[Avodah] Vizhnitz Rebbe Asks Chasidim To Make Kiddush This Shabbos Between 6 And 7

[Micha Berger]

On Sun, Dec 27, 2020 at 06:03:47PM -0500, Akiva Miller via Avodah wrote:
> And then he quoted Reb Zalman Alpert:
>> This has nothing to do with science. It's in the realm of Aggada and
>> kabbala which has no relation to logical scientific facts.
...
> I am a person who believes that each year, on Shavuos, there is a hashpaah
> from Above that enables us to accept the Torah yet again. And this happens
> every year, on schedule, whether it happens to be the 5th 6th or 7th of
> Sivan. And it happens on schedule every year...

Do you believe that when we speak of itzumo shel yom mekhapeir this includes
someone who dosn't believe in Yom Kippur and its power of kapparah? Seems
to be a parallel to what you're discussing about Shavuos.

There are other alternatives to science than just asserting metaphysical
forces. Even as a derekh in Qabbalah, eg the Ramchal's metaphoric approach.

What can make Shavuos a day of hashpa'ah for qabalas haTorah need not be
physics or even something "out there", but rather in our relationship to
the date. Halakhah in general seems to relate more to things as we relate
to them than to abstract scientific facts about the thing in itself.

Like when posqim choose to ignore DNA testing that would mean someone is
a mamzer. DNA testing is about facts about objects, not relationship to
them. We don't relate to microscopic bugs, or to DNA.

And similarly, our deciding a day is Shavuos can be the metaphysics that
makes Shavuos powerful. Which would be undrstandable to a reationalist,
and yet still be consistent with approaches to Qabbalah like R Chaim
Volozhiner's. (Like in Nefesh haChaim 1:6, where he writes that the
human was created last, "beri'ah nifla'a koachme'seif lekhol hamachanos"
that we alone are where all the olamos touch and connect, and actions
in one world can have the ability to move events in another only through
the connection that is Adam. (Which is his definition of "tzelem Elokim",
where "Elokim" is taken to mean "Master of all the Kochos".)


Which could also be true for defining 6pm Friday. I don't believe that,
since it's the railroads, and not the din, that standadized the clock. I
more want to change the language of the dialog from either physics or
metaphysics, but both presuming to be objective. The Torah focuses more
on the subjective world than our attempts to identify and understand an
objective one (or: ones).

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger                 It is harder to eat the day before Yom Kippur
http://www.aishdas.org/asp   with the proper intent than to fast on Yom
Author: Widen Your Tent      Kippur with that intent.
- https://amzn.to/2JRxnDF                     - Rav Yisrael Salanter