Bechoros

Bechoros 28b: Can a rav retract his psak?

January 10, 2024 YCLeave a comment

Bechoros 28b: If a rabbi judged a case and erred, exonerating the party who owed money, or forcing the party who did not owe to pay; or he declared the clean unclean, or the unclean clean – what was done was done, and the rabbi must pay for the loss out of his pocket. But if he was an expert judge, he is exempt. Rabbi Tarfon once ruled that a cow that had its uterus removed was treif, and as a result the owner fed it to the dogs. Later they asked the Sages at Yavneh, who permitted it, because Todus the doctor said that all cows and pigs exported from Alexandria of Egypt are sterilized by having their uteruses removed. Rabbi Tarfon said to himself, Tarfon, you will lose your donkey. Rabbi Akiva said to him: No, you are an expert judge and and therefore you need not pay.

Gemara: Why did Rabbi Akiva need to say that Rabbi Tarfon was an expert? Even if he not been, since his mistake was in an explicit Mishnah (Chullin 54a), his psak is immaterial, he never really forbade the meat, and he should not need to pay for the fact that the asker threw out the meat (because it is grama)! – Rabbi Akiva was giving two reasons: First of all, you are exempt from paying because the mistake was in an explicit Mishnah. Secondly, even if you had erred in logic (in a halachic point that is not explicit in the Mishnah), and you ruled incorrectly, you would still be exempt from paying because you are an expert.

בכורות כח ע”ב: דן את הדין, זיכה את החייב וחייב את הזכאי, טימא את הטהור וטיהר את הטמא ־ מה שעשה עשוי, וישלם מביתו, ואם היה מומחה לב״ד ־ פטור מלשלם… ומעשה בפרה שניטלה האם שלה והאכילה רבי טרפון לכלביםֹ ובא מעשה לפני חכמים ביבנה והתירוה שאמר תודוס הרופא: אין פרה וחזירה יוצאה מאלכסנדריא של מצרים שאין חותכין האם שלה בשביל שלא תלד. אמר רבי טרפון: הלכה חמורך טרפוןִ אמר לו ר׳ עקיבא: ר׳ טרפון, אתה מומחה לב״ד ־ וכל המומחה לב״ד פטור מלשלם. גמרא. ותיפוק ליה דטעה בדבר משנה, וטעה בדבר משנה חוזרִ חדא ועוד קאמר, חדא ־ דטעה בדבר משנה חוזר, ועוד א״נ בשיקול הדעת טעיתה ־ מומחה לב״ד אתה, וכל המומחה לב״ד פטור מלשלם.

There was once a rav who was mesader a get based on his assessment that the husband was generally mentally sound; his insanity was confined to one particular area of life. But in his older years, the rav learned the sugya about insanity in Chagigah 3b more carefully, re-examined the case, and decided that the husband had been mentally unfit to give a get. By this time, the woman had remarried and raised a whole family. According to the rav’s current conclusion, her children were now mamzeirim. The rav asked Rabbi Yitzchok Zilberstein whether he would be punished by Hashem for causing these children to be mamzeirim.

Rav Zilberstein responded by comparing this to various cases in Shas:

We find that Tannaim and Amoraim changed their halachic rulings. For example, in Niddah 14a: “All of Rabbi Chiya’s life, he used to rule that this case was unclean, but in his old age he would rule it clean.” He was allowed to reverse his earlier psak, even though his later line of reasoning was more lenient, because the Gemara (Shabbos 152a) says that the older a talmid chacham gets, the greater his wisdom. Similarly, the Levushei Mordechai (Orach Chaim 96) was asked about a talmid chacham who used to be strict about a certain halachic question, but in his old age decided to follow the lenient opinions. The Levushei Mordechai says that he has the right to do so, because the older a talmid chacham gets, the greater his wisdom.

We also find that Rabbi Tarfon once ruled that some meat was treif and then changed his mind, and he was held responsible: he had to give his donkey to pay for the loss of the meat, which had already been fed to the dogs. (And Rav Elyashiv commented that Rabbi Tarfon mentioned his donkey, although he was wealthy (Nedarim 62a) and could certainly have paid in cash, to show that he was not considered like a regular debtor, who has bankruptcy rights to keep his work animal; he is a mazik, who must pay no matter what.) Doesn’t this show that the rav in our story would be held responsible for causing the children to be mamzeirim?

Rav Zilberstein says no. Rabbi Tarfon’s case was different because he erred about an explicit Mishnah (טועה בדבר משנה). But if the rav studies and makes a mistake in logic (שיקול הדעת), his original psak is not reversed (i.e. even if the meat were still in existence, it would be fed to the dogs as per the original psak). But the rav still has to pay for the loss. Here too, this rav’s psak remains intact that the woman was permitted, and the children are not mamzeirim.

Source: Chashukei Chemed, Niddah, p. 149

[This piece in the sefer Chashukei Chemed is cryptically written, and as the author says in the introduction, “With my brief notes I was unable to cover all the wellsprings of the Torah’s endless wisdom, and I have only come to stimulate the heart of the learner; may the wise hear and become wiser.” Let’s do our job and break this question down, and then see what his sources prove.

It seems that both the asker and Rav Zilberstein started with the assumption that the earlier psak is reversed and the children are mamzeirim. The question was only whether the rav would be blamed in heaven.

Source 1) is a proof to this assumption: Rabbi Chiya changed his mind and ruled leniently, and his lenient ruling became the final halacha because he became wiser with age. Here too, the rav became wiser with age, his later psak is binding and the children are mamzeirim.

However, there is a big difference. Rabbi Chiya changed his mind about a certain commonly-asked shailah (a woman who wiped herself with a cloth that might have been bloody already, and then found blood on it). It does not say that he went back and contacted women he had declared impure, and told them that they were actually pure. He merely began to rule leniently on cases brought to him from then on. Here, on the other hand, we want to know whether the actual get ruled on by the rav is now retroactively invalid.

Source 2) comes closer: it seems to prove that the actual meat pronounced treif by Rabbi Tarfon is retroactively kosher. To this, the response is that in Rabbi Tarfon’s case, the mistake concerned an explicit Mishnah. But, the Gemara says, when the mistake was in logic (which the Gemara in Sanhedrin defines as ruling like one valid opinion when the other one is the widely accepted opinion), the psak is not reversed. The rav pays for forbidding the meat, but the meat remains forbidden. In our case, the get is still a good get and the children are not mamzeirim. And here, the rav would not pay, because there is no damage to pay for. Furthermore, in the case ofשוטה בדבר אחד (insanity in one area only) there is no clear-cut halachic consensus; indeed, this was the subject of a major controversy in the 1700’s (the Klever Get). And no two cases are alike; the psak would depend on the exact symptoms. This is all the more reason to say that the rav’s first psak stands.

However, we can ask: one of the cases in our Mishnah in Bechoros is טיהר את הטמא – “he declared the unclean clean.” On this, the Mishnah concludes: “What was done was done, and the rav must pay from his pocket.” This is certainly not talking about a rav who erred in an explicit Mishnah, because in that case his psak would be reversed; we don’t say “what was done was done.” Rather, it is talking about an error in shikul hadaas. (See as well Sanhedrin 33a which says that the Mishnah in Bechoros is talking about shikul hadaas.) Therefore, “what was done was done” – the rav‘s psak that the fruits are clean stands. So what is meant by “the rav must pay from his pocket”? What must he pay? He has caused no damage at all! Even if the fruits were subsequently mixed with other clean fruits, and even if the rav mixed them with his own hands as the Gemara says later in Sanhedrin, no damage was done.

Possibly the answer is that the idea that shikul hadaas is not reversed is only the opinion of Rav Sheishes, and Rav Sheishes would indeed say that the rav who mistakenly ruled “clean” would never have to pay; the words “he pays from his pocket” are referring only to the other cases in the Mishnah. The idea that the rav pays because he mixed the unclean fruits (thought to be clean) into the other fruits is said by the Gemara only according to Rav Chisda.

To clarify: in Sanhedrin 33a, the Gemara poses a contradiction between the Mishnah in Bechoros, which says “what was done was done,” and the Mishnah in Sanhedrin, which says that a dayan can change his mind and reverse a monetary ruling. Three answers are provided; one of them is Rav Sheishes, who differentiates between an error in an explicit Mishnah and an error in shikul hadaas. But there are two other Amoraim, Rav Yosef and Rav Chisda, who answer the contradiction. According to them, perhaps all mistaken rulings, even in shikul hadaas, are reversed. So we can propose that it might be only Rav Sheishes who says that in the Mishnah in Bechoros, the psak is not reversed.

How do we pasken? The Shulchan Aruch in Choshen Mishpat 25:2-3 seems to go like the other Amoraim, not Rav Sheishes. (In S’if 2 he brings Rav Yosef and in S’if 3 he brings Rav Chisda. The only cases where the Mechaber says the psak stands are where the psak cannot be reversed, or where the dayan carried out the psak himself.) According to this, in our case psak would be reversed and the children would be mamzeirim. (Ironically, the Gemara says according to Rav Sheishes that shikul hadaas means ruling like one opinion while the sugya d’alma, the general consensus, is like the other opinion – and Rav Sheishes himself fits this description. He is one out of three opinions in Sanhedrin, yet the Gemara in Bechoros quotes only Rav Sheishes, without mentioning his name!)

