[Avodah] Kitniyot

[Micha Berger]

Yesterday at 05:03pm EDT, I wrote:
: Not in that post, but should be... The Rambam, Hil Shemitah veYovel
: 10:5-6. He reports that the geonim had a mesorah that between the two
: batei miqdash and since churban bayis sheini, they only counted shemitah
: without counting yovel. And the Rambam said it is incorrect -- that one
: can't count the yovel year toward the shemitah cycle, so that counting
: one without the other gets you to the theoretically wrong year. Still,
: the Rambam says "shehaqabalah vehama'aseh amudim gedolim behora'ah,
: uvahen ra'ui lehitalos."

As RAF wrote me off list, this is poorly worded -- ambiguous at best,
probably altogether meaningless. So, I'll try again:

What I meant to say is that yovel can't be counted toward the 7 year
cycle. Therefore, shemitah should be 7, 7, 7, 7, 7, 7, and 8 years apart.
(As the Rambam says in the next halakhah, 1:7).

Therefore, if they counted shemitah while ignoring yovel (no 8 yr gaps),
our ancestors got what the Rambam considered the theoretically wrong year

It is clear from the closing words of 1:6 (quoted in Hebrew above) that
the Rambam is telling us to follow qabalah rather than switch to the
correct year by his own sevara. And that's really all I wanted to get to.

This is also relevent to my ongoing discussion with RMR about the extent
non-musmachim should be pasqening for themselves. There is a point at which
seikhel is insufficient to reach the proper din.

:-)||ii!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             Today is the 3rd day
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