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Modern Rabbis Are Not Chazal!

Becoming Meqori – The Lawyer and the Lawmaker

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In a previous post, I mentioned that in our times – as regards halakhah – there is only the authority of the lawyer and not that of the lawmaker. A “lawmaker” is one who has the legislative capability to make new laws or alter existing ones, whereas the “lawyer” has no such legal capacity. Instead, he is merely qualified to apply the laws as they exist and to work within them. And this is precisely our situation today.

The Rambam, in his haqdamah to the Mishneh Torah, describes the development and institution of the halakhah up until his own time. The demarcation between the rabbinic authorities of talmudic times and those subsequent to them which is made by the Rambam is clear and unambiguous. After the court of Ravina and Rav Ashi – described by the Gemara (Bava Messia 86a) as being “sof hora’ah – the end of halakhic instruction” – what we know of today as “talmudh” was officially closed. The term “talmudh,” as it is used by the Rambam, is not usually an exclusive term for the Babylonian Talmud. It is many times used as a collective term for all of the literature produced by Hazal, which includes both the Bavli and Yerushalmi, Mishnah, Tosefta, Sifra, Sifrei, and several others. So, in the view of the Rambam, the “talmudh” (i.e. the official body of authoritative halakhic literature authored by Hazal) has now become the standard of religious law for subsequent generations that do not have the benefit of a Sanhedrin.

The Rambam explains the statement from Bava Messia regarding Ravina and Rav Ashi as follows:

“Ravina wa-Rav Ashi hem sof hakhmei ha-talmudh – Ravina and Rav Ashi are the end of the Sages of the talmudh” (Mishneh Torah, Haqdamah i:23 – “talmudh” here being used in the general sense)

He then goes on to say:

“…And the purpose of the talmudhin is an explanation of the words of the Mishnah and a clarification of its depths, and also of those things which were originated by each and every beth din from the days of Rabbenu HaQadhosh [i.e. Rabbi Yehudhah HaNassi] until the composition of the talmudh. And from the two talmuds, and from the Tosefta, and from the Sifra and Sifrei, and from the Toseftoth – from all of them – is clarified what is forbidden and what is permitted, what is tamei and what is tahor, who is liable to punishment and who is exempt, the kasher and the pasul, just as it was repeated from person to person all the way back to Mosheh Rabbenu at Sinai…”

So, according to the Rambam, the halakhah is no longer determined in our times from the Sanhedrin, universal courts, etc., but is determined from the works of Hazal taken in aggregate. This aggregation is a complicated matter that has many interpretive rules, but this is the basic principle. And it is not just according to the Rambam, others also affirm this. For instance, Rav Sa`adyah Gaon states in his siddur that the “ba`alei mesorah – possessors of authoritative halakhic tradition” are those whose words are written in “the Mishnah and the Talmud” (pp. 11-12). And these are the bounds that every subsequent rabbi must work within.

The Rambam states this explicitly:

“…And every beth din that arose after the talmudh in every city that issued a decree (gezerah), or issued a, ordinance (taqqanah), or instituted a custom (minhagh) for the inhabitants of the city, or several cities, their practical rulings did not spread to all of Israel [i.e. from a central authority] because of the distance between the places of their dwelling and the disruption of unrestricted travel on the roads. Also, such a beth din is comprised of a few individuals and the beth din ha-gadhol [i.e. the Sanhedrin] comprised of seventy was disbanded several years before the composition of the talmudh. Therefore the men of one city cannot force those of another city to abide by its local custom, and they cannot say to another beth din that they should make the same decree as another beth din in his city. And also if one of the Geonim taught that the proper ruling (derekh ha-mishpat) was a certain way and it was clear to another beth din that arose after him that such a ruling was not the proper ruling (derekh ha-mishpat) as it is written in the talmudh – we do not listen to the first opinion, rather we listen to the one whose opinion makes the best logical sense, whether he came first or came later…”

There are several points to note here:

  • What is written in the “talmudh” (the works of Hazal) is the supreme source ofhalakhah since the disbanding of the Sanhedrin. The only arguments that can be acceptable are those made in effort to correctly interpret the talmudh. Rambam makes this explicit statement in his Pirush HaMishnayoth: “”The legal activity of all who arose after Ravina and Rav Ashi is confined to the understanding of the work they composed, to which it is forbidden to add and from which it is forbidden to detract.” (Haqdamah i:46, Qafih Edition).
  • The principle of halakhah ke-bathra’ei does not apply to anyone who comes after thetalmudh is closed – including the Geonim.
  • The standard for all subsequent legal positions is their cogency when compared to the text of the talmudh.