The Shach (s’if katan 14) does pasken like Rav Sheishes, but says the psak only stands in the case where the rav erroneously forbade something, because of the principle of שויא חתיכה דאיסורא – the rav, so to speak, created a new issur. But if he erroneously permitted something, even Rav Sheishes would agree that the psak is reversed. Based on this as well, the children in our story are mamzeirim.

One could still argue that perhaps our case is not שיקול הדעת because there is no halachic consensus on the subject. Thus, who is to say the rav’s second psak is correct – perhaps the first was correct? Add to that the concept of לא בשמים היא – when a rav rules on an actual case in a gray area, Hashem agrees that the halacha follows his ruling. (See the Hakdama to Igros Moshe v. 1.) The first time, the rav was approached by a woman who needed a get. He paskened on an actual case, so we say לא בשמים היא and that is the real psak on the case. But the second time, he was just learning on his own and thinking, so his conclusion may not have the status of a psak.

Finally, if this rav really held that his first psak was null and void and the children were mamzeirim, why didn’t he go and inform them? Perhaps he was following the Gemara in Kiddushin 71a, משפחה שנטמעה נטמעה – “A family that has a mamzer mixed into it, and no one knows, is permitted.” This is brought down by the Rema in Even Hoezer 2:5. The Rema explains that the one who knows about it should not marry into the family, but he should not publicize it to others. He also stipulates that this is only after they have mixed in (i.e. married into other families), but as long as they are not mixed, he should publicize it. Accordingly, it may be that all the children of the woman in our story were already grown up and married, and therefore the rav did not inform them or spread the word.]

Berachos

Berachos 6b: Being embarrassed to take tzedaka

December 29, 2023 YCLeave a comment

Berachos 6b: When a person needs to accept charity from others, his face changes colors like a krum. What is a krum? When Rav Dimi came, he said: There is a certain bird that lives in coastal cities, called a krum, which displays a rainbow effect in the sunlight.

ברכות ו ע”ב: כיון שנצטרך אדם לבריות ־ פניו משתנות ככרום, שנאמר: כרם זלת לבני אדם. מאי כרום? ־ כי אתא רב דימי אמר: עוף אחד יש בכרכי הים וכרום שמו, וכיון שחמה זורחת מתהפך לכמה גוונין.

Every time Rabbi Chaim Kreiswirth traveled to Eretz Yisroel, he would bring along large sums of money that he had raised, and would distribute tzedaka to the needy. Once he was sitting and handing out money to one person after another, when his son Reb Dov asked him, “Doesn’t the Gemara say explicitly that when a person needs to accept charity, his face turns colors like a bird in the sunlight? Yet here in Yerushalayim the takers don’t seem troubled at all.” Rav Kreiswirth answered immediately with a smile, “That’s a Bavli, not a Yerushalmi.”

Source: Mayim Chaim, p. 41

[Rabbi Shmuel Nussbaum, author of the biography Mayim Chaim, raised a question. The Yerushalmi (Orlah 6a, quoted in Tosafos on Kiddushin 36b) makes a similar statement: that one who is supported by another person is embarrassed to look him in the face. (This fact of human nature is used as a device to remember that when a live grapevine is buried in the ground and then sprouts up again, as long as the new sapling’s leaves point away from the old vine, it is still deriving its nourishment from the old one, so it is not considered a new tree, and is therefore permitted. But once its leaves point to the old vine, it is growing on its own, so it is forbidden for three years.)

But there is a difference between the Bavli and the Yerushalmi. The Yerushalmi only says that one can’t look his benefactor in the face, but Rav Kreiswirth wasn’t the benefactor. He was only a middleman, distributing funds he had collected from others. The Bavli, on the other hand, says that even in such a case, the recipient is embarrassed to have to live off tzedaka, and his face turns colors.]

Avodah Zarah

Avodah Zarah 39a: Sending chicken with a non-Jewish delivery man

December 29, 2023 YCLeave a comment

Avodah Zarah 39a: Milk, meat, wine and techeiles delivered by a non-Jew require two seals.

Shulchan Aruch Yoreh Deah 118:1: Wine, meat and cut fish that was entrusted or sent with a non-Jew requires two seals.

עבודה זרה לט ע”א: אמר רב: חבי״ת אסור בחותם אחד… חלב, בשר, יין, תכלת אסורין בחותם אחדֹ.

יו”ד קיח ס”א: יין ובשר וחתיכת דג שאין בו סימן שהפקיד או שלח ביד עובד כוכבים צריך שני חותמות.

In the early days of Lakewood, when Rabbi Ahron Kotler zt”l was the rosh yeshiva, there were 58 bochurim and 18 yungeleit learning there. The yeshiva used to buy eggs from the various egg farms in the area. Once, one of the farmers, a religious Jew, donated 180 chickens to the yeshiva. As these chickens could provide meals to the struggling yeshiva for a whole month, it was a well-appreciated gift. He brought them to the shochet, and then to the plucker, and then sent them to the yeshiva in a delivery truck driven by a non-Jew. There was no identifying sign on them, so the bochurim asked Reb Ahron what to do.

Reb Ahron replied that if the shochet confirmed that he indeed slaughtered 180 chickens, then these could be assumed to be the same ones. “But don’t we need two seals?” someone asked. Reb Ahron explained, “Here in America there are two kinds of chickens: meat chickens and egg-laying chickens. The egg-laying hens, once they grow old and can no longer produce enough eggs to be worth keeping, are slaughtered, but their meat is very tough and difficult to eat. It is usually used for canned soup, or made into pet food. This is the kind of chickens the farmer was sending to the yeshiva. Why do we need two seals? Because we’re afraid the non-Jew might steal the meat and replace it with non-kosher. But no one would ever steal and replace chickens like these.”

The bochurim in yeshiva had to cook those chickens for eight hours before they were edible.

Source: Rabbi Moshe Heinemann

[There are two separate decrees of Chazal: the rule of בשר שהתעלם מן העין אסור – meat that was out of sight is forbidden, because we fear someone may have switched it – and the rule of שני חותמות – that one sending meat with a delivery man must put two seals on it.

The first decree is the opinion of Rav, and the Gemara in Chullin 95a challenges Rav from several baraisos. Rav successfully defends himself, and the Mechaber in Yoreh Deah 63 paskens like Rav; however, the Rema, following the simple meaning of the baraisos, paskens not like Rav.

The second decree is universally agreed upon, and the difference is as follows. Ashkenazim who follow the Rema are not worried that someone would steal a piece of kosher meat and replace it with treif meat. If he wished to steal, he would simply steal and not replace it at all. But a delivery man has the responsibility to deliver the meat. If he got hungry on the way and ate the kosher meat, he would have to replace it, or else he would be out of a job. Therefore, we are afraid he might buy treif meat to replace it. The two seals ensure that this is the original meat sent.

In Reb Ahron’s case, the delivery man would have had no motive to steal and replace. The only problem would have been “meat that was out of sight” – but Ashkenazim hold like the Rema who permits that. If there were any Sephardi boys in Lakewood at the time, they would have had to find something else to eat.]

Eiruvin

Eiruvin 11a: How to use telephone poles for an eiruv

December 22, 2023 YCLeave a comment

Eiruvin 11a: Let us bring proof to Rav Yosef, who held that according to Rav, one may not carry in a courtyard whose openings total more than its solid wall, even if those openings have tzuras hapesachs. “If the walls of the courtyard have many doors and windows, it is good as long as the solid is more than the open.” Rav Kahana responded: That is no proof, because it is referring to openings that are in ruins. Rav Rechumei and Rav Yosef: one explained that “in ruins” means they have no doorposts, and the other explained that it means they have no lintel.

עירובין יא ע”א: לימא מסייע ליה: דפנות הללו שרובן פתחים וחלונות ־ מותר, ובלבד שיהא עומד מרובה על הפרוץ. שרובן סלקא דעתך? אלא אימא: שריבה בהן פתחים וחלונות, ובלבד שיהא עומד מרובה על הפרוץ. ־ אמר רב כהנאֹ כי תניא ההיא ־ בפיתחי שימאי. מאי פיתחי שימאי? פליגי בה רב רחומי ורב יוסףֹ חד אמר: דלית להו שקפי, וחד אמר: דלית להו תיקרה.

The original eiruv of Antwerp did not include the southern neighborhood of Berchem. In 1972, some from the Berchem community came to complain to the rav, Rabbi Chaim Kreiswirth, who appointed Reb Pinchus Kornfeld to survey the area and see if an eiruv was possible. After the survey, Reb Pinchus went over his questions and proposals with Harav Kreiswirth, who took into account the needs of young women with babies to get out of the house on hot summer Shabbosim. He inspected it at the beginning of Nissan so that it would be ready for Pesach.

