[Avodah] RMF Mattir Neder Gebrochts

[Micha Berger via Avodah]

On Thu, Apr 21, 2016 at 10:50:56PM +1000, Rabbi Meir G. Rabi via Avodah wrote:
: Is it inconceivable that Reb Moshe arranged being Mattir the Neder just to
: make the guest feel good? When in fact he really considered that it was not
: a Minhag at all and does not require Hatarah.

Actually, for RMF in particular, I find that hard to imagine.

The minhag is as old as the Raavan (12th cent), although he thinks they
were in error, he does advocate a more limited form -- cooking dishes
from boiled matzah because the result may be confused with recipes
that produce chameitz. The Keneses haGedolah (17th cent) confirms the
Raavan's fears with a story of it actually happening. Someone made fish
"breaded" with matzah meal, and the neighbor mistakenly learned from it
that it was okay to fry fish in actual flour.

Gebrochts in its full form doesn't come to pass until a generation after
the Besh"t -- there are stories about the Baal Shem Tov eating keneidelach
on Pesach, the Magid of Mezritch did not eat gebrochts. The SA haRav
(discussed here annually) says that the change was due to a change in how
we make matzah. This is the same generation in which kneading time was
counted toward the mil, and therefore the whole process got more rushed.
Until then, the chance of umixed flour remaining on/in the dough was
unrealistic.

I cannot picture RMF simply rejecting an SA haRav as not even a shitah.

Interestingly, a contemporary of the SAhR, the Shaarei Teshuvah, says that
gebrochts only made sense back before our more recent thing cracker matzos;
it would only apply to the Rama's only less than a tefach matzah.

So here you have two people writing at close to the same time, one
explaing why the minhag recently started, the other assuming the minhag
is old and no longer applicable to the current umdena.

But it is possible RMF agreed with the ST, and that the SAhR's world
used thicker (although still cracker-like) matzos than we do. In which
case, he could have held the minhag -- while once real -- is no longer
applicable.

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             You cannot propel yourself forward
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