[Avodah] The Main Idea of Judaism

[Micha Berger]

On Sun, Jul 22, 2012 at 12:55am BST, Chana Luntz wrote:
: I did say:
:>> But the problem with that is if you take it too far, as I suggested 
:>> in my earlier post, then you ought to get women off scot free from 
:>> committing adultery, because they never do any act, it is always the 
:>> man doing it all.
...

I wasn't the "you" in the above, but I was arguing a middle ground. That
a cheit without a maaseh isn't yeihareig ve'al ya'avor, even if still a
cheit. And even if she performs a maaseh, since it's the same cheit with
or without it, she isn't in a yeihareig ve'al ya'avor situation either
way.

...
: Firstly, it depends on what you mean by passivity....
:                                        My understanding of what the gemora
: is saying is that women do not, as a matter of fact, do an act in the course
: of tashmish, as the gemora understands the term act ie ma'aseh.  Ie it is
: *not possible* for a woman to do an act in the course of tashmish....

We get to the same point, but I don't think it's that the possibility of
an act is ruled out as much as the necessity of an act is, and therefore
the act is diassociated from the actual issur.

Except WRT gilui da'as. As RnCL puts it:
: And so similarly is this in Yael's head - if she had intended to have
: pleasure/benefit from Sisera, she would have been guilty of an averah
: b'mazid.  But her act was not shogeg (she did not forget that adultery was
: assur, or have it happen thinking that he was her husband when he wasn't),
: nor was it mesasek, she intended the act to occur.  Thus the gemora
: characterised it as an averah, but an averah lishma....


On Sun, Jul 22, 2012 at 10:37am EDT, R David Riceman replied to RnCL:
> And this leads you into incredible contortions.  How can a woman be  
> guilty of adultery without doing a ma'aseh? You claim it depends on her  
> state of mind.  Whereas if under normal circumstances she does a  
> ma'aseh, it's easy to define adultery, and only the exceptional cases  
> are hard.

A problem avoided by my formulation.

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             Worrying is like a rocking chair:
micha at aishdas.org        it gives you something to do for a while,
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