The eiruv was based on the mesorah Rav Kreiswirth had: to rely on the Shaarei Tzion (siman 3), who permitted the eiruv of Warsaw based on the argument that you can place one lechi at one end of the telegraph line and one at the other, and you need not place one at every pole in between, because although the wire zigzags, the lintel of the tzuras hapesach is allowed to be crooked. The main posek opposing the Shaarei Tzion was the Mishkenos Yaakov.

The eiruv in the main part of Antwerp, on the other hand, was on a higher level of stringency, not making use of the Shaarei Tzion’s kula.

The Shaarei Tzion brings proof from a diyuk in Rashi on the above Gemara in Eiruvin 11a. On the opinion that defines “a ruined door” as one without doorposts, Rashi explains it means the sides are uneven, with some bricks missing and some jutting out. On the opinion that defines it as a door without a lintel, Rashi explains that it has no lintel at all. Why didn’t Rashi say the lintel is crooked, as he explained the doorposts? Clearly, Rashi held that a lintel is allowed to be crooked.

The Mishkenos Yaakov brings a counterproof from a Gemara on the same blatt (Eiruvin 11b) which proves that the lintel of a tzuras hapesach does not have touch the two doorposts, based on the case of an arched doorway, where the two doorposts are vertical for at least 10 tefachim and then start to curve. The curved part separates the doorposts from the lintel, yet it is considered a door requiring a mezuzah. But if a crooked lintel counts, what is the Gemara’s proof? Here the whole arch is a crooked lintel and is contiguous with the doorposts!

The Shaarei Tzion responds that Rashi would answer this based on another position of his (l’shitaso). On the halacha about an arched doorway and mezuzah (Yoreh Deah 287:2), the Taz says that according to Rashi, the two doorposts do not actually have to be vertical for 10 tefachim. They can start curving from the ground up, as long as by 10 tefachim in height they still have 4 tefachim of horizontal space between them. Thus Rashi holds the arch is actually part of the doorposts until that point. Then it becomes the lintel. But this lintel is not kosher, since by that point it is less than 4 tefachim wide! So we must use the horizontal bricks or beam above the arch, which is not contiguous with the doorposts, as our lintel; hence the proof that the top of a tzuras hapesach does not have to touch the sides.

Some time later, a talmid chacham came to visit Antwerp, and decided on his own to inspect the new Berchem eiruv. He began to challenge Reb Pinchus Kornfeld, saying that the eiruv was posul according to the Mishkenos Yaakov. What right did Harav Kreiswirth have to adopt the Shaarei Tzion’s kula? Reb Pinchus retorted with a posuk (Tehillim 87:2), אוהב ה’ שערי ציון מכל משכנות יעקב – “Hashem loves the Shaarei Tzion more than all the Mishkenos Yaakov!”

Source: Mayim Chaim p. 141

Bava Metzia

Bava Metzia 102a: Ownership of a stray cat

December 8, 2023December 10, 2023 YCLeave a comment

Bava Metzia 102a: Doves that live in a dovecote or an attic are subject to the law of sending away the mother before taking the eggs (because they are considered ownerless), but the Sages forbade stealing them in order to keep the peace.

ב”א קב ע”א יוני שובך ויוני עלייה חייבות בשילוח, ואסורות בגזל מפני דרכי שלום.

Rav Eliyahu Dushnitzer served as Rosh Yeshiva and Mashgiach in Yeshivas Lomza in Petach Tikva, and many Torah giants – among them Rav Elazar Menachem Shach zt’l, Rav Shalom Schwadron zt’l, and Rav Chaim Kanievsky – viewed themselves as his privileged students. Livelihood was not easy to come by in those days, and Rav Eliyahu’s revered wife supported the family by selling chickens. She ran a stall in the marketplace, and the Rav noticed that there was a certain cat that persistently roamed around the chicken stall, eating up the scraps left behind. After his wife passed away, Rav Eliyahu worried that he had halachically inherited the cat, in which case he was obligated in all laws of damages. He subsequently gathered three men together, pronounced the cat “hefker”, and sent it on its way.

Source: http://www.tog.org.il/en/Article.aspx?id=271

[Here are three approaches to understand this story:

Just as the Sages viewed the doves as property of the dovecote owner for the purposes of stealing, they are also considered his “ox” and he must pay for any damage they cause. Similarly, if a stray cat roams around your property and you consistently feed it, it becomes yours Mid’rabanan and you must pay for any damage it causes. The proof that you are liable for damages is from the Mishnah in Bava Basra 23a, where it says that a dovecote must be kept at least 50 amos from the city, so that the doves shouldn’t eat other people’s food. One might argue that the Mishnah is referring to doves that were actually owned on a Torah level (e.g. he originally kept them in cages and made a kinyan on them, and only later he housed them in a dovecote where they were free to come and go). However, the Rambam clearly learns that it’s talking about doves that are owned Mid’rabanan, because in Hilchos Gezeilah 6:7-8 he brings that halacha that stealing doves in Rabbinically forbidden, and in the very next halacha, halacha 9, he brings the Mishnah in Bava Basra that one must prevent his doves from doing damage. So clearly, when you own an animal Mid’rabanan, you are liable for damages too.
The Gemara in Bava Kama 56b says that if Reuven takes Shimon’s sheep and places it in Levi’s field, and it proceeds to eat the crops, Reuven must pay. This is called מעמיד בהמת חבירו על קמת חבירו. Here too, although Rabbi Eliyahu Dushnitzer’s wife was not the owner of the cat, since she caused it to come to the area, she was responsible, and now he had inherited that responsibility. The trouble with this explanation is that if so, declaring it ownerless would not help. It was already ownerless. The issue was that she brought it there.
Perhaps since the cat helped Rabbi Eliyahu Dushnitzer’s wife clean up the scraps, she was happy that it came, and therefore had intent to acquire it through the fenced-in area where her chickens lived – קנין חצר.]

Taharos

Mikvaos 7:1 – Making a Mikveh out of Ice – Part II

November 16, 2023 YCLeave a comment

Mikvaos 7:1: The following substances may be used as part of the minimum volume of the mikveh: snow, hail, frost and ice… Rabbi Akiva said, “Rabbi Yishmoel disagreed with me and said that snow cannot be used for a mikveh.” But the men of Meidva testified that Rabbi Yishmoel told them to go out, bring snow and make the entire mikveh out of snow.

Shulchan Aruch Yoreh Deah 201:31: A mikveh made of mayim sh’uvim (water that was carried in vessels) that later froze is now free of the taint of mayim sh’uvim. If it melted, it is kosher to gather. Shach: This means that it is now like rainwater and one may immerse oneself in it.

מקואות פ”ז מ”א אלו מעלין ולא פוסלין השלג והברד והכפור והגליד… אמר ר’ עקיבא היה ר’ ישמעאל דן כנגדי לומר השלג אינו מעלה את המקוה והעידו אנשי מידבא משמו שאמר להם צאו והביאו שלג ועשו מקוה בתחילה.

שולחן ערוך יורה דעה סימן רא סעיף לא: מקוה שאוב שהגליד טהור משום מים שאובים, נימוחו כשר להקוות. וביאר הש”ך בסקע”ד: כשר להקוות, כלומר שחזרו להיות כמו מי גשמים ומותר לטבול בהן.

A rav in an American city retired, passing his position down to his son. The new rav decided to have the old mikveh, which had served the community for fifty years, checked by Rabbi Yirmiyahu Katz, a world-renowned expert on mikvaos. When Rabbi Katz checked the pipes that brought the rainwater down from the roof, he saw that they were completely posul according to all opinions. “If these pipes were ever used to fill the mikveh, it would be a posul mikveh,” he said.

Hearing these words, the young rav turned white as a sheet and was on the verge of fainting. It took a few minutes for him to regain his power of speech, and then he said, “I don’t remember these pipes ever being changed. I think they were here from the time the mikveh was built.” They called over the old non-Jewish caretaker of the building and asked him who installed the pipes, and he replied casually that he had installed them himself fifty years ago, and they had never been changed.

“Do you realize the magnitude of this problem?” the young rav cried to Rabbi Katz. “Not only is this the only mikveh in this city and the surrounding area, and all the women used it – I myself was born from this mikveh. But also, hundreds of geirim underwent their conversions here over the past fifty years. Many of them have children and grandchildren now, living all over the world. Some of these geirim and their children became sofrim, and have written hundreds and thousands of tefillin, mezuzos and sifrei torah which are sold throughout the world. Many of the geirim signed on gittin or served as witnesses for kiddushin. We are looking at a terrible churban here…” he sighed. “But,” he continued, “if the mikveh is posul, then there is no choice. It will take me years to track down all the geirim and their children and grandchildren, and get them to tovel in a kosher mikveh. I have a very difficult job ahead of me.”

