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<DIV><FONT face="Times New Roman">On Mon, Oct 31, 2011 at 10:36:21AM -0400,
hankman wrote:<BR>: Well, we are back to the achbor shechetsyo basar vechetsyo
adama in the<BR>: daf yomi. I know this has been discussed in the past, but I
guess it is<BR>: time for a repeat. Does anybody have a peshat in this Mishna
and gemara<BR>: Chulin 126b (as well as the gemara in Sanhedrin 91a) that does
not run<BR>: afoul of modern scientific understanding? I think the previous
discussions<BR>: were pre Slifkin ban. Any new ideas post Slifkin ban? I do
believe that<BR>: we are MECHUYAV to look for a peshat that does not incorporate
what is<BR>: currently believed to be untrue scientifically into Toras
Emes.<BR><BR>RMB wrote:</FONT></DIV>
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<DIV><FONT face="Times New Roman">I fail to see the big question.<BR><BR>The
natural philosophy of the day taught that sch an animal existed.<BR>Chazal
applied halakhah to that case. But they don't assert the case is<BR>real, they
take that for granted.</FONT></DIV>
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<DIV><FONT face="Times New Roman">....</FONT></DIV><FONT
face="Times New Roman">Does this mean our gedolei haposeqim were wrong?
Certainly not! They were<BR>discussing the halakhah of a case that turned out to
be hypothetical.<BR>But what they were doing was the halachic analysis, not
staking zoological<BR>claims.</FONT><BR>
<DIV><BR><BR>CM responds:</DIV>
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<DIV>Frankly, I find your approach less than satisfying, leaving much to be
desired. However, when you have no other valid approach even an unsatisfying one
may have to do in a pinch. I am pretty sure that if I were to ask a godol a
shaila as to whether a Yeti or a Saskwatch is metame be’ohel I would be thrown
out of the beis hamidrash. Dito if I were to ask a shaila whether a Unicorn is
mafris parsa or is a ruminant or not and therefore kosher I would again not last
long in the beis hamidrash! Or if I asked whether Nessie has fins and scales
etc, etc, etc. I am not sure why even in those days a mouse made half of basar
and half of adama was not at least in the same class as these I mention above.
Besides when you ponder creatures you have never seen, but only heard about in
legend or tales from travellers (who want to write a book), there is very little
info and fact of the sort you need to base halacha on. Who gives the course in
the anatomy of these creatures so you could determine appropriate halacha on
what kind of animal it really is and how it is metamei? How does it become a
treifa? etc, etc.</DIV>
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<DIV>Personally, I prefer the derech of the OTM, but I still have no hesber for
the gemara in Sanhedrin. But it takes “groisse pleitsis” to say something that
Rashi differs with even if you think he is scientifically in the wrong. You see
this sort of timidity (humility) fairly often and of course it is mostly a
positive thing but there may be times (if you have big enough pleitsis) where it
would be appropriate (as the Gr”a, CI, RMF and others have shown). Another
example of this is R. Schwab’s proposal for the missing Persian Kings and
missing 168 years in Chazal’s timeline of that period. He again just put it
forward as a maybe out of humility.</DIV>
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<DIV>Correct me if I am wrong, but I also think that the further down we go in
the mesorah, the easier it is to do this. Not because the gedolim of our time
are to be given less kavod than those of previous doros, Yiftach bedoro
keShemuel bedoro, but because I think the further down you go in time the more
the mesorah is passed through a larger number of people with less emphasis on
any one or several particular individuals. So for example if you differ with
Shemuel Hanovi or Dovid Hamelech you are not just differing from a great
individual, you essentially differing with the main bal mesora of the time – so
in the time of the Shoftim and then the Neviim, a litlle less so in the time of
the Tannaim and still less so in the time of the Amoraim, dito Rishonim and much
less so in the time of the Acharonim where the bits and parts of the mesora lay
on the shoulders of many individual talmidei chachamim. I would say that the
number principle individuals upon whom the mesora rested over the generations is
somewhat in the shape of a pyramid very broad at its base in recent times and
with Moshe at the pinnacle. If this is accurate, then a challenge to the
understanding of a particular godol in very early times was tantamount to a
challenge of the mesorah itself, whereas a challenge to the understanding of a
particular godol in more recent times (while not to be undertaken lightly) is at
least not also a necessarily a challenge to the mesorah at the same time. I
would also add that I think that this broad base of the pyramid began to broaden
more rapidly with the permission to write Torah shBal Peh after the period of
the Mishna and even much more so with invention of the Gutenberg Press since
even more of the mesorah was now in writing and not just on the shoulders of the
living gedolim of that generation. For the most part, I was just thinking out
loud when I wrote this post as it came to mind. I hope I am not too far off
base.</DIV>
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<DIV>Kol Tuv</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>Chaim Manaster</DIV>
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