Here’s another miscue courtesy of the entertainment and education of delirious chareidism.
. Every year there’s a peculiar halachic dichotomy among the faithful and the super-duper faithful that is likely to provoke Hashem to become vexed at the tortured halachisisms proliferating in the corridors of chareidi piety. Where to start? — Kitniyot— some of your friends are on their way to Gehenim for indulging in Sefardi Pesach food practices while Ashkenazim adhering to their gebrokts hokum are assured an everlasting intoxicated euphoria while נהנים מזיו השכינה .
There are scores of other examples but it’s getting late here in חוץ לארץ and I have to worry about Hashem discovering that I’m being עובר the Torah commandment that forbids me celebrating 2 days of פסח.
But maybe not. If I can get Hashem to change his mind and forgive my sins on Yom Kipur, maybe I can convince him to modify the Torah also …just as the Reform Jews have done.
I love you and I genuinely enjoy your comments, although, as a religious dude, I wish you weren't so closed to our rich and beautiful heritage. But I can't well blame you; the 'other side' isn't so easy to navigate; maybe I have it wrong...?
I'm open to an atheist debate which we can do in private and publicize when done if you're interested, although we've both probably heard all of the arguments on both sides more than enough times.
Did someone summon me? I just want everybody to know, I am buying souls for $100,000. I'm offering $200,000 for particularly saintly souls. Slifkin sold his soul to me 20 years ago for half a bottle of cheap vodka. I couldn't believe my luck. That should answer your question.
Yeah we clowns are the educators and entertainers. It’s the only source of probity to the irrationalist delusionals.
This is not the venue to replay the vast arguments against the notion for a creator, unless Rav Slifkin approves.
Suffice it to say yours is the most self-promotional mutual admiration society since the onset of opposite sex attraction.
And I will have a tremendously spiritual Shabbos kvelling in the Architect-Of -The-Universe’s warning, upon pain of death, not to pick out the bones from my homemade gefilte fish during Shabbos.
As I said, we can chat about this topic in private. Everything you deride and ridicule is perfectly legitimate if you are wrong, but if you are not, it's pretty darn sad. So let's have this debate! You can email me...
I’ve had debates like this before and it’s really a waste of time because your argumentation is tethered to unfalsifiability. I would produce scientific arguments against your beliefs ( and that’s all that they are — beliefs). And you would retort with something like the Kuzari argumentation or a variant thereof. I would debunk it as unscientific bunkum and you would respond, No It’s Not. And that would end the debate right there.
So why waste my time. I’ve done this before and there’s no convincing a True Believer.
Hell, you’re convinced that studying Torah motivates The Creator to protect you from harm. How can one convince otherwise ?
In daf yomi this week we have been talking about money. According to some opinions -- and they seem to be codified as accepted halachah -- money plays d'oraita roles in transactions (Rabbi Yochanon vs. Reish Lakish). But money hadn't been invented yet by the time of Matan Torah.
1. Believe what you want, but the Torah mentions money in the years prior to Matan Torah, more than once. So obviously your sources have made some mistake.
2. The Chazon Ish discusses the fact that money is manmade and Torah precedes that. He claims human nature is that money is necessary, which makes it an integral part of creation. Alternatively, we are commanded to set currency in order to keep the laws of tort and other issues dependent on money.
Rabbi Rimon points out that the shiur of כדי אכילת פרס is the time to eat 8-9 olives. So it makes no sense to have a large shiur for the olive and a short shiur for the time to eat it
The logic of a olive for matzah becomes apparent when you realize matzah was soft and a piece could be easily rolled up into a small round ball the size of an olive and then just pop it in your mouth.
If you mean before the seder to measure, well then there are ways of breaking down hard matza as well. Though I am aware that hard matza is not even as old as chasidim.
The chart on kezayis was not helpful at all. You did not explain how you figured out an average olive of today, nor did you convert the volume into matzah weight of measurements, the way all the other charts do. I get you just posted for the statement, but do it right once you are at it. (I for myself don't mind eating more but I am makpid on even the smallest shiur so not to have a safek on bracha achrona, so I would benefit from such a chart.)
FKM's claim about olive volumes declining due to the destruction of the beis hamikdash is irrelevant. The Gemara in Brachos 38b says that R. Yochanan (who lived after the churban) said borei nefashos after eating an olive.
