (Given the
> approximation from the data, I'm rounding.) A kezayis would be
> 6.6 cc.

To me, this is all in the realm of "Theoretical Shiurim", at least as matzah is concerned. It could also be a "Practical Shiur" for fruit or meat or anything else which has no airspace, but not for bread or matzah.

> ... which is a shade larger than R' Chaim Volozhiner's 3 cc,
> but much smaller than the next (in size) on RDBannett's list, the
> CI's lemaaseh (as per R' Chaim Kanievsky) of 17 cc. RACNaeh at
> 27cc is WAY WAY larger.

Can someone please explain to me how it was determined that Rav Chaim Volozhiner's matzah was 3 cc? It seems to me that the most anyone could possibly say is a description of the area and thickness of the matzah he used. But we have no way of knowing how he related to the airspace, do we?

Here's a more current example, taken from the second Hebrew edition (5734) of Rav Dovid Feinstein's "Hagada Kol Dodi". In sections 2:5-9, he speaks of the Theoretical Shiurim of reviis and beitzah, and then converts them into Practical Shiurim of fluid ounces, for the Arba Kosos. Later, in 14:11, for Achilas Matza, he takes those figures and converts them for kezaysim.

Upon concluding that a person needs to eat 1.4 fluid ounces of matzah, he writes: "And this shiur is a piece of matzah 4 by 6 inches..." At the end of that paragraph, in a line which looks (to me) like it was pasted in for this second edition, he writes, "Hagah: I measured it again, and I found that the kezayis is even bigger, that it is about 6 1/4 by 7 inches of matzah."

So the first time, it was 24 square inches, and then it was about 43.75 square inches, an increase of over 82%! Over 25 years ago, I penciled this note to myself in the margin: "I heard from someone that the first measurement was based on ordinary matzah meal, the second on cake meal." - In other words, the first time he ground up some matza to the fineness of matzah meal, and calculated how much matzah would make 1.4 ounces when ground. But then he ground up the matzah much more finely, and found that a much larger piece was needed to fill the 1.4 fluid ounces.

If this "someone" is correct, then it would seem that to Rav Dovid Feinstein, airspace in matzah does NOT count towards the kezayis, because he ground it up very well before measuring it.

Unfortunately, I have no memory of who the "someone" was. But the really important question is: Does anyone know for sure what procedure he used for making these calculations?

But even more germane to the thread titled, "Theoretical and Real Shiurim", is *this* question: Who knows what procedure Rav Chaim Volozhiner and the Chazon Ish used? Similarly, who is to say that Rav Feinstein's second calculation is more correct than his first?

Well, actually I can answer that one: When Rav Feinstein published Kol Dodi in English (ArtScroll, 2000) it mentioned only the second shiur. Apparently, *he* is the one to say that the first calculation was wrong. (And Rav Shimon Eider seems to have agreed; he ignored the first calculation, on page 242 of his Halachos Of Pesach.)

But was Rav Dovid Feinstein possibly not eating enough matzah in the years between his first and second editions? And if the smaller shiur *IS* enough, then why not say so?

And, by the way -- does this, or does it not, support the view that the tiny airholes in a spongy matzah *do* count toward the kezayis?

Akiva Miller


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