So, the position of all rabbinic persons today is that of an interpreter of the existing laws as bequeathed to the Jewish world by Hazal. They can apply what is there, but they are halakhically disallowed from adding or subtracting as they see fit. Anyone familiar with the works of the Rambam (and various other rishonim) knows that he frequently denies the authority of the Geonim to change the law, make new legal institutions, compose newberakhoth, etc. Instead, he rules according to the Gemara and dismisses their innovations as baseless (as did many other rishonim). However, when the Geonim write in effort to rightly apply the law as recorded in the talmudh, the Rambam carefully considers their words.

Lawyers are those who have gone to law school, studied the legal system and legal precedent, graduated, passed an exam, and are technically qualified to practice law. This is essentially the lot of “rabbis” today; they have attended yeshivah, been tested on certain legal subjects, and have received a certificate of their academic training. However, though technically qualified – and perhaps graduates of the top, most prestigious law schools – many lawyers are brutish and vile, have their own agendas, seek to circumvent the rules of the legal system, appeal to popular public sentiment, and generally lack personal integrity and moral clarity. So, who ultimately decides who is qualified? The people who hire them.

If someone needs the services of a lawyer (and it is the wise thing to do so when considering any complex legal decision or action), he seeks out an honest person concerned with justice. We generally steer clear of “scheister” lawyers unless we also have a crooked personal agenda we would like them to carry out on our behalf. The search for a rabbi is basically the same. There are those who are honest and true, loving their fellow Jews, and seeking to do the will of God, but there are also those who have their own agendas, are hateful, and seek to only bring honor to themselves. The decision of which to follow is a personal choice based on the morality of the individual.

Lawmakers do not exist in our times. All we have is a legal library containing the minutes of meetings, trial transcripts, and the dossiers of various judges that were left after the disbanding of the Sanhedrin. We have no judges today and the “jury” (following the metaphor, there is no such concept in halakhah) is comprised of the Jewish laity. Lawmakers can demand allegiance and obedience, but lawyers cannot. Lawyers must be convincing in their arguments, able to display their competence when handling the law, and have a good reputation. Otherwise, they are not hired. And admittedly, sometimes in a pinch a bad lawyer is better than no lawyer, but overall we seek out good lawyers and ignore the rest.

More on this later. Love and blessings to all of you.

-YBI

From Forthodoxy, here.

On Yeshayahu Leibowitz

Yeshayahu Leibowitz

(1903 – 1994)

Born in Riga, Leibowitz studied chemistry and philosophy at the University of Berlin, where he received his doctorate in 1924. He also studied medicine and became a medical doctor in 1934 at the University of Basel. In 1935 he settled in Palestine and joined the staff of the Hebrew University. He was appointed professor of organic and biochemistry and neurophysiology. His research was concerned with saccharides and enzymes in chemistry and with the nervous system of the heart in physiology. He was the head of the biological chemistry department at the Hebrew University and professor of neurophysiology at the HU Medical School. He also taught the history and philosophy of science. Yet Leibowitz was not only an academician. He was involved in public affairs and had a unique approach to Judaism. As such he was a popular lecturer, who loved to appear before diverse audiences, also frequently on radio and television. Leibowitz served as editor in chief of several volumes of the Encyclopedia Hebraica. His writings are found mostly in periodicals: Gilyonot, De’ot, Be-Terem, Petaḥim, and Moznayim, and also in the newspaper Haaretz. A selection of lectures and articles from the period 1942–53 was published in book form, entitled Torah u-Mitzvot ba-Zeman ha-Zeh (1954). His book of collected essays, Yahadut, Am Yehudi u-Medinat Yisrael (“Judaism, Jewish People, and the State of Israel,” 1975) stated his philosophy and views. Other books (published in 1965 and 1982) testify to his broad knowledge and great interest in Jewish life. He also wrote on Maimonides, The Sayings of the Fathers, and the weekly Torah-portion. In 1992 Eliezer Goldman published a collection of Leibowitz’s essays in English under the title Judaism, Human Values and the Jewish State, making him known internationally.Yeshayahu Leibowitz was an Israeli scientist and philosopher.