You're positing that 200 years after the churban, R. Yochanan ate an olive that happened to be larger than contemporary olives due to the after-effects of the beis hamikdash, but when the Gemara tries to work out how R. Yochanan ate a kezayis volume given that he would not have eaten the olive's pit, it neglected to mention this. Come on.
What makes you think the olives got larger after the churban? The Gemara says it was one larger than normal even for those days. Even today there are olives that are half the volume of a contemporary egg. (I eat them all the time and have no problem making an על העץ after eating just one)
I still do agree that it's unlikely that this was the case, only that I think it can be worked out in the gemara
Sorry, I'm not following you. FKM argues that olives used to be larger than they are now, and that this larger size should be used to establish the volume of a kezayis. He maintains that olives shrunk due to the churban, when ניטלה שומן הפירות.
I noted that R. Yochanan considered an olive in his time to be a kezayis volume for ברכה אחרונה purposes, and he lived around 2 centuries after the churban.
You claimed that R. Yochanan may have eaten an olive that was large due to the after-effects of the churban having not yet fully materialised.
I believe this is not only far fetched but also does not fit with the context of the Gemara there (unless you are claiming that all olives in R. Yochanan's time were still large due to the after-effects of the beis hamikdash), because the Gemara there questions how R. Yochanan ate a kezayis given that he would not have consumed the volume accounted for by the olive's pit. The Gemara answers that R. Yochanan ate a large olive, the volume of which without its pit is equivalent to a medium sized olive (which is used for the kezayis measurement). The ניטלה שומן הפירות angle does not come into it, and the Rif, for example, cites the Gemara without qualification.
I initially brought the gemara in ksubos that Reish Lakish said he still saw shuman hapeiros, so it seems there were after effects then, as Reish Lakish was the same generation as Rav Yochanan. Why the Gemara doesn't answer that in Brachos may be a question מיניה וביה, but as I pointed out, there are still colossal olives today, so if they shrunk on a general scale after the churban, there were obviously exceptions as there are today, and so the gemara just answers it was longer than normal. A similar idea to this is the Arizal saying techailes ceased due to the churban even though the gemara explicitly talks about it many years after the churban. The answer is that may be the root of the problem but did not take place immediately.
I will repeat I am not a big believer in this, and I am fully convinced the Rambam Rif and Geonim held an olive size to be pretty small. I am simply saying the bigger shiur is not against the Gemara.
Since we have grown olive trees from ancient olives, and have thousand year old olive trees, I've never really understood why the size of an olive is controversial.
My (yeshivish) rav said there is never a reason to eat two kezaisim at once, especially if you hold of a large kezayis, since the large kezayis would by definition include the kezayis for hamotzi, which doesn't need to large according to anyone.
Rav Ovadia used to joke that Hillel was כורך a kezayis of פסח מצה ומרור, and with the chumra of tosfos, 2 כזיתים of מצה, and still swallowed it all in one! This is impossible since Chazal says אין בית הבליעה מחזיק יתר מביצה .He had other issues too, like its not דרך אכילה וכו' So would end off : לכן צריך לדחות שיטה זו בשתי ידים.
Incidentally though, תוס' רבינו פרץ askes the question and says one can swallow 3 כזיתים after chewing.
All in all, if a כזית is smaller that half an egg there's not much of a question.
I do believe that is in the MB (maybe in BH or SZ). The two kezizim business is a d'rabbonon/minhag (and a pretty incomprehensible one at that - no one is really sure of the reason) and clearly if your one d'oreysoh covers the two d'rabbonons it's fine.
The reason is its a מחלוקת ראשונים which matza it is proper to eat from, as one should eat the broken one for לחם עוני but the bracha of המוציא ולחם משנה was made on the shalem. Still a chumra, but we know the reason.
I am aware. That is a suggested reason, on which there are lots of questions. The hamotzi was made on both, for a start. And besides, why does everybody at the seider have to eat two kezeisim?
Also lechem oni applies to sholem matzo too. 'Mah darkoh shel oni b'prusah' is a drush, nobody suggests you cannot be yotzei the mitzvoh of achilas matzo with a sholem.
It isn't a suggested reason, the poskim start with tosfos so they say to eat 2 to accommodate.
There is no source that those not eating from the קערה need to eat 2 zaysim.
There are ראשונים who say explicitly to use a פרוסה for that purpose, and the Rif and Rosh and Gra use that source to allow a broken matza to count for לחם משנה.
"There is no source that those not eating from the קערה need to eat 2 zaysim.
There are ראשונים who say explicitly to use a פרוסה for that purpose, and the Rif and Rosh and Gra use that source to allow a broken matza to count for לחם משנה."
