[Avodah] The Main Idea of Judaism

[Micha Berger]

On Thu, Jul 19, 2012 at 12:16:17PM +0100, Chana Luntz wrote:
: And RDR:
:>It's not a change in perspective.  It's a different physical event. 

: This I think is the heart of our disagreement. I do not dispute that a
: possible interpretation of what occurred with Yael was absence of pleasure,
: but I would dispute that even if that is what the Maharsha, Tosphos et al
: are saying, that they considered an absence of pleasure as creating a
: different physical event, rather than a change of perspective.

The way I was taught Esther qarqa olam haysa was that she physically
didn't move. She passively let Achashveirosh have his way. And that much
of her lack of culpability was due to the lack of maaseh.

Similarly WRT yeihareig ve'al ya'avor. A woman can be subject to gilui
arayos without doing anything. Therefore, it can't be yeihareig ve'al
ya'avor. (And possibly even if she is an active participant, since it's
not the activity that defines the issur. But I'm not insisting on this,
nor is it germaine to my thesis.)

One could understand Ya'el as also making herself qarqa olam in the sense
of not being an active participant. And thus, the gemara is saying that
one can only learn from Yael about an aveirah lishmah where the aveirah
itself has no maaseh either.

Still, as I mentioned when I first wrote the words "aveirah lishmah",
it's a big topic with a lot of rishonim and acharonim. RYGB (CC-ed)
used to raise it quite often in the early days of our chevrah. I wasn't
asserting that aveirah lishmah proves that one can turn an aveirah into a
mitzvah through machashavah, as in some flipside of teshuvah mei'ahavah,
just the much weaker claim that one can't rule it out.

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             When one truly looks at everyone's good side,
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Fax: (270) 514-1507                        - Rabbi AY Kook