Leibowitz regarded Judaism as a religious and historical phenomenon, which is characterized by a recognition of the duty to serve God in performing mitzvot. The service of God according to binding halakhic norms must be “for its own sake” (li-shemah), and its purpose is not designed to achieve personal perfection or to improve society. Religion is thus not a means toward any specific end. Judaism is for Leibowitz not humanism, or a sentiment or a bundle of memories. Jews have the obligation to take upon themselves the yoke of Torah and mitzvot. Leibowitz’s standpoint is thus neither anthropocentric or ethnocentric, but theocentric. Consistent with his own reasoning, Leibowitz refused to be called a “humanist,” because this is an anthropocentric notion that envisages the human being as a supreme value. Under the influence of Maimonides, Leibowitz stressed the transcendence of God, whom we cannot know. His thought also contains Kantian elements. Kant’s critique of pure reason led to a theological agnosticism, whereas his critique of practical reason led him to affirm that the realization of values follows from a person’s autonomous decision. There is a tension between Leibowitz the philosopher who read Kant on human autonomy, and regarded politics and ethics as domains where human autonomy is decisive, and the halakhic man who lived in conformity with his strict halakhic, theocentric conception of Judaism. For Leibowitz, morality is thus an atheistic category. Kant’s influence on Leibowitz is also clear when he states that the value of a religious act is determined by the intention. Only when one performs an act because it is a divine commandment does it possess a religious value.

Leibowitz repeatedly expressed his opinions on the religious aspect of Jewish life in Israel. Before the state of Israel was established, he stressed the religious importance that national independence would assume, provided it would bring about halakhic legislation designed to mold the character of the state. After the establishment of the state, he advocated the separation of the Jewish religion from the state and its confrontation with it. He adopted a negative attitude toward the system of party rule, including the religious parties with their economic and rabbinical institutions.

Leibowitz emphasized the necessity for innovation in the halakhah, due to the changed circumstances created by the establishment of the State of Israel. He wanted halakhic decisions to cope with the challenge of today. One can note a change in his thought concerning the state in the course of time, although he himself would have denied this. Leibowitz refused to grant to the state religious status: the aim of the state would be the fulfillment of the needs of the individual and of the community, nothing more. He thought it was idolatry to ascribe holiness to the land or the state, which is not (in the words of religious Zionism) “the beginning of the redemption.” The state – just like history – had for Leibowitz no religious significance. He was a Zionist, but he emphasized that the state need not realize values, it has merely to satisfy needs. The Jewish people, on the other hand, has to realize values. Against Ben-Gurion, he pleaded for the separation of state and religion. Whereas Ben-Gurion wanted religion to be an instrument in the hands of the state, Leibowitz asserted that religion had to be in opposition to the state. For Judaism, only God is holy, whereas country, nation, and state lack that status. The state is not a value in itself; indeed, “seeing the state as a value is the essence of the fascist conception.” Rather, Leibowitz argued, the state is an instrument, a means to an end. Its existence allowed him not to be ruled by the goyim. In addition, Leibowitz criticized the “sacred cow of national unity,” pointing out that the Jewish religion had always divided the people, whether between prophets and kings or between religionists or secularists.

Leibowitz further denied that Zionism had any religious significance, stating that, since the intention of many of its propagators had been completely nonreligious, it could not be retrospectively assigned religious value. In the same way, he refused to acknowledge any messianic significance in the creation of the State of Israel, citing Maimonides’ warning against such messianic fervor. He did, however, ascribe immense moral significance for the Jewish people to the establishment of the Jewish state: “Now – and only now,” he wrote,”with the attainment of the independence of the Jewish nation – will Judaism be tested as to whether indeed it has a ‘Torah of life’ in its hand …. Certainly there is no guarantee that the struggle on behalf of the Torah within the framework of the state will be crowned with success, but even so we are not free to desist from it, for this struggle is itself a supreme religious value, independent of its results.”

Leibowitz was well known in Israel for his provocative utterances on the political situation. After the 1967 Six-Day War, his position on the occupation of the Palestinian territories was sharply critical. His uncompromising stance and forceful, biting language made him a known and much-discussed figure in religious as well as secular circles. In his opinion, partition of the country would be the rational and moral resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. With the outbreak of the Lebanon War in 1982, Leibowitz called upon the Israeli soldiers to refuse to serve in Lebanon. He also supported conscientious objection regarding military service in the territories on the grounds that occupation morally corrupts. His outspokenness on matters of conscience led to his vilification by those who saw him as a threat to their values, and the protest that ensued upon the announcement that he had been awarded the Israel Prize in 1993 was such that he turned it down.

