kol isha alert

this was at a chazzanut concert recently held in honor of the great chazzan Moshe Stern

Chag Sameach

the blog is officially going into holiday mode. that means there will be postings, but not on any regular schedule.

I hope you all enjoy your holiday!

funny.. but this never actually happened to me

Yiddish rap?

I frequently enough quote Moshe Feiglin on this blog... Now I am going to quote Moshe Feiglin, but it is not the same guy. This is Moshe Feiglin, a Chabdnik. I think it is a distant cousin - I used to be in contact with a member of a Chabad family named Feiglin and the person told me that they are distant cousins with the MK (then he was not MK yet).. I think this is part of that family.

Anyways, this Chabad Moshe Feiglin wrote on Facebook a proposal how every religious Jew can "save" a non-religious from violating Pesach with chametz. Here is Feiglin's Facebook post:

The following was posted by Feiglin to his Facebook page:






Basically, you should sell someone else's chametz. If they eat some of that chametz, not knowing it is not owned by them but by a gentile somewhere, theft from a non-Jew is not as bad as eating chametz on pesach, from a halachic perspective. So, you have saved him from a more serious transgression.

How can you sell someone else's chametz? using the concept of "zachin l'adam she'lo b'fanav" - you can do acquire something for somebody when it will be beneficial for him, even without his knowledge. So, he does not know it, but you can sell his chametz because it is beneficial to him.

my problems with it:
1. it seems very Christian and missionary-like. "Saving" people. Kind of grates on my nerves.
2. The concept of "zachin" is, in my opinion being misused. the concept is used in two ways that I know - either to acquire something for somebody from hefker, or to buy something for somebody and to facilitate the acquisition now for the person you intend to give it to later.

from hefker: if I find an object that does not seem to belong to somebody, I can acquire it on behalf of somebody else knowing he would want it. It is considered his even now, even though he has not yet touched it or come into actual possession of it.
giving ownership: such as if I want to give a book to someone on Shabbos, but one cannot make an acquisition, a kinyan, on Shabbos. I can buy the book and acquire it for my friend before Shabbos, so it is already his. Then, when I give it to him on Shabbos, he is not acquiring it as it is already his.

In this case of Moshe Feiglin above, he is using zachin to say I can take my neighbors thigns and sell it, because spiritually thats what he would really prefer.

 We don't find, as far as I know, "zachin" working to let me take something from somebody else without his knowledge. Only to give to him.

If I sell my neighbors chametz without his knowledge, I stole his chametz and sold it, which is theft on my part (and with all due respect, I am not going to transgress the prohibition of theft just to prevent someone else from transgressing the prohibition of chametz - another talmudic concept).

The second possibility, and this is really the way it works - I did absolutely nothing. I cannot sell my neighbors stuff. I might think I sold it, but all I did was deceive the rav who facilitate the sale, and the non-Jew who bought it. When the non-religious Jew eats his chametz on pesach, he will not be eating the goy's chametz after unknowingly stealing it from him - he will be eating his own chametz, because I cannot sell someone else's belongings without his knowledge!

The one good thign i can say about this idea promoted by Feiglin is that he is showing his ahavat yisrael by trying to find a way to "save" others form transgressions...

Do you know of any other reasons why this may or may not work?

I don't know what qualifies something to be considered a landmark case, but this case sounds like it might be one.. This is the first time I am hearing of such an incident..

Basically, the State looked into an avreich who declared his status as "Torato Umanuto" - full-time Torah learning - yet every time they checked into him, they never found him in kollel. Rather, he was voluntarily running some girls school and was Director of the NGO.

The State imposed financial sanctions on the kollel this avreich was supposedly learning in, and sued the avreich. The State argued that the stipend paid to kollel people is is order to assist those people who really live the life of torato umanuto, where the focus of his entire life is his torah learning. The State therefore sued to receive back all the monies paid in stipends to this fellow - 7 years worth of stipends, totaling about 84,000NIS.

The avreich's response was that he was caught out of kollel on a spot check, but the rest of the time he was in kollel and they can't know otherwise.

The State responded to that saying they cannot be expected to attach a "personal bodyguard" to every person in kollel to track when he is there learning and when he is not. It should be enough for them to show via spot-checking a number of times that he was not in kollel, and from that it can reasonably be extrapolated that he regularly was not learning in the kollel.

The court accepted the States argument saying the State is not able to attach an investigator to each person who receives "havtachat hachnasa", and a reasonable sampling is enough for an investigation. The State proved that his lack of attendance was not a one-time thing or a chance encounter being caught out of kollel, rather he regularly was not in kollel.

The court decided the avreich would have to pay the State 84,000NIS to return all the stipends, and another 8000NIS in court costs.
source: NRG

the new "Samson" plane arrived in Israel... these clips are from the ceremony..

this is the report from the IDF:



and this is the report from the US Embassy:

a bit of a smackdown on Peter Beinart!

running out of time, so here's a couple more Pesach parody music videos..