[Avodah] How do we evaluate nezeq nowadays of a person?

Zev Sero via Avodah avodah at lists.aishdas.org
Mon Aug 22 11:46:58 PDT 2016


On 22/08/16 14:20, Marty Bluke wrote:
> The mechaber does not pasken halachos because he had semicha.

I don't know what you mean by this.  He had semicha, therefore he could
judge dinei chavalos.  I don't know whether he ever did, but the fact
that he could means that these dinim were halacha lemaaseh for him and
his colleagues, and for anyone who would receive smicha from them.


> In any
> case the Tur and other piston including the Aruch Hashulchan who most
> definitely did not have semicha bring this lhalacha in Siman 420.

The Aruch Hashulchan is not a question, since he discusses many halachos
that were not lemaaseh in his day.   As for the Tur, perhaps the Spanish
rabbonim of his father's day, just as they judged dinei nefashos by the
government's authority, also judged dinei chavalos.  Or perhaps he
anticipated the renewal of smicha, or even didn't know that the smicha
no longer existed in EY.  (There are historians who claim that it survived
in Damascus all the way until the Crusades; they would cross the border
into EY to give smicha.)   I don't know.

But the bottom line is that it doesn't matter why the Tur brought these
halachos, the fact is that only musmachim can apply them, and by the time
slavery disappeared there were definitely no musmachim.  Therefore the
question how a beis din of musmachim today would assess nezek is moot.



-- 
Zev Sero               Meaningless combinations of words do not acquire
zev at sero.name          meaning merely by appending them to the two other
                        words `God can'.  Nonsense remains nonsense, even
                        when we talk it about God.   -- C S Lewis



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