In his antimystical approach to Judaism, Leibowitz wanted Jews to reach out toward transcendence, which is approached in the mitzvot that have to be performed without reward. Whereas *Levinas links morality and religion, Leibowitz differentiates between them and even separates the two. Levinas believed that the appeal of the other person is heteronomous, whereas Leibowitz maintained that only the divine command is heteronomous and that morality is autonomous. Therefore, their views on the relationship between religion and morality are radically opposed: for Levinas, religion and morality are intrinsically linked, for Leibowitz, ethical laws are religiously relevant only if a person accepts them as commanded by God. Another crucial difference between Levinas and Leibowitz lies in the fact that the former emphasizes the performance of the ethical act itself, whereas the latter highlights the intention of the act: an act is religious if performed “for the sake of heaven,” it is not religious when performed as a function of human needs and based upon a person’s arbitrary will. Since morality is autonomous, based upon human thought and will, and therefore not “for the sake of heaven,” but “for the sake of man,” it is not religious. Towards the end of his life, Leibowitz appreciated Levinas, but his concept of Torah and mitzvot prevented him from agreeing with him.

Leibowitz had a very negative view of Christianity as well as of modern Jewish thinkers like *Rosenzweig and *Buber, who showed intellectual and religious interest in Christianity. In contrast to scholars and thinkers like David *Flusser, who investigated the Jewish roots of Christianity, Leibowitz wrote that the very concept of a “Judeo-Christian heritage” is a square circle. A synthesis or symbiosis is impossible; Christianity is for Leibowitz the adversary of Judaism. In his view, Christianity is the heir who does not want to admit that the testator is still alive. Judaism and Christianity cannot coexist, because Christianity claims that it is true Judaism, and is interested in the liquidation of Judaism as the religion of Torah and mitzvot.

In his essays, Leibowitz produced sharp and thought-provoking insights on many subjects such as the nature of holiness, chosenness, Messianism, prayer, redemption, and general and personal providence. His consistent and provocative thought gave him a prominent position in contemporary Jewish thought, especially in Israel. His thinking, even when contested, is stimulating and powerful and invites or even forces people to respond by formulating their own views.

In 2005, Leibowitz was voted the 20th-greatest Israeli of all time in an online poll conducted by an Israeli newspaper.

Sources: Encyclopaedia Judaica. © 2008 The Gale Group. All Rights Reserved; The Pedagogic Center, The Department for Jewish Zionist Education, The Jewish Agency for Israel, (c) 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, Director: Dr. Motti Friedman, Webmaster: Esther Carciente

A. Kasher and Y. Levinger, Sefer Yeshayahu Leibowitz (Heb., 1977); H. Kasher, “‘Torah for Its Own Sake,’ ‘Torah Not for Its Own Sake,’ and the Third Way,” in: The Jewish Quarterly Review, 89:2-3 (1988-89), 153-63; A. Sagi (ed.), Yeshayahu Leibowitz. His World and Philosophy (Heb., 1995); Yeshayahou Leibowitz: le retour du sadducéen par Ami Bouganim (1999); A.Z. Newton, The Fence and the Neighbor: Emmanuel Levinas, Yeshayahu Leibowitz and Israel among the Nations (2001); D. Banon, “E. Levinas et Y. Leibovitz,” in D. Cohen-Levinas and S. Trigano (eds.), Emmanuel Levinas: Philosophie et judaisme (2002), 57-86.

From Jewish Virtual Library, here.

Rethinking the State

Mises Daily Friday: The Truth About Politics

FEBRUARY 5, 2016

The very first votes of the 2016 presidential election season were cast this week in the Iowa caucuses. This is supposed to fill us with happy thoughts about self-government, civic virtue, rational deliberation, and about politics as the way the people’s will is put into effect.

But to the contrary, we should spurn what the establishment would have us celebrate. Politics operates according to principles that would horrify us if we observed them in our private lives, and that would get us arrested if we tried to live by them. The state can steal and call it taxation, kidnap and call it conscription, kill and call it war.

And yet we are taught to fear capitalism, of all things.

But what, after all, are capitalism and the free market? They are nothing more than the sum total of voluntary exchanges in society.

When we engage in a voluntary exchange — when I buy apples for $5, or when you hire someone for $25 per hour — both sides are better off than they would have been in the absence of the exchange.

We can’t say the same for our interactions with the state, since we pay the state under threat of violence. The state sure winds up better off, though. That’s for sure.

Business firms that increase their profits thanks to some new innovation cannot rest on their laurels. Other firms will adopt the innovation themselves, and those abnormally high profits will dissipate. The original firm must continue to press forward, striving to devise still newer ways to please their fellow men.

The state operates under no such conditions. It can remain as backward as it likes. Other firms are typically prohibited from competing with it.

The state’s priorities arbitrarily override your own. Ethanol “is important for the farmers,” one candidate says. So because the state has decided some interest group’s foolish and economically nonsensical pet project is “important,” what you yourself would have preferred to do with your money is simply set aside and ignored, and you are forced to subsidize what the state seeks to privilege.

