[Avodah] two fictional sects

[Micha Berger]

On Mon, Apr 02, 2012 at 08:05:39PM -0400, David Riceman wrote:
> The Americas, because they intersect a westward line drawn from Israel,  
> are considered iyei hayam and hence part of EY according to R. Yehudah,  
> whose opinion they follow.  Furthermore, they argue that when the Mishna  
> says about bamos "v'lo haysah lahem od hechsher", it means up to the  
> time that that Mishna was composed.  But afterwards, when there was no  
> unitary source of hora'ah, that din no longer applied, and so bamos are  
> mutar in the Western hemisphere.  Furthermore, they argue that the issur  
> of being makriv korban Pesah on a bamah applies only to a bamas yahid,  
> and since theirs is the only valid bamah in the world, it is the bamas  
> tzibbur.

This is actually the topic currently in Y-mi Yomi -- Megillah 1:11,
"Ein bein bamah gedolah lebamah qetanah ela pesachim". Bamah gedolah
refers to the mishkan. There is a machloqes whether there is an implied
"bilvad". R' Yudah (15b) holds chatas as well is only brought on a bamah
gedolah. The Rabanan say you can make on a bamah qetanah any voluntary
qorban. Thus, Shofetim speaks of the era when "is *hayashar be'einav*
ya'aseh" -- there was no Mishkan Shilo yet, so people brought whichever
of the qorbanos they were moved to on their own.

(Resulting issues... E.g. What about a nazir? Nezirus is voluntary,
but once he is a nazir, the qorbanos are not. Go see the sugya, this is
tangential to RDR's question.)

> It follows that they sacrifice korban Pesah every year.

Anyway, at the very least it would seem that these people would bring
chataos too.

But there is a discussion of the issur bamah, and this hypothetical
tribe couldn't hold like the Y-mi anyway. The pasuq is "i lo batem
ad atah el hamenuchah ve'el hanachalah". There is a machloqes (18a)
"is TENAYEI TANI", ie citing tanaim, whether menuchah is Shilo and the
nachalah Y-m, or the other way around. But it's clear that they hold
that after the BHMQ in Y-m, the pasuq says bamos are over.


> The authority of the kehillah comes either top down, from a grant of  
> authority from the king, or bottom up, from a grant of authority from  
> its inhabitants.  The authority of previous generations to bind later  
> generations is mediated by the kehillah: if someone moves to a town with  
> a different custom he is not bound by his old town's customs, and, a  
> fortiori, if he establishes a new town he is not bound unless he agrees  
> to be bound.

I don't think this holds if the individual moves to a place that has
no minhag.

See Pesachim 50a-51a. (Yes, Bavli. Although there are parallel sugyos in
the Y-mi.) This is why we in the real US, where meqomos have no minhagim,
we ARE bound to minhag avos.

You don't say where their history diverges from the real one. But I would
conclude that if it's around the time of the mishnah or Y-mi, they would
also have this notion of minhag avos in the absence of minhag hamaqom.

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             The mind is a wonderful organ
micha at aishdas.org        for justifying decisions
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