With a pained expression, the rav added, “My father built this mikveh fifty years ago when he first took his position as rav. He built it with mesirus nefesh, because most of the members of the congregation then were not religious, and didn’t allow him to use the kehillah’s money to build a mikveh. They even threatened to fire him if he insisted on building it. But my father was not afraid; he raised the money elsewhere and built the mikveh. I don’t understand it! How could such a terrible stumbling block result from my father’s devotion to this cause?”

The young rav, of course, had the pipes fixed based on Rabbi Katz’s instructions, and filled up the mikveh’s reservoir with new rainwater. But his mind could find no rest; he could not stop wondering how he and his father could have caused so many people to stumble into sin.

Rabbi Katz went home. A few weeks later, his phone rang. It was the young rav from that city, calling to update him on the story.

“After you left,” he said, “I could not rest. At first, I resisted telling my father, who lives in another city, because I didn’t want to cause him pain. But in the end, I decided to simply ask my father to tell me the story behind the mikveh. I hoped I would find some heter and not have to track down all the geirim, or deal with the other resulting problems.

“I went to visit my father, and began to chat with him about one subject and then another. Eventually I turned the conversation to the mikveh. ‘Please, tell me the story behind it,’ I said. My father was surprised by the question, and then let out a deep sigh of sorrow. ‘This story brought me nothing but pain and heartache. Let’s not talk about it,’ he said. But I insisted, ‘Father, I really want to know about it. Who built the mikveh? Who installed the pipes? I want to hear every detail.’ My father sat lost in thought for a few minutes, looking like someone re-living a painful ordeal.

“Finally, he began to tell the story. ‘When I proposed building a mikveh, several baalei batim who were the leaders of the Kehillah opposed me. They threatened that if I went through with it, they would hold elections and choose a new rabbi. But I didn’t care what they said. With mesirus nefesh, I built the mikveh. For the mikveh itself, I was given a blueprint by a rav who was an expert on mikvaos. But for the rainwater pipes, he didn’t give me a blueprint, so I had the non-Jewish repairman and caretaker install them. But let me tell you what an embarrassment I suffered because of this mikveh. On the day the mikveh was finished and the goy opened the pipes to collect rainwater, a drought began. In this part of the country, it rains many times a week without fail, summer or winter. Under normal circumstances, all the reservoirs of rainwater could have been filled within one week. But on the day we finished the mikveh, the heavens closed up. This continued day after day, week after week. The baalei batim who had opposed me were laughing and saying, look how heaven is punishing the rav for making the mikveh against the will of his congregation. Surely if the mikveh were a good thing, Hashem would not hold back the rain. This proves that the rav did the wrong thing. My shame was awful.

“’And so, many months passed. Historians said that no such drought had ever hit this state before. And everyone saw that the drought had started precisely on the day the mikveh opened. One can’t imagine the disgrace that I suffered.

“’After almost a year had gone by, I spoke to another rav, crying and pouring out my bitter heart, asking him why I deserved such a punishment for making a mikveh with mesirus nefesh. The other rav said to me, “Listen, I don’t know Hashem’s chesbonos, but you can fill up your mikveh with snow or ice.” And he explained to me how to do it. The next day, I filled the mikveh with snow and ice, and it was ready to use. Amazingly, the very next day, there was a flood of rain. It was as if all the rain held back in the sky for all these months was coming down now. My embarrassment was now doubled. The baalei batim said, “Look how much Hashem hates you. As soon as you filled your mikveh with snow and ice, it rained.” So the whole mikveh story remained a painful mystery to me, and after that, I never refilled the rainwater basin. I never used the pipes installed by my worker to feed rainwater into the mikveh.’

“As soon as I heard that, I almost fainted with joy. I then explained to my father why I had been asking so many questions about this story. ‘Father, now we see how much hashgacha pratis and siyata dishmaya Hashem gave to this mikveh. It’s the opposite of what you thought: Hashem interfered in nature and held back the rain so that you couldn’t make the mikveh out of rainwater, since the pipes were posul. Hashem saw your mesirus nefesh for taharas yisroel and made a miracle.’”

The young rav concluded telling his story to Rabbi Katz, and then added, “Although the mikveh turned out to be kosher, please promise me that you will keep this story strictly confidential.” When Rabbi Katz later published the story in his sefer, he omitted the name of the rav and the city.

The lesson of this story is that sometimes, a person may harbor complaints about the way Hashem runs His world. “I did such-and-such a good deed; why do I deserve this or that?” A person doesn’t realize that what looks to us like a punishment is sometimes actually a reward, a Divine intervention to save us. This old rav had gone around for fifty years with a grudge against Hashem. Why, he thought, did he deserve this disgrace? He was total unaware that Hashem had turned nature upside down for his sake.

Source: Tiferes Lemoshe, by Rabbi Yirmiyahu Katz, p. 221

[Besides the amazing lesson and chizuk in emunah from this story, it is tempting to try to draw the conclusion that Hashem Himself approved of the use of artificial ice for a mikveh. The trouble is that the story is not clear as to whether snow or ice, or both, were used. The language is, “I filled the mikveh with snow and ice.” Snow is natural, so would not be relevant to our question. Even if it was ice, it could have been natural ice, cut from a river or lake, assuming that the city where this took place was in an area with cold winters. However, the sentence, “In this part of the country, it rains many times a week without fail, summer or winter” indicates that the story took place in one of the southeastern states. So, pending more details, we have no proof from this story.]

Yevamos

Yevamos 60b: Kohanim and the body of Jeremy Bentham

November 14, 2023November 14, 2023 YCLeave a comment

Yevamos 60b: Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai said, “The graves of non-Jews do not transmit tumah through a roof, as it is written, “And you, My flocks, the flocks of My pasture, you are man” (Yechezkel 34:31). You are called “man” but the non-Jews are not called “man”.

Tosafos: The Ri said that the halacha does not follow Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai, but rather Rabban Shimon ben Gamliel, who disagrees with him in Oholos.

Oholos 8:1: A large wooden closet can block tumah from ascending.

Raavad Nezirus 5:15: The kohanim nowadays are already tamei meis, so they are not liable for the sin of coming in contact with tumah.

יבמות ס ע”ב: תניא, וכן היה ר״ש בן יוחאי אומר קברי עובדי כוכבים אינן מטמאין באהל, שנא׳: (יחזקאל ל״ד) ואתן צאני צאן מרעיתי אדם אתם, אתם קרויין אדם, ואין העובדי כוכבים קרויין אדם.

תוספות יבמות סא ע”א ד”ה ממגע. ואר״י דאין הלכה כר״ש דרשב״ג פליג עליה כדתנן במס׳ אהלות (פרק יח מ״ט כתובות עז.) והלכה כמותו במשנתנו וצריכים כהנים ליזהר מקברי עובדי כוכבים.

אהלות פ”ח מ”א: אלו מביאים וחוצצים.השדה והתבה והמגדל.

ראב”ד בהשגה על הלכות נזירות פ”ה הט”ו: מעתה טומאה וטומאה אפילו פירש וחזר ונגע פטור והכהנים בזמן הזה טמאי מת הן ועוד אין עליהן חיוב טומאה והמחייב אותם עליו להביא ראיה.

The philosopher Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832) specified in his will that he wanted his body to be preserved as a lasting memorial, and this instruction was duly carried out by his friend Dr. Thomas Southwood Smith.

In 1850, Southwood Smith donated the body to University College London, which Bentham had helped found, and from then until 2020, the body was displayed at the end of the South Cloisters in the main building of the college. Upon the retirement of Sir Malcolm Grant as provost of the college in 2013, however, the body was present at Grant’s final council meeting. As of 2013, this was the only time that the body of Bentham has been taken to a UCL council meeting. (There is a persistent myth that the body of Bentham is present at all council meetings.)

Bentham had intended this “auto-icon” to incorporate his actual head, mummified to resemble its appearance in life. Southwood Smith’s experimental efforts at mummification, based on practices of the indigenous peoples of New Zealand and involving placing the head under an air pump over sulfuric acid and drawing off the fluids, although technically successful, left the head looking distastefully macabre, with dried and darkened skin stretched tautly over the skull.

The auto-icon was therefore given a wax head, fitted with some of Bentham’s own hair. The real head was displayed in the same case as the auto-icon for many years, but became the target of repeated student pranks, with students from rival King’s College London often the culprits. The head is said to have at one time been found in a luggage locker at Aberdeen station, and to have been used as a football by students in the Quad. These events led to the head being removed from display.

In 2020, the body was put into a new glass display case and moved to the entrance of UCL’s new Student Centre on Gordon Square.