We are back to classic yeshivah style learning. Sources but not thoughts.
I can't speak for everybody, but in most sedorim, many if not all of the participants each matzo from the box - there isn't enough from the 'ba'al haseider'. They neither have 'perusos' or should have a requirement for 2 kezeisim.
The ROsh and the gro are irrelevant to this particular point.
The rishonim are talking about soft matzah which allows enough כזיתים for all to eat from the קערה. Today that is irrelevant for most and so there is no reason for anyone but the בעל סדר to eat two.
You completely missed my point about the Rif and Gra (so you retreated to your yeshivish tropes). You said lechem oni can be שלם and דרכו של עני בפרוסה is just a drush. I responded that the Rif and Gra use this halachically. And so the Rosh and Gra are not irrelevant to this point. The fact you don't understand doesn't make it a source without a thought.
Posting (without his permission) for our friend, Eli Yitzchak Fine:
Hey dear fellows, here is another great article about rationalism and pesach! https://irrationalistmodoxism.substack.com/p/a-rationalist-approach-to-pesach
Great reading material to keep you entertained and educated about our view of the dangers of rationalism!
@Jerry S.
Here’s another miscue courtesy of the entertainment and education of delirious chareidism.
. Every year there’s a peculiar halachic dichotomy among the faithful and the super-duper faithful that is likely to provoke Hashem to become vexed at the tortured halachisisms proliferating in the corridors of chareidi piety. Where to start? — Kitniyot— some of your friends are on their way to Gehenim for indulging in Sefardi Pesach food practices while Ashkenazim adhering to their gebrokts hokum are assured an everlasting intoxicated euphoria while נהנים מזיו השכינה .
There are scores of other examples but it’s getting late here in חוץ לארץ and I have to worry about Hashem discovering that I’m being עובר the Torah commandment that forbids me celebrating 2 days of פסח.
לֹא תֹסִפוּ, עַל-הַדָּבָר אֲשֶׁר אָנֹכִי מְצַוֶּה אֶתְכֶם, וְלֹא תִגְרְעוּ, מִמֶּנּוּ--לִשְׁמֹר, אֶת-מִצְוֺת יְהוָה אֱלֹהֵיכֶם, אֲשֶׁר אָנֹכִי, מְצַוֶּה אֶתְכֶם.
But maybe not. If I can get Hashem to change his mind and forgive my sins on Yom Kipur, maybe I can convince him to modify the Torah also …just as the Reform Jews have done.
You're such a clown.
I love you and I genuinely enjoy your comments, although, as a religious dude, I wish you weren't so closed to our rich and beautiful heritage. But I can't well blame you; the 'other side' isn't so easy to navigate; maybe I have it wrong...?
I'm open to an atheist debate which we can do in private and publicize when done if you're interested, although we've both probably heard all of the arguments on both sides more than enough times.
Either way, have a great shabbos!
I'm at a loss as to why blasphemy is tolerated here but chareidi trolls are not.
I will summon the Devil to answer this question
Did someone summon me? I just want everybody to know, I am buying souls for $100,000. I'm offering $200,000 for particularly saintly souls. Slifkin sold his soul to me 20 years ago for half a bottle of cheap vodka. I couldn't believe my luck. That should answer your question.
What does He-who-must-not-be-named have to do with Dvinsk, and since when does he mention the devil?
Because one is a threat to a certain world view
@Jerry S.
Yeah we clowns are the educators and entertainers. It’s the only source of probity to the irrationalist delusionals.
This is not the venue to replay the vast arguments against the notion for a creator, unless Rav Slifkin approves.
Suffice it to say yours is the most self-promotional mutual admiration society since the onset of opposite sex attraction.
And I will have a tremendously spiritual Shabbos kvelling in the Architect-Of -The-Universe’s warning, upon pain of death, not to pick out the bones from my homemade gefilte fish during Shabbos.
As I said, we can chat about this topic in private. Everything you deride and ridicule is perfectly legitimate if you are wrong, but if you are not, it's pretty darn sad. So let's have this debate! You can email me...
@ Jerry S.
I’ve had debates like this before and it’s really a waste of time because your argumentation is tethered to unfalsifiability. I would produce scientific arguments against your beliefs ( and that’s all that they are — beliefs). And you would retort with something like the Kuzari argumentation or a variant thereof. I would debunk it as unscientific bunkum and you would respond, No It’s Not. And that would end the debate right there.
