<blockquote>On 9/6/07, <b class="gmail_sendername">Micha Berger</b> <<a href="mailto:micha@aishdas.org">micha@aishdas.org</a>> wrote:</blockquote><div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
<span class="gmail_quote"></span><br>On Sun, August 5, 2007 7:55 pm, Moshe Y. Gluck wrote:<br>:>From <a href="http://discovermagazine.com/2007/jun/in-no-time">http://discovermagazine.com/2007/jun/in-no-time</a>:<br>: "Efforts to understand time below the Planck scale have led to an
<br>: exceedingly strange juncture in physics. The problem, in brief, is<br>: that time may not exist at the most fundamental level of physical<br>: reality....<br>: "The trouble with time started a century ago, when Einstein's special
<br>: and general theories of relativity demolished the idea of time as a<br>: universal constant. One consequence is that the past, present, and<br>: future are not absolutes."<br>(Going off on a tangent: This is useful metaphor for questions of
<br>science and Torah. Science explains how the world works, Torah, to<br>provide meaning, purpose and values. The expectation when dealing with<br>historical claims that they seem to contradict on is that that both<br>are fundamentally right, there is only a minor lack of understanding
<br>on our part that creates an illusory contradiction in a corner case<br>that neither was designed for. If scientists can live with a<br>contradiction and engineers can use the data to design devices, why<br>can't we simply shelve our question without having a crisis of faith?)
<br> <br><br>Tir'u baTov! -mi</blockquote><div><br>Going off on a tangent to Micha's tangent - in 1972 I took Physics at University of CT in West Hartford. The professor - a non-Jew but fairly religious man - often waxed philosophical. he discussed the concept that photons were considered either/neither paritcles or waves, but rather had properties of both. This was a paradiox taht sicentists at the time really could not explain.
<br><br>Nevertheless, this paradigm ws use to explain subsequently discovered phenomena that had the same kind of paradox! So after photons there came oother particle/waves that were explained as photon-like.<br><br>================================================================
<br><br>My point? Back to Torah. Sometimes a teirutz to a question or a stirah maybe difficult to comprehend. But ONCE discovered, this chiddush may be in turn used to explain OTHER Cases unforesen by the original metareitz! Hiddush gorreres Hiddush!
<br><br>We know the story of bringing down a chiddush on to the earthly plane that sometimes becomes commonly known very quickly. Simlarly, a paradigm - a dugma - can come down and even if a bit fuzzy can be used to understand even newer problems!
<br><br>I even have an example.<br>My daughter's school taught - based upon the chiddushim of R. Menachem Mendel Kasher iirc - that Hametz was an Egyptian delicacy. And that Semites traditionally ate Matzah- [hence how Lot served matza to the mal'achim.]
<br><br>Follow this thinking a bit to antoher case. Sefer haHinuch struggles with the prohibition of dvash and s'eor on a korban minhah. But following the above hiddush it is easy to explain. Se'or - as noted - was an Egyptian bread enhancer. And similarly, Egyptians had a bread and honey delicacy!
<br><br>A simple explanation for this issur is that we are to avoid Egyptian rituals in the process of Korbanos! [Simlar to Rambam's meat/milk explanation as an avodah Zoro ritual!]] This COULD explain how Hametz is ONLY assur on Pesah - it is aftera ll Zecher yetizas Mitzrayim And Dvash/se'or in korban Minha has a problem - because it would be like k'maaseh eretz mitzrayim!
<br clear="all"></div></div><br>How about lot baking matza BEFORE yetizas mitzrayim? My best explanation is that despite Lot's sojourn in Egypt with his uncle Avraham, he stuck to a Semitic diet and this constituted conceptually OWN mini-Yetzias mitzrayyim. IOW, maettaphorically Lot did not carry with him ma'aseh Eretz Mitrayim. But, unfortunately he DID learn from Sodom and Amorahh...
<br><br>-- <br>Kesiva vaChasima Tova<br>Best Wishes for 5768,<br><a href="mailto:RabbiRichWolpoe@Gmail.com">RabbiRichWolpoe@Gmail.com</a><br>Please Visit: <br><a href="http://nishmablog.blogspot.com/">http://nishmablog.blogspot.com/
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