Our schools and media portray corporations as sinister, and government as benign. But who wouldn’t rather take a sales call from Norwegian Cruise Line than an audit demand from the Internal Revenue Service?

Or imagine if a corporation fabricated a web of untruths, used them as a pretext to launch a violent attack on a people that had never caused Americans any harm, and brought about as many as a million deaths and millions more internal and external refugees. That corporation would be broken up and never heard from again. It would be denounced ceaselessly until the end of time.

Now all those things did happen, but they were carried out by the state. And as we all know, there have been no repercussions for anyone. No one has been punished. In fact, the perpetrators earn six-figure speaking fees. The whole thing is shrugged off as at worst an honest mistake. Some people are still outraged about it, but even they seem to take for granted that there’s really nothing that can be done about behavior like this on the part of the American regime.

Imagine there were a corporation that was somehow so entrenched that despite being responsible for a staggering death toll, it evaded all responsibility and simply carried on as before. The outrage would be deafening and overwhelming.

But so relentless has been the propaganda, ever since all of us were children, about the state’s benign nature that many people simply cannot bring themselves to think as badly about the state as they have been taught to think about corporations — even though the crimes of the state put to shame all the misdeeds of all existing corporations put together. Meanwhile, opponents of the state are routinely portrayed as incorrigible misanthropes, when in fact, in light of the state’s true nature, we are mankind’s greatest advocates.

The market brings people together. People of divergent and sometimes antagonistic racial, religious, and philosophical backgrounds are happy to trade with one another. Beyond that, the international division of labor as it exists today is the greatest and most extraordinary example of human cooperation in the history of the world. Countless firms produce countless intermediate goods that eventually combine to become finished consumer products. And the entire structure of production, in all its complexity, is aimed at satisfying consumer preferences as effectively as possible.

The state, on the other hand, pits us against each other. If one of us wins a state favor, it comes at the expense of everyone else. For one group to be benefited, another must first be expropriated. At one time or another the state has pitted the old against the young, blacks against whites, the poor against the rich, the industrialists against agriculture, women against men.

Meanwhile, all the anti-social effort devoted to extracting favors from the state is effort that is not available to produce goods and services and increase the general prosperity.

The market is about anticipating the needs of our fellow men and exerting ourselves to meet those needs in the most cost-effective manner — in other words, by wasting the fewest possible resources, and making what we offer as affordable as we can for those we serve.

Ah, but we need the state, virtually everyone tells us. Whether it’s “monopoly,” or drugs, the bad guys overseas, or the scores of other bogeymen the state uses to justify itself, we’re constantly being reminded of why the state is supposed to be indispensable. To be sure, these and other rationales for the state sound plausible enough, which is why the state and its apologists use them. But the first halting steps toward intellectual liberation come when someone considers the possibility that the truth about these things might be different from what he hears on TV, or learned in school.

The small minority of people who administer the state with funds expropriated by the productive private sector need to justify this situation, lest the public become restless or entertain subversive ideas about the real relationship between the state and themselves. And this is where the state’s various platitudes about the people governing themselves, or taxation being voluntary, or government employees being the servants of the people, enter the picture.

Think for a moment just about this last claim: that government employees are our servants. These people staff an institution that decides how much of our income and wealth to expropriate in order to fund itself. They will imprison us if we do not pay. And we are to believe that these people are our servants?

For those not gullible enough to fall for such a transparent canard, the rationales become mildly more sophisticated. All right, all right, the state may say, it’s not quite right to say that the people govern themselves. But, they hasten to add, we can offer the next best thing: the people will be represented by individuals chosen from among them.

As Gerard Casey has argued, though, the idea of political representation is not meaningful. When an agent represents a business owner in a negotiation, he ensures that the owner’s interests are pursued. If the owner’s interests are defended only weakly, ignored, or downright defied, the owner chooses different representation.

None of this bears any resemblance to political representation. Here, a so-called representative is chosen by some people but actively opposed by others. Yet he is said to “represent” all of them. But how can this be, when he can’t possibly know them all, and even if he did, he’d discover they have mutually exclusive views and priorities?

Even if we focus entirely on those people who did vote for the representative, is their vote supposed to imply consent to his every decision? Some of them may have voted for him not for his positions or merits, but simply because he was less bad than the alternative. Others may have chosen him for one or two of his stances, but may be indifferent or hostile on everything else. How can even these people — who actually voted for the representative — seriously be said to be “represented” by him?

But the idea of political representation, while meaningless, is not without its usefulness to the modern state. It helps to conceal the brute fact that, despite all the talk about “popular rule” and “governing ourselves,” even the “free societies” of the West amount to some people ruling, and others being ruled.

