[Avodah] Drops of wine

[Daniel M. Israel]

On Jun 23, 2012, at 9:08 PM, kennethgmiller at juno.com wrote:
> In Avodah Digest 30:69, in the thread "Translation of Yayyin", R' Zev Sero wrote his understanding and translation of the phrase "v'nohagim she-shofchim l'eebood hamakos v'ein shosin osam".
> ...
> Over Shabbos, I spent some time looking through my Hagada collection, trying to find this "common idiom".
> 
> I looked in quite a few Hebrew hagados, searching for the quoted phrase, or even any form of alef-beis-dalet in connection with the makkos, and never found it. Not in my hagados, and also not in the main nosei keilim on the last page of Siman 473 of both Shulchan Aruch and Mishne Brurah.


When I first posted this quote from the Kol Dodi, my intention was to make the following point: regardless of who is right in RMB and RZS's discussion of the origin of the idea that we spill for the makkos to show that our joy is incomplete, it is in fact a well accepted notion in contemporary frum circles, and not just fringes with "lefty" ideas.  My point was, RZS's contention that this is an idea alien to Torah is not correct, regardless of the source, as proven by the number of widely respected talmedei chachamim cite it.

As far as what RDF holds, I noted that my Hebrew wasn't good enough to exclude any ambiguity on this point, dragging RZL into the discussion.  This can simply be solved by someone asking RDF directly; I am sure there are multiple people on list who know him.

What I would be more curious of, assuming you (RAM) having been looking through an (extensive?) Hagada collection is the answer to the original question: how many hagaddos (and which ones) mention spilling for the plagues because of decreased joy?

--
Daniel M. Israel
dmi1 at cornell.edu