[Avodah] the Sne and the Aish

[Micha Berger]

On Mon, Feb 20, 2023 at 06:10:09PM -0000, Chana Luntz via Avodah wrote:
> I was looking at Shemot 3:2 the other day and thinking about the Sne, and it
> struck me that what Moshe Rabbanu saw in the Sne is described as "aish" and
> "bo'ar eish" despite it not being consumed.  And it struck me that these are
> the same words used in the pasuk in Shemot 35:3 ie the same root in lo
> t'vairu aish.  Now we usually think of aish as being fuel + oxygen -> carbon
> dioxide + water, ie the scientific definition of fire - and certainly that
> is mostly what they were kindling over the years, and what they were
> avoiding kindling on Shabbat in the midbar.

Not only "aish", but also the word "bi'ur", which names the melakhah.

Lemaaseh, though, the "seneh bo'er ba'iesh vehasneh enunu ukal" was an
illusion. That's what the pasuq says "vayar". But what actually happened
was that the mal'akh appeared "belabas-eish mitokh hasseneh". Notice the
fire was really smaller, within the bush, and just gave the appearance
of engulfing it.

RYBS notes (given in a motza"sh shiur to his congregants) that it was
Moshe looking again and realizing that the fire was metzamzeim that
Moshe's nevu'ah went up from being a message from a malach to "Vayiqra
eilav Elokim mitokh haseneh". When he realized Hashem wouldn't need the
flashier presentation Moshe became the anav mikol adam that merited his
being the av hanevi'im.

To get to why I brought all of this up... I'm not sure what the story
was with the bush not burning. Maybe the small fire that was within the
bush did burn it, but the bush was not consumed (ukal) because the fire
that seemed to totally engulf it wasn't real.

>                              Now at the time of the midbar and Chazal, we
> were not in a position to deliberately generate visible light photons in any
> other way than by classic fire - but now we are (inter alia LEDs)!

In any case, in terms of the melakhah.... It's a machloqes whether making
a gacheles shel mateches is bishul or havarah. Seems to me this issue --
is aish causing a glow in general or only if something is burning -- is the
root of that machloqes.

This was the case with the filament in the old-school incandescent bulb.

What the case of LEDs adds is the possibility of making light without
anything reaching yad soledes bo, so a lack of havarah doesn't leave you
with bishul. But I don't see how the old bulb was more about combustion
than an LED is.

(I have posted in the past that I think florescent bulbs are a bigger
problem than incandescents, since we not only have glowing electrodes
hidden the bulb, we use their heat to boil mercury into a vapor. But
that's a bishul issue, not havarah.)

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger                 Every child comes with the message
http://www.aishdas.org/asp   that God is not yet discouraged with
Author: Widen Your Tent      humanity.
- https://amzn.to/2JRxnDF                 - Rabindranath Tagore