In 1965, Dayan Aryeh Leib Grossnass of the London Beth Din published a teshuva written to kohanim who were students at University College. Dayan Grossnass describes the question as follows: “Many years ago, the leading professor of that university, who was one of the most famous in the world, left a will instructing that his body be kept permanently in the hall of the university. He also instructed that at special gatherings, his body should be displayed as he looked in his lifetime, sitting at his place and giving a lecture. After he died, they removed the head from the body, mummified the body and connected an artificial head made of wax, and placed him on a chair in a glass box with wheels on the bottom to transport it from place to place, with a book in his hand, as if giving a lecture. His knees touched the glass of the box. All the time, they keep this box inside a large wooden closet next to the wall, with a door that opens and closes. Sometimes they open the closet to show the body to whoever wants to see it. When there is a gathering, they take the glass box out of the wooden closet and display it in the middle of the hall. The head that was removed from the body was mummified and placed in a small wooden box atop a platform on the wall of the hall. Occasionally, if people are interested in seeing it, they take down the wooden box and open it. According to the information given to me, it has been about 20 years since they last took the box off the platform. Anyone attending any lecture or visiting the library must pass through this hall; there is no other entrance. May kohanim pass through the hall when the body is inside the glass box inside the closet? And may they participate in gatherings when the glass box is taken out of the closet and wheeled to the center of the room?”

Dayan Grossnass then proposes two reasons to be lenient: 1) The body of a non-Jew, according to some opinions, has no tumas ohel (does not transmit tumah to those under the same roof with it); and 2) The wooden box and/or the glass box might serve as a roof over the body, which would block the tumah from ascending the ceiling of the building and spreading to everyone in the building.

Regarding the first argument, he shows that a non-Jew’s tumas ohel is the subject of a dispute between Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai (Yevamos 60b) and Rabban Shimon ben Gamliel (Oholos 18:9). Tosafos and the Rosh rule strictly, while the Rambam (Hilchos Tumas Mes 1:13) rules leniently. The Shulchan Aruch (Yoreh Deah 372:2) concludes that it is better for kohanim to be strict and avoid coming under the same roof with a dead non-Jew.

Regarding the second argument, he says that the wooden closet, although not connected to the building, is an ohel of its own, blocking the tumah from ascending to the ceiling of the building and spreading through the hall. The reason is that a large wooden closet is not susceptible to tumah, and we have a rule that anything not susceptible to tumah is able to block tumah. Although other vessels made of material that is not susceptible to tumah (e.g. stone) would nonetheless not block tumah from ascending, that is because they are physically small like any other vessel and simply can’t contract tumah for a technical reason. But a large wooden closet has the status of an ohel, not a vessel, and therefore blocks the tumah. This is explicit in the Mishnah, Oholos 8:1.

Dayan Grossnass wrote the above based on what he was told by students. Later, he visited the college himself and saw that the wooden closet was actually bolted to the floor. Thus it was definitely considered an ohel to block the tumah.

However, he counters, perhaps the closet can only block the tumah from going up, so that, for example, if the body of Bentham were in this wooden closet outdoors, a kohein would be allowed to sit on top of the closet. But in our case, the closet was indoors, and the Rambam writes in Hilchos Tumas Mes 20:1 that if a small tent stands inside a large tent, and a dead body is in the small tent, everything in the large tent becomes tamei. And although the Raavad disagrees, that is only when the small tent has its own entrance to the outdoors, and thus the body will eventually be carried out directly to the outdoors without passing through the large tent. But in our case, the wooden closet only had one exit – to the college hall. This principle is known in the Gemara as סוף טומאה לצאת – since the tumah will eventually go out through that door to the college hall, the college hall is tamei even now.

To solve this problem, Dayan Grossnass proposes that since Bentham’s body is in a glass box, and even when they take it out for gatherings, they wheel out the entire box, not just the body, this is not called “the tumah will eventually come out”. This is because the glass box is also an ohel within an ohel. But that would depend if glass has the same property as wood – does a large glass box act as an ohel?

The tumah of glass vessels is Rabbinic: because they are made from sand, Chazal gave them the status of earthenware (Shabbos 16b). Regarding earthenware, there is a dispute between Rashi and his teachers as to whether a large earthenware vessel can act as an ohel to block tumah (Shabbos 44b). But even according to Rashi who is strict with earthenware, glass certainly acts as a blocker. We see that Reb Chaim Brisker (Tumas Mes 19:1) learns that the Rambam holds like Rashi and the Raavad holds like Rashi’s teachers. Yet even the Rambam is explicit that a large glass vessel blocks tumah (Hilchos Keilim 3:3).

One objection could be raised: the glass box containing Bentham’s body has wheels and can be moved from place to place, despite its large size. (This was written in 1965, but as of 2020, the body is in a glass box without wheels.) Tosafos (Shabbos 84a) says that a large wooden vessel that can be dragged by men is considered a regular vessel and is susceptible to tumah. Rav Grossnass however theorizes that, perhaps, with glass we would not be so strict. Also, perhaps this glass box is different because it was made never to be opened.

Thus the argument to be lenient goes as follows: first of all, maybe a non-Jew has no tumas ohel. And even if he does, maybe the halacha is like the Raavad that a tent inside a tent is not a problem. And if you say, even the Raavad is strict in cases where the tumah will eventually come out – here the tumah will never come out because it’s inside a glass box. And if you say, a large box does not block the tumah because it is moveable by virtue of its wheels, maybe glass is different.

What about the box holding the head? Even though it is a wooden box made to rest, and therefore not susceptible to tumah, still it’s too small to be an ohel. Dayan Grossnass responds, based on a Chazon Ish, that that is only true according to the Rambam Tumas Mes 13:4, but according to the Raavad 28:5 even a small box is considered an ohel. So for the Rambam l’shitaso, we can rely on the Rambam’s own ruling that non-Jews are not metamei baohel. And according to the opinion that a non-Jew is metamei, we can rely on the Raavad, who holds the box is an ohel.

However, there is another problem: perhaps the wooden closet or the glass box itself has the status of a “kever” – a grave (i.e. a mausoleum)? True, the Rambam (chapter 12 of Tumas Mes) says a wooden coffin is not a kever. But the Raavad disagrees. And even the Rambam only said it regarding wood, because it’s not earth, but glass is made from sand, which is earth. And although the body is visible and burial usually means it is hidden from view, in this case the wooden closet makes it hidden, so it should be considered a kever and thus be forbidden. This is especially true in light of the bolts holding it to the floor; perhaps even the Rambam would agree that wood can be a kever in that case. To these arguments, Dayan Grossnass replies that the floor of the college hall separates the glass from the ground, so it’s not a kever.

After discussing the matter with the Tchebiner Rav, Dayan Grossnass realized that there is yet another reason to be lenient: the Raavad (Hilchos Nezirus 5:15) holds that a kohein who is already tamei (which applies to all kohanim nowadays) is not forbidden Mid’oraisa to come in contact with a meis. Since it’s only Mid’rabanan, we can rely on the opinion that non-Jews are not metamei ba’ohel. He quotes many teshuvos who relied on this combination, including a very interesting teshuva of the Maharsham (1:215) about visiting a royal museum containing Egyptian mummies.

Since Dayan Grossnass’ heter is based on a combination of several disputed opinions, we must ask: what about the rule that a sofek tumah in a private domain is always tamei, even if there are several sfeikos? To this, Dayan Grossnass provides three answers: 1) That rule applies only to a sofek about the facts, not to a sofek in the law. 2) The college hall is a public domain because many people are constantly walking through it. 3) The rule of “private domain” only applies when we’re not sure if something became tamei or not, and we need to decide what to assume. But tumas kohanim is an issur, and so it follows the regular rules of issur v’heter.

Source: Pamphlet published by the London Beth Din, 1965, #14, “B’inyan Dinei Ohel Hameis.”

[Utilitarianism teaches that people should do whatever results in the most happiness for the most people. It’s ironic that Jeremy Betham, as the founder of utilitarianism, thought he was giving people happiness by putting his body on display forever; he confidently envisioned that “if it should so happen that my personal friends and other disciples should be disposed to meet together on some day or days of the year for the purpose of commemorating the founder of the greatest happiness system of morals and legislation, my executor will from time to time cause to be conveyed in the room in which they meet the said box or case with the contents therein, to be stationed in such part of the room as to the assembled company shall seem meet.” But who did he end up benefiting? Scholars of the Torah, which teaches not utilitarianism but right and wrong, mutar and assur – from whom his strange request continues to serve as a springboard for discussion of the deepest sugyos in Shas. Indeed, everything that is done in the world is “for Israel, that they should learn Torah” (Avodah Zarah 2b).

It’s also ironic that Bentham chose not to be buried, but according to one possibility brought up in this teshuva, he was indeed buried in the glass box, which is like sand.]

Avodah Zarah

Avodah Zarah 29b: The Photo of the Mahari Aszod

October 31, 2023 YCLeave a comment

Avodah Zarah 29b: Just as it is forbidden to derive benefit from a dead body, so too it is forbidden to derive benefit from idolatrous sacrifices. And the dead body itself – how do we know? We derive it using a gezeirah shavah from the eglah arufah.

Tosafos, Pesachim 22b: Handing an object that is forbidden to derive benefit from (issurei hana’ah) to a non-Jew is forbidden, because since it would be forbidden to do so for pay, the fact that the non-Jew is grateful to him is considered like pay.