So why waste my time. I’ve done this before and there’s no convincing a True Believer.
Hell, you’re convinced that studying Torah motivates The Creator to protect you from harm. How can one convince otherwise ?
Okay, I guess that's that then.
Good shabbos!
Here is one for a rationalist:
In daf yomi this week we have been talking about money. According to some opinions -- and they seem to be codified as accepted halachah -- money plays d'oraita roles in transactions (Rabbi Yochanon vs. Reish Lakish). But money hadn't been invented yet by the time of Matan Torah.
Oh really! What did Avrohom use to pay Efron? Sheep?
PS What is 'money', by the way?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A81DYZh6KaQ
Except that עובר לסוחר has a meaning.
That comment seems irrelevant.
A סוחר will only take money that is of good quality. Still money.
Kenneth kitchen long answered that.
1. Believe what you want, but the Torah mentions money in the years prior to Matan Torah, more than once. So obviously your sources have made some mistake.
2. The Chazon Ish discusses the fact that money is manmade and Torah precedes that. He claims human nature is that money is necessary, which makes it an integral part of creation. Alternatively, we are commanded to set currency in order to keep the laws of tort and other issues dependent on money.
I was taught by my rebbeim to use a standard kezayis size, not the huge shiurim of Rabbi Bodner.
Good old days before Slifkin cracked up. Poor chap!
Rabbi Rimon points out that the shiur of כדי אכילת פרס is the time to eat 8-9 olives. So it makes no sense to have a large shiur for the olive and a short shiur for the time to eat it
The logic of a olive for matzah becomes apparent when you realize matzah was soft and a piece could be easily rolled up into a small round ball the size of an olive and then just pop it in your mouth.
Now explain that for lettuce.
Easy enough lettuce is soft and flexible and can be rolled up as well.
Thats how you eat it?
If you mean before the seder to measure, well then there are ways of breaking down hard matza as well. Though I am aware that hard matza is not even as old as chasidim.
Gosh, you're so original!
The chart on kezayis was not helpful at all. You did not explain how you figured out an average olive of today, nor did you convert the volume into matzah weight of measurements, the way all the other charts do. I get you just posted for the statement, but do it right once you are at it. (I for myself don't mind eating more but I am makpid on even the smallest shiur so not to have a safek on bracha achrona, so I would benefit from such a chart.)
Have to admit, it's a pretty funny graphic. Let this be Natan Slifkin's greatest contribution.
"Maniacal Dishonesty About Olives - exposing an error-ridden critique that appeared in the charedi polemical journal Dialogue."
https://slifkinchallenge.blogspot.com/2013/11/i-didnt-expect-kind-of-spanish.html
https://slifkinchallenge.blogspot.com/2014/04/the-kezayis-crusader-is-at-it-again-but.html
https://slifkinchallenge.blogspot.com/2016/05/good-but-not-perfect.html
FKM's claim about olive volumes declining due to the destruction of the beis hamikdash is irrelevant. The Gemara in Brachos 38b says that R. Yochanan (who lived after the churban) said borei nefashos after eating an olive.
That could take time, and the Gemara in the end of ksubos sounds like that.
You're positing that 200 years after the churban, R. Yochanan ate an olive that happened to be larger than contemporary olives due to the after-effects of the beis hamikdash, but when the Gemara tries to work out how R. Yochanan ate a kezayis volume given that he would not have eaten the olive's pit, it neglected to mention this. Come on.
What makes you think the olives got larger after the churban? The Gemara says it was one larger than normal even for those days. Even today there are olives that are half the volume of a contemporary egg. (I eat them all the time and have no problem making an על העץ after eating just one)
I still do agree that it's unlikely that this was the case, only that I think it can be worked out in the gemara
Sorry, I'm not following you. FKM argues that olives used to be larger than they are now, and that this larger size should be used to establish the volume of a kezayis. He maintains that olives shrunk due to the churban, when ניטלה שומן הפירות.
I noted that R. Yochanan considered an olive in his time to be a kezayis volume for ברכה אחרונה purposes, and he lived around 2 centuries after the churban.
You claimed that R. Yochanan may have eaten an olive that was large due to the after-effects of the churban having not yet fully materialised.