When the results are announced this primary season amid cheers and celebration, then, remember what it all represents: the triumph of compulsion over cooperation, coercion over freedom, and propaganda over truth. The civics textbooks may write with breathless awe about the American political system, but this is by far the worst thing about the US. Rather than celebrate the anti-social world of politics, let us raise a glass to the anti-politics of the free market, which has yielded more wealth and prosperity through peace and cooperation than the state and its politicians could with all the coercion in the world.

Note: The views expressed on Mises.org are not necessarily those of the Mises Institute.

From Mises.org, here.

Rabbi Grossman Critiques the Mishna Brurah

The Chofetz Chayim and the Vilna Gaon: Similar Halachoth, Dissimilar Approaches

March 20, 2016

This past semester we had the opportunity to review the topic of the time concerning the weekly onset of the Sabbath. Using the Mishna Berura (to Orah Hayim 261) as a base text, we saw how in the olden days, the prevailing view was that the halachic day starts at sundown, and therefore if one wished to add to the Sabbath by accepting it while it was still Friday, he would have to accept the Sabbath, i.e., desist from performing forbidden labors, sometime before sunset. We also how Rabbeinu Tam believed, based on his understanding of the relevant Talmudic passages, that the halachic “sunset,” the dividing line between the halachic days, is something that occurs everyday almost an hour after the setting of the sun that we are used to seeing. At the time, applying Rabbeinu Tam’s opinion was revolutionary. For centuries, the Jewish people greeted the Sabbath queen and saw her off at certain times of the day, and then slowly, they started doing so later. The weekly Sabbath shifted by about an hour, and that eventually became the prevailing custom among us, such that both the Shulhan Aruch and the Rema assume that the halacha follows Rabbeinu Tam. While there were notable holdouts who did not completely accept the new definition of the cut off line between days, like the Shach and Yemenite jewry, Rabbeinu Tam’s position held sway until the Vilna Gaon came around. The Vilna Goan completely rejected Rabbeinu Tam’s approach because it simply does not fit with reality. What celestial phenomenon actually happens about an hour after sunset? Most of the stars, whether, small, medium, or large, are already out by that time. It was better to revert to the classic understanding of sunset as explicated by the Geonim and Maimonides: sundown is sundown, and the Sabbath must start by then, and it departs only a matter of minutes afterward. The Chofetz Chayim, by mentioning the Vilna Gaon’s opinions concerning most halachoth, helped popularized the Gaon’s overall approach, and today the momentum has shifted. Most Jewish communities accept the Sabbath by sundown on Friday, and allow their constituents to begin forbidden labor well before even an hour has passed from the sundown the following day. Rabbeinu Tam would not be too satisfied with the status quo today; he ruled the way he did because he believed that the halacha should fit with the ancient cosmological models that the ancient Hebrews shared with others in the Near East, and felt that the sages later viewing the world and the orbits of the spheres as did the Alexandrian astronomers was improper, despite their stature.

Here’s where it got interesting. Rabbeinu Tam and the Shulhan Aruch and the rest specifically adopted one position and outright rejected the other, while Maimonides and the Vilna Gaon took the second opinion and rejected the first. All of the pos’qimtook sides on the issue, each one for his own reason(s), but the Chofetz Chayim does not present his readers with sufficient arguments for or against each position. Instead, he just presents the opinions as being at odds with each other and identifies who subscribes to each opinion, and then he rules that both opinions be ideally followed. We should take in the Sabbath according to the earlier definition of sunset, but end the Sabbath according to the later opinion. This overall approach of trying to satisfy all major opinions was popularized by the Chofetz Chayim, but is, in a historical sense, the most revolutionary. And this shows us the defining difference between the methods of the Vilna Gaon and the Chofetz Chayim, even though it was the Chofetz Chayim who made the Vilna Gaon’s views so well known: The Vilna Gaon ruled like the view that he felt fit the Talmudic sources and the reality, while the Chofetz Chayim did not weigh the merits of individual views, and instead sought to somehow satisfy all of them.

…

We then saw a number of the classic cases we discussed previously, where most notably, the Mishna Berura does not mention the actual opinion of the Vilna Gaon on the matter because, presumably, it stands at complete odds with the view the Chofetz Chayim was trying to advance.