עבודה זרה כט ע”ב: מה מת אסור בהנאה, אף זבח נמי אסור בהנאה. ומת גופיה מנלן? אתיא שם שם מעגלה ערופה, כתיב הכא: (במדבר כ) ותמת שם מרים, וכתיב התם: (דברים כא) וערפו שם את העגלה בנחל, מה להלן אסור בהנאה, אף כאן נמי אסור בהנאה.

פסחים כב ע”ב תוספות ד”ה ואבר מן החי: דכיון דבשכר היה אסור להושיט דאסור להשתכר באיסורי הנאה אף על גב דדיעבד שכרו מותר כדמשמע בפ׳ בתרא דמס׳ ע״ז (ד׳ סב.) מכל מקום אסור לכתחלה ובחנם נמי אסור דמה שמחזיק לו העכו״ם טובה חשיב כמשתכר.

Rabbi Yehuda Aszod, known as Mahari Aszod (1794-1866), was the rav of Szerdahely and a major leader of Hungarian Jewry. His great-grandson, Yehuda Goldstein, wrote a biography of him and printed it at the beginning of the Mahari Aszod’s commentary on the Torah, Divrei Mahari. Near the end, he wrote as follows:

“My great-grandfather never allowed anyone to take a photograph of him. However, many of his students wanted his picture to remember their teacher. Therefore, after he passed away, some of his students decided amongst themselves to dress him in his Shabbos clothes, place him on his chair and take a photograph; this picture is now found in many Jewish homes. However, all those who participated in this deed were severely punished: It was not long before they all died. They were punished for disturbing his holy body after death by carrying him for this purpose.”

Source: Divrei Mahari, p. 41

[The great-grandson assumes that the reason they were punished had to do with lack of kvod hameis. But one could raise a different question: maybe by looking at the photo and selling the photo, they were deriving benefit from a meis, and a meis is אסור בהנאה – one is forbidden to derive benefit from it.

In 1938, Rabbi Zev Tzvi Hakohein Klein of Berlin wrote a small sefer of teshuvos entitled Kahana Mesayea Kahana. In siman 12, he takes the position that it is allowed to photograph a dead body as a memento for the family, because this is not the hana’ah that was forbidden. Hana’ah from a dead body means taking something away from the body, such as hair, and using it. Here, the photo is taking nothing away. However, he forbids the photographer to charge a fee, because that would be making money off issurei hana’ah, which Tosafos forbids (Pesachim 22b).

Rabbi Klein mentions that there was another rav, Rabbi Yitzchok Weiss of Verbau, who forbade taking pictures of bodies, and brought proof from four precedents. Rabbi Klein proceeds to rejects each proof in turn:

Someone had a stillborn, deformed child and wanted to carry it around with him to arouse people’s pity so that they would give him tzedaka. The Pleisi (Rabbi Yonasan Eybeshutz, second perek of Hilchos Yom Tov) forbade this because one may not derive benefit from a dead body. Rabbi Klein’s response is that there, he was making money off the meis, but here, one is merely looking at a photo of a meis.
The Noda Beyehuda (2:206) forbids doctors to examine a dead body in order to determine the reason for the illness and learn how to prevent it or cure it in the future. Rabbi Klein’s response is that there, the doctors are violating the honor of the meis by cutting him open, but here one is merely taking a photo.
The Sefer Masa D’Yerushalayim tells the story of how they took a photo of the Mahari Aszod “in order to sell the photo” and says this was a great sin because one may not derive benefit from a dead body. Rabbi Klein responds that this was different for two reasons: they violated kvod hameis by sitting him in his chair, and they sold the photo for money. But one may take a simple photo of the meis lying in his coffin as a memorial for the family.
Rabbi Yehuda Hechossid’s will says that one may not show a dead body in a grave to a non-Jew. According to this, perhaps one may not show the Mahari Aszod’s picture, or any picture of a body, to a non-Jew. Rabbi Klein responds that perhaps a photo is different from the actual body.]

Taharos

Mikvaos 7:1 – Making a Mikveh out of Ice

October 26, 2023November 16, 2023 YCLeave a comment

Tosefta, Taharos 2:3: A mikveh made of mayim sh’uvim (water that was carried in vessels) that froze is now free of the taint of mayim sh’uvim. If it melted, it is kosher to gather upon it.

Shulchan Aruch Yoreh Deah 201:30: Only water invalidates a mikveh if it is carried in vessels. But snow, hail, frost, salt and thick mud, even if they are fluid enough to be poured from vessel to vessel, are not invalid when carried in vessels. Thus if one carried vessels full of these and dumped them into a mikveh that contained less than the minimum volume, they did not invalidate it. Not only that – even if the entire mikveh was made of snow, frost or hail brought in vessels, it is kosher.

201:31: A mikveh made of mayim sh’uvim (water that was carried in vessels) that froze is now free of the taint of mayim sh’uvim. If it melted, it is kosher to gather. Shach: This means that they are now like rainwater and one may immerse oneself in them.

תוספתא טהרות ב,ג: מקוה שאוב שהגליד טהור משום מים שאובין, נמוחו כשר להקוות עליו.

שולחן ערוך יורה דעה סימן רא,סעיף ל: אין שאיבה פוסלת אלא במים אבל השלג והברד והכפור והמלח והטיט שהוא עב קצת אפי׳ יש בו רכות שיכולין להריקו מכלי אל כלי אין שאיבה פוסלת בהן שאם שאב מאלו למקוה החסר לא פסלוהו ולא עוד אלא אפילו עשה כל המקוה משלג או כפור או ברד שהביאו בכלי ועשה מהן מקוה כשר.

שם סעיף לא: מקוה שאוב שהגליד טהור משום מים שאובים, נימוחו כשר להקוות. וביאר הש”ך בסקע”ד: כשר להקוות, כלומר שחזרו להיות כמו מי גשמים ומותר לטבול בהן.

In July 2012, the rainwater basin of the mikveh of Omaha, Nebraska was accidentally emptied when a maintenance crew member thought that cleaning the mikveh meant emptying it completely. In most circumstances, a mikveh can be refilled relatively easily through rain, but that summer’s drought made that impossible.

The mikveh was out of service for almost two months. Women traveled to the next closest mikveh in Des Moines, Iowa, or Kansas City, Kansas, each more than two hours away. Dishes went unpurified. The receptionist at the Rose Blumkin Jewish Home, where Omaha’s mikveh is located, received calls every time it rained an inch, asking if the pool had somehow miraculously filled.

Rabbi Jonathan Gross of Beth Israel immediately contacted Rabbi Mendel Senderovic who lived in Milwaukee, but oversaw the kashrus of the Omaha Mikveh. Rabbi Senderovic gave Rabbi Gross instructions of how to make sure that the mikveh was prepared to collect rainwater at the earliest onset of precipitation. Unfortunately, with the Bor Z’riah (pool where rainwater collects) being empty and drought conditions preventing it from being easily refilled, it seemed that a usable mikveh would not likely be available in Omaha for many more months. So in early August, Rabbi Yitzchak Mizrahi suggested using ice to fill the mikveh.

Rabbi Mizrahi asked Rabbi Yaakov Weiss, the chaplain of the Blumkin Home and one of the supervisors of the mikveh, to use his connections at Yeshiva University to speak with Rabbi Hershel Schachter about this possibility. He called Rabbi Schachter, who referred him further to Rabbi Zvi Sobolofsky, another Rosh Yeshiva at YU with encyclopedic knowledge and who has been involved more directly with mikveh construction and law. Rabbi Sobolofsky provided him with much insight and guidance to the requirements for using ice as an alternate method of filling the mikveh. He had never been directly involved with this process, however, since it is a very rare occurrence, so he directed him to Rabbi Yirmiyahu Katz who not only wrote the book on modern mikvaos (literally), but who has also had first-hand experience at filling a mikveh with ice. Rabbi Weiss called Rabbi Katz, and he was incredibly responsive, helpful and cautious while outlining the requirements and parameters of Jewish law needed to fill a mikveh with ice. Through discussion with Rabbi Katz, sending him pictures of the Omaha mikveh (via snail mail as he did not use the internet), and research into how the mikveh normally functions, Rabbi Weiss developed a plan with Rabbi Katz involving the placement of 250 10-pound blocks of ice into the mikveh. While Rabbi Weiss had a handle on the requirements of doing this from the standpoint of Jewish law, there were still many logistics to work out. For example, would 250 blocks of ice realistically fit into the Omaha mikveh? Could he get them in there before they all melted, as any melting would invalidate the process?

[Theoretically, if the ice could be carried to the mikveh in such a way that all water drained off before reaching the mikveh, this would not have been an issue. Since, however, the ice invariably came packed in plastic bags, any melting would mean that the melted water remained in the bags and thus ended up in the mikveh together with the ice. See comments below.]

Here is how Rabbi Weiss later described the process of ordering the ice and getting it into the mikveh: “I spent days on the phone with Rabbi Katz, Matt Chadek, the Facilities Manager at the JCC, and any distributor of ice within 100 miles of Omaha. (Did you know that while there are many ice companies – Arctic Ice, Omaha Ice, Glacier Ice – they are all actually the very same place?)

