[Avodah] Ghost Rabbis [in the sky]

[Jonathan Baker]

From: Zev Sero <zev at sero.name>
> Subject: Re: [Avodah] Is Panentheism Heresy
> 
> On 10/02/2013 10:33 PM, Lisa Liel wrote:
> > On 2/8/2013 3:47 PM, Zev Sero wrote:

> >> That's not metaphor, and it's not nevuah, it's a claim (true or
> >> not) of an actual visitation by a neshomo, just like Rebbi used
> >> to come home to make kiddush, or R Elozor br Shimon used
> >> to pasken shaylos from the attic after his passing (which
> >> you surely agree happened).

> > Why surely?  I'm not at all convinced that this happened literally.

> Really?  How can those two stories be read non-literally?

Saying kiddish is already non-literal.

How could Rebbi say kiddush for anyone, it's like a goy saying kiddush
the dead are NIFTARIM, patur from mitzvos.

Maybe Mrs Rebbi felt her husband's presence at lichtbenchen.  In fact,
that seems pretty likely, given that (according to Dan Rabinowitz,
it's not the Gemara that says he made kiddush, it's the Sefer Chasidim.
The Gemara just says that he visited the house on Shabbos.  And he was
invisible to the visiting neighbor.  So already the kiddush story is a
non-literal reading.  R' Reuven Margulies apparently spends som time on
"how can the dead make kiddush" in his edition of the Sefer Hasidim, #1129. 

http://seforim.blogspot.com/2006/11/ghosts-demons-golems-and-their.html 

--
        name: jon baker              web: http://www.panix.com/~jjbaker
     address: jjbaker at panix.com     blog: http://thanbook.blogspot.com