I believe this is not only far fetched but also does not fit with the context of the Gemara there (unless you are claiming that all olives in R. Yochanan's time were still large due to the after-effects of the beis hamikdash), because the Gemara there questions how R. Yochanan ate a kezayis given that he would not have consumed the volume accounted for by the olive's pit. The Gemara answers that R. Yochanan ate a large olive, the volume of which without its pit is equivalent to a medium sized olive (which is used for the kezayis measurement). The ניטלה שומן הפירות angle does not come into it, and the Rif, for example, cites the Gemara without qualification.
I initially brought the gemara in ksubos that Reish Lakish said he still saw shuman hapeiros, so it seems there were after effects then, as Reish Lakish was the same generation as Rav Yochanan. Why the Gemara doesn't answer that in Brachos may be a question מיניה וביה, but as I pointed out, there are still colossal olives today, so if they shrunk on a general scale after the churban, there were obviously exceptions as there are today, and so the gemara just answers it was longer than normal. A similar idea to this is the Arizal saying techailes ceased due to the churban even though the gemara explicitly talks about it many years after the churban. The answer is that may be the root of the problem but did not take place immediately.
I will repeat I am not a big believer in this, and I am fully convinced the Rambam Rif and Geonim held an olive size to be pretty small. I am simply saying the bigger shiur is not against the Gemara.
Hilarious!!!
Since we have grown olive trees from ancient olives, and have thousand year old olive trees, I've never really understood why the size of an olive is controversial.
And for an irrationalist (well , part aspiring rationalist) Passover: https://ishayirashashem.substack.com/p/a-new-baby-and-a-boris-the-terrible
There are olive trees that are thousands of years old that still produce olives.
https://www.oldest.org/nature/olive-trees/
Yes, indeed
My (yeshivish) rav said there is never a reason to eat two kezaisim at once, especially if you hold of a large kezayis, since the large kezayis would by definition include the kezayis for hamotzi, which doesn't need to large according to anyone.
Rav Ovadia used to joke that Hillel was כורך a kezayis of פסח מצה ומרור, and with the chumra of tosfos, 2 כזיתים of מצה, and still swallowed it all in one! This is impossible since Chazal says אין בית הבליעה מחזיק יתר מביצה .He had other issues too, like its not דרך אכילה וכו' So would end off : לכן צריך לדחות שיטה זו בשתי ידים.
Incidentally though, תוס' רבינו פרץ askes the question and says one can swallow 3 כזיתים after chewing.
All in all, if a כזית is smaller that half an egg there's not much of a question.
I do believe that is in the MB (maybe in BH or SZ). The two kezizim business is a d'rabbonon/minhag (and a pretty incomprehensible one at that - no one is really sure of the reason) and clearly if your one d'oreysoh covers the two d'rabbonons it's fine.
The reason is its a מחלוקת ראשונים which matza it is proper to eat from, as one should eat the broken one for לחם עוני but the bracha of המוציא ולחם משנה was made on the shalem. Still a chumra, but we know the reason.
I am aware. That is a suggested reason, on which there are lots of questions. The hamotzi was made on both, for a start. And besides, why does everybody at the seider have to eat two kezeisim?
Also lechem oni applies to sholem matzo too. 'Mah darkoh shel oni b'prusah' is a drush, nobody suggests you cannot be yotzei the mitzvoh of achilas matzo with a sholem.
It isn't a suggested reason, the poskim start with tosfos so they say to eat 2 to accommodate.
There is no source that those not eating from the קערה need to eat 2 zaysim.
There are ראשונים who say explicitly to use a פרוסה for that purpose, and the Rif and Rosh and Gra use that source to allow a broken matza to count for לחם משנה.
"There is no source that those not eating from the קערה need to eat 2 zaysim.
There are ראשונים who say explicitly to use a פרוסה for that purpose, and the Rif and Rosh and Gra use that source to allow a broken matza to count for לחם משנה."
We are back to classic yeshivah style learning. Sources but not thoughts.
I can't speak for everybody, but in most sedorim, many if not all of the participants each matzo from the box - there isn't enough from the 'ba'al haseider'. They neither have 'perusos' or should have a requirement for 2 kezeisim.
The ROsh and the gro are irrelevant to this particular point.
The rishonim are talking about soft matzah which allows enough כזיתים for all to eat from the קערה. Today that is irrelevant for most and so there is no reason for anyone but the בעל סדר to eat two.
You completely missed my point about the Rif and Gra (so you retreated to your yeshivish tropes). You said lechem oni can be שלם and דרכו של עני בפרוסה is just a drush. I responded that the Rif and Gra use this halachically. And so the Rosh and Gra are not irrelevant to this point. The fact you don't understand doesn't make it a source without a thought.