In 31:8 the Chofetz Chayim is trying to advance the position that a blessing should not be recited when donning t’filln on Hol Hamoed, and the Vilna Gaon’s “lenient position” on the matter can be used as a “weight” to counter the position that a blessing should be recited on donning t’fillin. This would give the reader the impression that the Vilna Gaon ruled that t’fillin are worn without a blessing on Hol Hamoed, whereas in  reality the Vilna Gaon believed that there was no question about the blessing, because he held like the Shulhan Aruch, which ruled that t’fillin may not be worn on Hol Hamoed at all. Citing the Vilna Gaon accurately would have wrecked his entire thesis.

In 583:8, the Mishna Berura, in a discussion concerning the practice of Tashlich, neglects to mention the opinion of the Vilna Gaon: that tashlich should not be done on Rosh Hashana, nor by a body of water. Citing the Vilna Gaon would have eliminated the entire point of the discussion. The same can be said about the entirety of mark 605. The Mishna Berura has much to say about how to perform kapparois, even though both the Shulhan Aruch and the Vilna Gaon prohibited them.

In Orah Hayim 2 and 8 the Mishna Berura discusses the issues of ad hoc head coverings when reciting blessings, and the idea that Jews should always wear hats even when indoors. He does not mention that the Vilna Gaon wrote that “the rule of the matter is that there is never any prohibition of going about with an uncovered head,” and that it is only during the times of the prayer that one should cover his head out of respect. Once again, the Vilna Gaon’s opinion is not mentioned,  because it is in such stark contrast to the view the Mishna Berura favored.

The Vilna Gaon would often mention who subscribed to views that he rejected; I know of no instance where the Mishna Berura cites the Vilna Gaon and then rejects his opinion.

…

The entire issue of reading part or all of the last verse of Parashath Zachor multiple times has its basis in  a  practice of the Vilna Gaon as cited by the Mishna Berura. Ma’aseh Rav 133 and 134 mention that the Vilna Gaon himself would be the one to read Zachor in the synagogue, and that he read the word as zecher, with a segol, as opposed to the traditional vowelization, zeicher, with a tzeirei. In Diqduq Eliyahu, the Vilna Gaon seems to say that the difference between the two vowels is the yud-like sound that is a natural part of the tzeirei vowel, much like the long hiriq (ee as in “bee”) has a natural yud sound. This issue is surprising, because as we wrote earlier, there are many disputed vowelizations throughout the Torah, and many actually affect the meaning, but in this case, there is no known manuscript or classic text that has the word zeicher vowelized with a segol, and even if such a variant vowelization existed, it would not change the meaning of the word. The Vilna Gaon also felt that the word should also be zecher in Psalm 145:7 (“Ashrei”), even though, once again, we have no such version. Be all this as it may, the Vilna Gaon apparently favored one view over the other, but it was the Chofetz Chayim who popularized trying to somehow satisfy all opinions.

But why did the Vilna Gaon feel that the word zeicher should be re-vowelized? Granted he made similar recommendations with regards to the prayer liturgy, and spent his life trying to edit the exact texts of the Talmud and Midrashim, but those are not part of the received Biblical text, the masora, and he did not suggest any other re-vowelizations throughout the entire Bible, nor did he attempt to reconcile some other known vowelizations that are subject to dispute. Why did he seem to care about only one word in the entire Bible, and is it more than a coincidence that it happens to be in the one minimally parasha read every year by command of the Torah?

Here is how I see it. The Vilna Gaon likely did not really say that zeicher should be revowelized! Having a segolate noun of the tzeirei-segol form (e.g., sheivet, tribe, and neizer, diadem) is just as valid as the double segol form (e.g. kesef, silver, and qesher, knot). In the commentary  P’ulath Sachir to the printed versions of the Ma’aseh Rav, the author mentions that the Vilna Gaon’s students actually do not agree on how the Gaon said zecher/zeicher. Some dispute the Ma’aseh Rav, and claim he really said zeicher with a tzeirei. So what happened?

