[Avodah] mutav sheyihyu shogegim

Micha Berger micha at aishdas.org
Fri Mar 22 07:03:20 PDT 2024


On Thu, Mar 14, 2024 at 09:56:18PM -0500, Jay F. Shachter via Avodah wrote:
> [Micha:]
>> Maybe because mutav sheyihyu shogegim would lead me to conclude that
>> if they aren't accepting my tokhachah, I should give up rather than
>> make future chataim worse by adding to their bemeizid-ness.

...
> You are correct that "mutav sheyihyu shogegim" never exempts us from
> our obligation to obey Leviticus 19:17; it only exempts us from our
> obligation to obey the Rabbinic extensions to Leviticus 19:17...

And yet, R Ila'a says in the name of R Elazar beR' Shimon (Yevamos 65b):
    Kesheim shemitzvah atam lomar davar hanishma
    kakh mitzvah al adam shelo lomar davar she'eino nishma.
Rabbi Abba was dissatistfied with calling this silence of "mitzvah", he
insists it's a formal chiyuv. He cites Mishlei 9:8 "Al tokhach leitz..."

This gemara shows up in the SA just once (according to search engines),
the Rama OC 608:2. The context is tosefes Yom Kippur, which in his day
was routinely violated by women who ate until the moment of sheqi'ah
itself. Which is a derashah, not peshat in the pasuq.

And as R Jay Schachter wrote:
> Of course, the Scriptural obligation to admonish your fellow Jew when
> he or she is transgressing, only applies when your fellow Jew is
> violating a Scriptural commandment; if your fellow Jew is violating a
> Rabbinic obligation, but not a Scriptural one, then there is no
> Scriptural obligation to admonish.  There is a Rabbinic obligation to
> admonish, but this Rabbinic obligation has many qualifications that
> the Scriptural obligation has not (such as, it is better that they
> transgress unknowingly, than that they transgress knowingly).

However, the Rama opens by generalizing it "vehu hadin bekhol devar
issur".

Similarly the Qitzur SA 29:15-16. Se'if 15 starts "Someone who sees his
chaver sinning (shechata) or was heading in not good ways..." And then
se'if 16 limits the scope of #15 with:
    Bameh devarim amurim, when you picture (medammeh) that he may listen
    to you. But when you know (yudea) he won't listen, it is assur to
    give him tochakhah. As R Ila'a said..

The Sema"g (asei #11) and the Chinukh (#239), however, limit this idea of
not saying what won't be heeded to shegatos. Which linguistically fits
"mutav sheyihyu shogegim". And it could be the Rama's intent as well;
the Rama generalizes across all issurim, but maybe he means a shoegeig
in any mitzvah. And give tokhachah to someone who is already willfully
violating an issur -- whether letei'avon or lehakh'is -- even if you
don't think it will stop his sinning.

Which brings me to a question I had since learning these gemaras in yeshiva,
decades ago.

Chazal make a distinction between issurim in the pasuq and issurei deOraisa
that are found by derashah. We don't find that distinction much in rishonim
and beyond. (I didn't find it at all, actually, but I am not claiming such
beqi'us.)

So, I wonder... Was the distinction meant ledoros, something inherent in
issurim written out in the peshat?

Or was it because the leading competitor to halakhah were the Tezeduqim,
and they were saying that a halakhah even the Tzeduqim agree to has an
acceotance that makes bemeizid the default assumption. And they were
speaking to a situation later generations, including ours, aren't facing?

It would explain my inability to find later citation or codification.

Of course, the plausibility would depend on the machloqes rishonim about
whether to view derashos as constructed or discovered. (Not thrown in
just to get RZLampel to reply, really it wasn't.) The Rambam seems to
say the former, whereas the Raavad says even asmachtos are discovered --
Hashem "hinting" at useful deRabbanans Sanhedrin may want to make if
the need arises. (Most find the latter position WRT derashos, if not
Asmachtos, in most of the Rishonim -- Rashi, Tosafos, the Ran and likely
the Catalonians as a whole...

:-)BBii!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger                 What you get by achieving your goals
http://www.aishdas.org/asp   is not as important as
Author: Widen Your Tent      what you become by achieving your goals.
- https://amzn.to/2JRxnDF            - Henry David Thoreau



More information about the Avodah mailing list