[Avodah] : Another Chumera ends up Involving a Kula

[Chana Luntz via Avodah]

I wrote:

>> But aren't they then denying those Jews who have not yet heard shofar at
all
>> the chance to hear shofar according to the majority opinions by only
blowing
>> for them according to the minority opinions?

And RZS replied:

>AFAIK everyone agrees that all these methods are kosher, so those Jews
>are definitely yotzei the mitzvah.

...

>They're not foisting anything. The people they're blowing for would
>otherwise not hear shofar at all, so they're clearly better off hearing
>even some obscure form of it, so long as they're yotzei.


But if these people who want to hear the shofar blown according to minority
shitos are capable of finding people who would otherwise not hear shofar at
all and blowing for them, they are *also* capable of finding such people in
circumstances where they then blow for them according to the majority
shitos. For it to be true that "they're clearly better off hearing some
obscure form of it, so long as they are yotzei" - you have to be assuming
that the people doing the blowing would only be prepared to go to the
trouble of blowing to fulfil their desire to fulfil minority shitos but NOT
where the result is only to ensure that fellow Jews perform a mitzvah.  You
may be correct that indeed people are more concerned with making sure they
themselves have fulfilled the mitzvah of shofar in every possible
permutation than in making sure another Jew performs the mitzvah at all, but
could anybody honestly regard that as praiseworthy?

As a consequence, I then raised a halachic query:

> The principle on which
> somebody who has fulfilled their obligation can then fulfil the obligation
> of another is based on kol yisrael areivim zeh b'zeh.  But to what extent
is
> that applicable in a situation in which that person would never, had the
> situation been reversed, have accepted the form of fulfilment they are
> offering the other.  Ie since the person who is blowing the shofar refused
> to have these alternative ways of blowing as the fundamental method of
> fulfilling their own mitzvah, is it really areivus to then foist that form
> of fulfilment on others?

RZS's assumption is that, so long as everybody agrees that a form of blowing
is kosher bidieved, then areivus works, but I wonder whether this is
necessarily true.  Areivus is a fascinating halachic concept - it allows
somebody who has already fulfilled a mitzvah to do it again, including
(importantly) making brachos again (which they would otherwise not be
permitted to do) on behalf of another.  I went for a bit of a hunt over Yom
Tov to see what I could find regarding areivus, but did not turn up much.
First of all, the pasuk from the Torah regarding Areivus is brought in
Shevuos 39a as being based on the Vayikra 26:37 [vchashlu ish b'achiv] -
which is then explained as meaning that a man in *the sin* of his brother so
as to teach that kol yisrael areivim ze l'zeh.  But while that seems a valid
source for what might be considered "negative" areivus or areivus in
relation to lo ta'asehs (and the obligation to protest), it led me to wonder
how straightforwardly that gets you to what might be called "positive"
areivus - ie doing something, such as performing the mitzvah of shofar on
behalf of another [not that I have seen this distinction between "negative"
and "positive" areivus anywhere].  Ie while you can see that if is permitted
to blow shofar for somebody who was otherwise unable to fulfil the mitzvah,
and one failed to do so, one might then be considered to have stumbled into
the sin of that person's omission - ie failure to perform an aseh - it seems
a leap to therefore derive from this particular pasuk that one has the power
to fulfil and make brachos on behalf of that person.  If anything I would
have thought perhaps v'ahavta re'echa k'mocha seemed more likely, but I
couldn't find any reference.  Note that areivus would seem not to be
shlichus, as one can make a shaliach out of somebody who is themselves not
commanded in a particular thing - whereas that is not applicable for areivus
where the original level of obligation must be at least equal on the part of
the arev.

[This is all leaving aside the famous Rosh Brachos perek 3 siman 13 which
states that areivus does not apply to women, which is clearly discussing
what might be termed positive areivus ie making brachos on behalf of one
another, and which the achronim generally limit to cases where there is no
equal obligation, despite what may seem to be the simple pshat, or the
Tosphos in Kidushin 70b that areivus does not apply to gerim - which must
surely at most [and here it seems to me you need the definition of negative
and positive areivus] to be only a reference to negative areivus - otherwise
this would be raised as a problem of a ger making brachos on behalf of
others - although given the source of the Tosphos in Sotah 37b, this would
also seem to apply to women for the same reasons  - ie the number count
being made by reference to the 603,550 in the midbar not including the eruv
rav, and not including women either].

The most I was able to find in my brief search over Yom Tov was a Birchei
Yosef Orech Chaim siman 124 discussing the question as to whether a Ben
Chutz L'Aretz who found himself in a village in Israel over Yom Tov (in the
case quoted by the Birchei Yosef he had gone to Israel to bury his dead)
where nobody besides him had the knowledge to be Shatz, and who had already
davened at home on second day yom tov the second day yom tov davening, could
be shatz for the community by saying the birchei chol amidah.  But there
seem to be lots of other reasons to permit (as the Birchei Yosef does) in
this particular case.

In particular it seems to me, besides all of the Birchei Yosef's arguments,
if you were to say that areivus was linked to v'ahavta re'echa kamocha, you
can see why, if circumstances were reversed, the ben chutz l'aretz would
want the same as he is providing to the benei aretz (ie the mutuality of
areivus).  But in the case that RZS has outlined, where the people hearing
only the minority shitos form of shofar blowing would surely want the
majority position shofar blowing if they could get it, can the blower
unilaterally choose to force them to fulfil their obligation via a set of
minority shitos via areivus, or does the principle of areivus not stretch
that far?  More generally, if somebody holds a particular position as being
the ikar, can they under the principle of areivus perform a mitzvah on
behalf of somebody who holds by a contradictory position, so that what the
arev is doing is, according to him, possul?  How about the reverse
situation?  And that gets us to RZS's case, where it might be agreed that a
particular form is kosher  bidieved, but if the arev could provide a
l'chatchila version and chooses not to, can he be genuinely be said to be a
real arev? How good a guarantor must a guarantor be to be considered a
guarantor at all? I am sure some achron has written a treatise on areivus
which must cover these kinds of topics, but so far I haven't found it.

Zev Sero
zev at sero.name

Shavuah tov

Chana