The Vilna Gaon was not always the regular Torah reader. That is why it was a novelty for him to be the reader for Zachor. He would normally only go up to the Torah for the sixth aliya. Further, he believed that the reading of Zachor was biblically ordained, and told his students that that was his opinion, so they naturally paid more attention to that reading, especially when their holy master was doing the reading. Next, the Vilna Gaon’s Hebrew definitely did not sound like that of  other Litvaks. It, like very other of his practices, was colored by his objective adoption of what he believed to be right, and therefore was unusual. (He also declined to speak Yiddish like the rest of the Jews, and strove to only speak Hebrew.) His vowels were the objective ones he describes in his other seifer (sefer?). While Ashkenazis allows for a segol that sounds like the e in “bet” and a tzeirei that sound like the ay in “way,” in truth the tzeirei should not have such a strong diphthong yud (y) sound, and in the Gaon’s opinion, the tzeireiwas actually somewhere between the two sounds, similar to the way both the segoland tzeirei are pronounced in Modern Hebrew. Next, in the entire Parashath Zachor, the vowel tzeirei only occurs once in a syllable that is both open and accented, i.e. most distinguished from a segol: in the word zeicher! Therefore, when the Vilna Gaon read that word properly, to some students of his students it sounded like what they knew was his version of a tzeirei, but to the less knowledgable students, it did not sound like a true, hard, Ashkenazic tzeirei, so it must have been a segol! This is similar to the fallacy that Ashkenazis is any pronunciation system that includes a weak sav and some sort of qamatz that is different from a patah, or that the forms of checkers or handball that are unusual are “Chinese.” The vowel was weaker than a tzeirei, so it must have been a segol. What about the tzeirei in eith and Amaleik? Wouldn’t they have noticed that those were weak? Not as much, because those syllables are closed and therefore less noticeable.

To sum up, the Ma’aseh Rav is not reporting that the Vilna Gaon felt the word should zeicher should be vowelized with a segol, but rather that the Vilna Gaon did not, when the time came to speak proper biblical Hebrew, pronounce a tzeirei exactly like the way the other Ashkenazim were doing, and this fits with the Vilna Gaon’s life-goal of escaping the misguided “poilisher minhagim” that dominated in Europe.

Much like eating an inordinate amount of matza in a short period of time has come to overshadow the commandment to remember facets of the Exodus, the over pronunciation of the words of Zachor has now overshadowed the message of the parasha, and this is due in part to the Mishna Berura’s over simplification of this issue, turning it into just another mahloqeth that needs to have both sides satisfied.

From Avraham Ben Yehuda, here.

Take Your Money Out of the Bank!

Two BIG Reasons NOT to Keep Your Cash in the Bank

By

Nestman.com

March 16, 2016

It’s bad enough depositing your money into a bank account and earning essentially zero interest on it, or in some countries, having a negative interest rate.

It’s even worse knowing that once you deposit your money in a bank, it’s not really yours anymore. You have turned over your property to the bank in return for a debt claim. You become an unsecured creditor holding an IOU.

Worst of all, there’s the “bail-in,” which we all became familiar with during the 2013 banking collapse in Cyprus. Some uninsured depositors got half of their money back, although, at one bank, customers received nothing of their deposits over the “insured” amount.

In 2014, the leaders of the Group of Twenty (G20) – representing the world’s 20 largest economies – declared the Cyprus model should apply globally. They did so in a mind-numbing tome entitled Adequacy of Loss-Absorbing Capacity of Global Systemically Important Banks in Resolution.

Deposits in banks that are “too big to fail” will be promptly recapitalized with their unsecured debt. And… guess what? The largest chunk of unsecured debt is your bank deposits. Insolvent banks will recapitalize themselves by converting your deposits into worthless bank stock. This avoids taxpayer-funded bailouts that proved politically unpopular during the last financial crisis.

Oh, and get this… the G20 has also declared that derivatives – the toxic contracts Warren Buffett calls “financial weapons of mass destruction” – are secured debts. Since your bank deposits are only unsecured debt, guess who gets your money if the bet goes the wrong way for the bank? Answer: It’s not you.

Heads, the bank wins. Tails, you lose.

It’s practically guaranteed, too, that in the next financial crisis, there’ll be a whole slew of bank failures. That’s despite the fact that the mainstream financial media assures us that central banks have imposed higher capital requirements, stress tests, etc., on banks to ensure that when the “big one” hits, your deposits will be safe.

Don’t believe a word of it. The amount of capital that banks hold compared to the money on deposit is frighteningly low. In the US, the five largest banks have a capital ratio as a percentage of assets of only 6% – although that’s double what it was in 2008. In effect, if every depositor in a bank demands their money back simultaneously – the classic “bank run” – the largest US banks could repay only six cents on the dollar before they ran out of money. And since most banks don’t keep a lot of cash on hand, it could even be less.

It’s worth remembering that historically, US banks were much better capitalized. For instance, in 1842, US banks had an average capital ratio of 60% – ten times that of the largest banks today. That was an era in which bank competition was based on safety because no deposit insurance was in effect.

This chart from Bloomberg News says it all:

Sure, in many countries your bank deposits are “insured.” In the US, the first $250,000 in your account qualifies for deposit insurance through the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC). But for every $100 on deposit, the FDIC has only $1.06 with which to back it. Doesn’t that make you feel warm and fuzzy about the safety of your bank deposits?

Continue reading…

From Lewrockwell.com, here.