[Avodah] The Fungibility of Mitzvos

[Akiva Miller via Avodah]

R’ Micha Berger quoted R’ Natan Slifkin:

<<< I have found that while people are shocked when one challenges the
notion that you can learn Torah on behalf of someone who is sick, nobody
has yet actually come up with any classical sources demonstrating
otherwise. >>>

I’d like to suggest a very slight difference between two scenarios:

Suppose I say, “Hashem, I am going to learn some Torah now, and I’d like
the s’char for this mitzvah to go to Ploni, instead of to me.” That seems
to be the situation that RNS is talking about.

But suppose I say, “Hashem, I am going to learn some Torah now, and I’d
like *MY* s’char for this mitzvah to be that You heal Ploni, who is
currently ill”, or “… that You elevate Ploni to a higher level in Gan
Eden”, or something similar.

My point is that if there is no mechanism to transfer s’char from one
person to another, perhaps we can still request that the s’char should take
a particular form, and it would result in the same effect.

I’m pretty sure that there *are* sources for requesting that the s’char
should take a certain form. More accurately, I recall cases where one
requests that his *onesh* should take a particular form, such as if it has
been decreed that one should lose a certain amount of money, it should
occur in tiny amounts over a long time, or some other similar request.


Akiva Miller
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.aishdas.org/pipermail/avodah-aishdas.org/attachments/20170405/efac3769/attachment-0004.htm>