“Finally, I spoke with a local ice distributor, going over the process with him and letting him know that it was imperative that the solid blocks of ice stay frozen during the entire process. I arranged a team of 11 volunteers on a Friday morning to work as an assembly line to get ice from the delivery truck into the mikveh as quickly as possible. I gave instructions and provided diagrams to volunteers. Finally, the ice truck arrived. I got onto the truck, lifted up the first ice block only to find that the block of ice was not a block at all; it was crushed ice in the shape of a block, pooling with water. There was an audible sigh from all of the volunteers. The delivery man looked baffled stating, “It’s ice. Ice melts.” Unfortunately for us, we could not make use of any ice that had already begun to melt, and we needed to scratch the plan. Despite having spoken with the manager at the ice company numerous times and discussed our exact needs, apparently his idea of frozen solid blocks of ice was different than mine. We sent the ice back, and we all left the mikveh a little disappointed. We were not, however, deterred. Everyone was optimistic that we would meet again with a new plan to fill the mikveh with ice.

“As I continued on a search for solid blocks of ice (and now knowing that some people have different definitions of solid blocks of ice), I called more and more companies to see what was out there. Lots of Federation, JCC and RBJH employees suggested ice distributors to contact, but all of them confirmed that their ice was crushed rather than solid. I visited every local supermarket, gas station and superstore looking for solid blocks. The closest I came was at HyVee where they sold such cubes, but probably due to their lack of popularity (unless you want them to fill a mikveh), they were all broken up in their bags. The manager special ordered a fresh case of the blocks for him to examine, but even the ones right off the truck were no more solid than what was in the store.

“I moved on to my last option: Muzzy Ice, a company specializing in 300-pound ice blocks used for ice sculptures. These were actually solid ice blocks. I talked with them to find out if it was at all possible to have the blocks made smaller so they would be easier to move. One option was to hire an ice sculptor who would use a chainsaw. Not only would our cost greatly increase, but the chainsaw would cause some of the ice to chip and melt and break apart in addition to adding grease from the chainsaw to our ice, making it unsuitable for our needs. The other option was for us to use a Flintstones-style ice pick to chip away at the huge blocks. I came to the conclusion that we just had to go ahead and use the full size 300-pound blocks. To achieve the amount of melted water necessary, we would need seven of them. That is more than a ton of ice.

“This time, I wasn’t taking chances. I went out to Muzzy Ice’s warehouse to personally inspect the blocks of ice to make sure they were indeed solid and suitable for our needs. As I looked them over, I found that they were definitely solid (and definitely big), but they also had some frost built up on them. I was concerned that the frost build up could cause an issue of premature melting, so I again consulted with Rabbi Katz. He assured me that the buildup would not be problematic as any miniscule drops of melted ice that might form would immediately freeze back, and since we were transporting the ice early in the morning while it was still cool outside, there would likely not be any melting at all. I also took a look at the inside of the ice truck to make sure that it was kept at a cool enough temperature to keep the blocks frozen. I was very happy to see that there was ice buildup on the sides of the truck indicating that it was freezing on the truck – something that I did not see on our first attempt a few weeks earlier. Once I had confirmation from Rabbi Katz about the ability to use Muzzy Ice, I checked one last time with Matt Chadek to be reassured that we could make this happen. Matt was confident that he and his team could successfully move the ice blocks from the truck into the mikveh’s entrance one at a time, unwrap each cube, allow for inspection and then place them into the mikveh. With that, I placed the order for the ice to be delivered 24 hours later.

“Those 24 hours were pretty anxiety-ridden. Any minor deviation from the expected plan could result in a failed effort, not to mention the loss of significant funds since Muzzy Ice could not provide us with a refund policy. I wanted to be responsible with our community’s resources and did not want a sizable amount of money to be spent on something that did not work out. I enlisted Leon Shrago to assist me in the morning. As he is recently retired, and always looking for ways to help the community and learn more, I knew he would be up for this challenge.

“The time finally arrived for all members of our team to be in place and fill our mikveh with ice. At 8:00 a.m., the Muzzy Ice truck arrived and we assembled the crew. Muzzy Ice was kind enough to be extra careful in ensuring that the ice stayed frozen and filled the truck with 100 pounds of dry ice to keep the truck colder than usual. We plugged in the freezer truck to an outlet as an additional measure to ensure that everything stayed frozen until the blocks of ice were safely placed in the mikveh.

“One by one, the delivery man wheeled the ice blocks which were wrapped in plastic and packed in boxes into the mikveh room. The JCC and RBJH facilities staff unwrapped the ice blocks and got them ready to place in the mikveh at the top of the stairs. Leon and I checked to see if there was any water pooling (there was not), and we wiped off any piles of frost as a safeguard. Matt did the hard part of supporting most of the weight of each block of ice carrying them down the stairs with ice tongs, bracing each one with his body as an additional crew member held on to the ice at the top with tongs. After each cube was placed in the mikveh, Leon and I wiped down any residual water to make sure no contamination took place. After the first block, Matt assured me that ‘It was pretty easy.’ But the sweat on his brow told me that maybe it just wasn’t as bad as he originally thought it would be…

“Less than an hour later, all seven blocks were placed in the mikveh. We all had a big sigh of relief. Before we loaded the ice into the mikveh we bottomed out the thermostat to keep the room as cool as possible to prevent any melting. Now that all the ice was inside the mikveh, we turned up the heat so that the ice would melt at a natural pace. I locked the door, put a sign on it noting that no one should enter since any breach could result in a disqualification of the entire process. Now, we waited for the ice to melt and for our mikveh to be functional once again.

“Within 48 hours of completing the whole ice transfer, nearly all of the ice had melted. At that very same time, an act of G-d brought a deluge of rain upon Omaha – a storm that was not only a rarity for the past 3 months of the drought, but rainfall that by all measures was above normal. As it turns out, the Bor Z’riah – the place in which rainwater is collected – was naturally filled by the storm with the requisite amount for a kosher mikveh.

“Jewish tradition teaches that however much we as humans attempt to bring G-d into our lives, G-d reflects back the same amount of involvement in this world. I can see no better manifestation of this teaching than in the story of the Omaha mikveh. We as a community worked so hard together to ensure that a proper mikveh be available for our community. At times, it seemed like it may not be worth the effort, or perhaps there was just no way to do it, but we persevered and made it happen. While a mikveh filled with melted ice certainly would have been kosher for use and would have fulfilled the immediate needs of our community, it still would not have been a mikveh created in the ideal way – with rainwater. An ice-filled mikveh requires many leniencies in Jewish law to be permitted for use that should only be employed in exceptional cases of great need. (The drought of 2012 qualifies as such a case.) So, I believe, G-d responded in kind to our community’s effort and provided for us a magnificent rainfall enabling Omaha to have a top-tier mikveh that meets the highest qualifications that Jewish law demands.”

Source: Rabbi Yaakov Weiss, personal memoir

[Rabbi Meir Arik (Imrei Yosher chelek 1, siman 148) raises four different concerns about man-made ice (i.e. any ice that was mayim sh’uvim before it was frozen). Actually, the first two concerns apply specifically to man-made ice, while the last two apply to any snow or ice, even natural, used as a mikveh.

The questions about man-made ice center around the meaning of the Tosefta quoted above.

The first question, brought up by Rabbi Meir Arik’s correspondent, is that the Smag, quoted by the Beis Yosef, gives two explanations of the Tosefta:
1. One may make a mikveh purely out of melted ice (that was originally sh’uvim); the taint of sh’uvim is completely gone.
1. When the ice melts, it is not kosher for a mikveh by itself, but one may add 40 se’ah of rainwater on top of it and the mikveh will be kosher. In other words, the melted ice does not have the status of “3 lugin of mayim sh’uvim” which invalidate a mikveh even if 40 se’ah are later added.

Although the Shach rules in accordance with the first opinion, the Smag himself seems to endorse his second explanation. He compares 40 se’ah of mayim sh’uvim that froze and then unfroze to 40 se’ah of mayim sh’uvim that flowed for 3 tefachim on the ground, in which case the Sheiltos rules the water is not kosher for a mikveh, but at least it’s allowed to add 40 se’ah of kosher water on top. Also, it can be argued that since we pasken (Yoreh Deah 201:44) like this Sheiltos, we should also pasken that sh’uvim that froze and then melted is also not kosher by itself. (The counter argument would be that the Shulchan Aruch was not bound to the Smag’s comparison of freezing to flowing on the ground.)

Rabbi Meir Arik’s second argument against machine ice is that today’s water is tamei (since we are all tamei today and therefore the vessels used to draw the water which was then frozen are tamei) and so the Tosefta’s statement is not applicable anymore. Tamei water that froze and then unfroze is not kosher for a mikveh, according to the Tzlach in Pesachim 17b. (This problem may not have applied in Omaha, if the ice making machine or molds were not mekabel tumah.)

