[Avodah] R Avraham

[Micha Berger via Avodah]

On Fri, Sep 09, 2016 at 12:48pm Israel DT, R Eli Turkel wrote:
: In the second shiur he claimed that there are 2 types of teshuva process.
: One that one repents on individual sins. This requires the technicalities
: of teshuva, repentance on the past, vidui and determination not to repeat
: the sin. The second kind is where one changes one's personality, example is
: Elazar ben dordaya. This kind does not need the technicalities of teshuva
: as now the person is a different personality.

I once gave a talk (part of which ended up in "Aval Asheimim Anachnu", pg
34 in <http://www.aishdas.org/10YemeiTeshuvah.pdf#page=34>) contrasting
the Vidui that the Rambam calls the essence of the mitzvah of Teshuvah
in Teshuvah 1:1:
     How does one confess? One says, "Please, Hashem! I erred, I sinned,
     I acted rebelliously before You, and I did such-and-such. Now I
     regret and Im embarrassed of my actions, and I will never repeat
     this thing."
and "the Vidui that all of Israel practice is 'Aval anachnu chatanu.'"
(2:8)

One vidui lists acts, the other vidui emphasizes "anachnu", the "who"
behind the sin.

See my qunterus for more detail (including the connection to Yehudah's
confession to "Tzafnas Paneiach").

:                                               This kind also works in
: reverse when a tzaddik changes totally to a rasha while the first kind
: works only in one direction.

: A more controversial point he made is that the total change of personality
: in teshuva is a special chessed of hashem and the regular person can't make
: such a change in a different situation.

I don't get this. First he says that the same mechanicsm does work
the other way, then he says it can't -- that the self-change is
only possible through a chessed associated with teshuvah?

On Fri, Sep 09, 2016 at 4:24pm EDT, R Akiva Miller replied:
: Okay, having explained my views on Halachic Risk-Taking, I'd like to add
: that this idea that "the expert can never give a definitive answer. He can
: only supply statistics..." applies in other areas too. Specifically, I have
: often used this regarding the definition of death. At most, the doctor can
: give statistics like, "We have never seen anyone in this condition
: improve," and then it is the rav's job to decide whether or not the neshama
: has left the guf. (The fact that one rav might disagree with another rav is
: irrelevant. The point here is that it is the doctor's job to supply
: statistics, and it is the rav's job to make a determination.)

Well, in principle yes. In practice there are times the probability
is close enough to 0 or 1 so that the doctor or other expert is in
all practical sense giving outcome.

Second, it's not always about prediction.

In the case of death, the doctor may give you probability that the
condition will improve -- eg that the heart may be restarted or
replaced.

But he is also telling you (to reuse your three numbers for a
non-predictive scnario):

1) whether the heart is operating, the person is breathing, what parts
if any of the brain still show activity, etc.. He is telling you the
biological state of the body in the here and now.

And
2) the poseiq has to decide which set of biological states have the
chalos-sheim "meis", and which are "chai". Misah is a halachic state,
perhaps rooted in a hashkafic statement about when the relationship
between soul and body is servered in some particular way, and what that
"particular way" is. Misah is not a medical statement, but a halachic
categorization of how we view various medical states.

>From both of which
3) the pesaq halakhah lemaaseh about the person laying before us
becomes a natural conclusion.

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             You cannot propel yourself forward
micha at aishdas.org        by patting yourself on the back.
http://www.aishdas.org                   -Anonymous
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