His two concerns about ice and snow in general:

The Rema in s’if 30 quotes a Mordechai at the end of the fourth perek of Shabbos who brings a dispute as to whether one may immerse oneself in snow while still in its frozen state (Rabbeinu Shmarya), or one must wait for it to melt (Rabbeinu Simcha and Rabbeinu A. of Bohemia). The Rema concludes that it is better to be strict and wait for it to melt.

The Shach proves that actually, all the poskim agree with the stringent opinion, and even Rabbeinu Shmarya retracted in the end. Therefore, one may definitely not tovel in snow, a psak that seems merely academic, but… the Chasam Sofer (Yoreh Deah 200) shows that it is very relevant to the procedure of making a mikveh from snow or ice. Let’s assume the snow or ice is now in the mikveh – how can we accelerate the melting process? We could pour a pot of hot water on it, but since the snow is not yet kosher for tevilah, that would be considered making the mikveh out of mayim sh’uvim. Therefore, the Chasam Sofer recommends placing a hot metal plate atop the snow, and piling up hot coals on the plate to keep it hot until the snow is melted. (In the Omaha story, they melted it by turning up the heat in the building, which would also be fine.)

The Chasam Sofer (Yoreh Deah 200) brings that the Rosh actually holds that one may tovel in snow as is, but the Raavad in Baalei Hanefesh objects to this with a two-pronged argument (mimah nafshach): if the snow is treated like water, then why is it not subject to the law of sh’uvim? And if the snow is not treated like water, then why is it allowed to tovel in it? Therefore, says the Raavad, it is not allowed to tovel in snow as is. But it is not subject to sh’uvim, hence one may put snow in a vessel and carry it to the mikveh. The Chasam Sofer’s only concern is that part of the ice may melt while the snow is being transported to the mikveh, and that water in the bottom of the vessel – now mayim sh’uvim – will be added to the mikveh too. Therefore he advises using wicker baskets so that melting snow can drip out. In Omaha, with the ice packed in plastic and cardboard, there was a concern that melted ice might be in the package too, hence the care they took to keep it cold and wipe it down.

Rabbi Meir Arik points out that the Chasam Sofer still does not satisfy the opinion of the Baal Hamaor, who is even stricter than the Raavad and says that one must not carry the ice in any kind of vessel because this is תפיסת יד אדם – human power. Rather one must slide it along the floor. However, this shitah – the Baal Hamaor – is against the psak of the Shulchan Aruch.

The bottom line is that Rabbi Meir Arik was against machine ice for his first two reasons, and even with natural ice, he outlines rules for how to use it. Where did the other poskim stand on the issue of machine ice? The Divrei Malkiel permitted it. So did Rabbi Nissan Telushkin (Sefer Taharas Hamayim, page 46). However, there were poskim who were against it: The Gidulei Taharah, Rabbi Moshe Mordechai Epstein, the Yad Dovid and the Satmar Rav (although the Satmar Rav’s teshuva on this subject has been lost so we don’t know his reasons). Rabbi Moshe Feinstein (Y.D. 3:67) was also against it.

In the Ohama story, it seems that the ice was placed in the bor tevilah, not the bor z’riah. (Rabbi Weiss refers to steps, and typically a bor z’riah does not have steps. Also the bor z’riah is typically small and wouldn’t have room for so many large blocks of ice (each cube probably had a side length of about 2 feet). Also, he relates that the rainstorm filled the bor z’riah, implying that it was empty until that point – not full of melted ice.) Then the ice melted, and then rainwater filled the bor z’riah, allowing them to add tap water to it and have it overflow into the bor tevilah. Thus, the icewater plus the rainwater overflow satisfied even the second explanation of the Smag, which holds that melted machine ice is not kosher by itself, but is kosher after 40 s’ah of rainwater is added to it.

Can we interpret the Omaha story, as Rabbi Weiss did, as evidence that Hashem did not want them to rely on the opinion that permits machine ice, so He made it rain? Possibly, but the objection to that would be לא בשמים היא. The Omaha community asked a shailah to a posek, and Hashem agrees to the psak given by poskim in this world. Also, that would contradict another story of Divine intervention in a mikveh, which we hope to publish soon – stay tuned.]

Pesachim

Pesachim 7a: Talking during bedikas chometz

September 5, 2023 YCLeave a comment

Pesachim 7a: Rav Yehuda said: Before the search for chometz, one must make a bracha.

Rosh: “Some say that one should not speak until he finishes the bedikah, and some even say that if one did speak about matters unrelated to the bedikah, he must repeat the bracha. But I disagree. True, one should not speak between the bracha and starting the bedikah, but once he has started, speaking is not a hefsek, just as one may speak while sitting in a succah or during a meal and does not have to repeat the bracha on the succah or the hamotzi. Still, it is best not to talk about unrelated matters until finishing the entire bedikah, so that he should concentrate on checking every room and place where chometz is brought.” The Shulchan Aruch 432:1 rules in accordance with the Rosh.

פסחים ז ע”א: אמר רב יהודה: הבודק צריך שיברך.

הרא”ש: ויש אומרים שאין לבודק לדבר עד שיגמור הבדיקה ויש מוסיפין עוד יותר ואומרים שאם סח בדברים דעלמא שלא מעין הבדיקה שצריך לחזור ולברך וכל זה אין נראה לי אלא שיש ליזהר שלא יסיח בין ברכה לתחלת הבדיקה ואחר שהתחיל לא הויא שיחה הפסק מידי דהוה אישיבת סוכה וכאדם המדבר בתוך סעודתו דלא הויא שיחה הפסק להצריך לחזור ולברך על הסוכה וברכת המוציא… ומיהו לכתחילה טוב ליזהר שלא יעסוק בשיחה בטילה עד שיגמור כל הבדיקה כולה כדי שישים אל לבו לבדוק בחדרים ובעליות ובכל מקום שמכניסין בו חמץ.

One of the things that resulted from Rav Chaim Kanievsky’s long bedikas chometz was a complete booklet on the topic of bedikas chometz. Rav Chaim zt”l was accustomed not to speak during the bedikah, beginning from the bracha until the end – except for matters related to the search. Even if people were asking for a bracha, he would not answer with words, but only nodded his head.

One of the relatives who assisted Rav Chaim zt”l with bedikas chometz each year thought of an idea. Several days before Pesach he prepared questions about the laws of bedikas chometz. During the time of the bedikah, he came with pages of questions, and Rav Chaim zt”l answered all the questions, since they were related to the search. However, he would not answer shaalos on other topics. In this way, by the end of bedikas chometz, which took many long hours, he accumulated hundreds of answers from Rav Chaim which encompassed all the laws of the bedikah, enough to fill a complete sefer.

Source: Derech Emunah Bacharti, p. 3

[The Rosh does not say who this authority was who held that if one speaks, the bracha must be repeated. And the Rosh’s argument against this seems very convincing. After all, when doing the same mitzvah, such as succah, for an extended period of time, one need not be silent for the whole time. Why should bedikah be any different?

The answer may lie in the Rema in the following s’if, 432:2. The Rema quotes the Mahari Brin (Rabbi Yisroel Bruna) who held that before the bedikah, pieces of chometz should be put out so that the searcher will find them and his bracha will not be in vain. The Rema then disagrees and quotes with approval the Kol Bo, who says that the bracha is not in vain because when a person says על ביעור חמץ – “on the destruction of chometz,” he has in mind to destroy it if he finds it.

It seems that this dispute is about whether the bracha goes on the searching itself (i.e. Chazal enacted that we must search for chometz, so whether we find any or not, we are fulfilling the mitzvah), or on the actual finding and destruction of chometz.

If so, according to the opinion of the Mahari Brin that the mitzvah is to actually find chometz, if one began the bedikah but did not yet find anything, he has not started the mitzvah and thus would not be allowed to interrupt with speaking. One who spoke before finding the first piece of bread would have to repeat the bracha. This would be the meaning of the opinion quoted by the Rosh. (Although the Rosh lived before the Mahari Brin, we can assume that the authority he quoted held the same position as the Mahari Brin.)

The Taz, commenting on the Rema about putting out ten pieces, offers a different reason why the bracha is not in vain even if ten pieces were not placed and no chometz was found: because the bracha refers to the burning of the chometz in the morning. The difficulty with the Taz is: what if no ten pieces were placed, no chometz was found during the search, and the person’s bracha therefore goes only on his burning in the morning? Then it should come out that he would not be allowed to speak from the bedikah until the burning. But we don’t find such a halacha.

We also see from the Rosh that the reason it is allowed to talk about matters related to the bedikah is not because it actually helps one search, similar to the halacha (Orach Chaim 167:6) that one may say, “Pass the salt” between hamotzi and eating. Rather, the reason is that one must stay focused on the bedikah and make sure to do a good job, and talking about related matters will not distract him. (But, for example, a person would not be allowed to listen to a shiur on some unrelated topic while doing the bedikah, even if he himself does not speak at all.) This explains why Rav Chaim was willing to speak about the halachos of bedikah even though this speaking did not actually help him do his own bedikah.]