RRW:
: OTOH alien worship in terms of a "HOW" to worship is not directly or
: so obviously prohibited. Yet the torah unambiguously condemns such
: a practice.
Micha Berger:
This is the whole issur of derekh emori, no?
One can say that conceptually it's a subspecies of AZ, but it's a
different one of the 613.Tir'u baTov!
-Micha"
FWIW Three other mitzvos come to mind
Which are all prohibited EVEN in the worship of HKBH. That is the form is tainted regardless of the Target - Similar to "Eish Zara" IOW the HOW is rejected even if the WHO is Kosher.
RRW:
That's easy to explain: Shabbos brings with it a neshima yesiera! :-)
-RRW
I posited this model: AIUI before Rebbe there was a "Sea of Tannaitic statements" Rebbe (OK his predecessors ;-) redacted these statements into a coherent whole. Rebbe organized them by seder, maseches, and chapter. One of his biggest tasks was to decide what NOT to include.
After Rebbe finished, Rabbi Chiyya and Rabbi (H)Oshiya said: "wait a minute! A LOT has been left out!" And so they gathered alternate or supplementary collections of their own. And thus we have different anthologies of Tannaitic material
-RRW
Here is what I posted several years ago :
The Rambam firmly construes Sefirat Ha'Omer as 1 Mitzvah. Sefer HaHinuch concurs with the Rambam's read. ... Case Closed.
http://nishmablog.blogspot.com/search?q=sefirat
But it is NOT closed Here is more information gained with a bit of persistence and a lot of assistance!
See Sefer Hamitzvot of the Rambam Mitzva 161 and his reference to Mitzva 140.
Kol Tuv,
Yitzchok Zirkind
And From Micha Berger
http://www.vbm-torah.org/shavuot/shav67-mt.htm and
http://www.vbm-torah.org/shavuot/shav68-mt.htm It's a machloqes. Rabbeinu Yerucham says that the qorban and counting weeks is one mitzvah, and counting days another. Therefore, counting weeks today is a derabbanan zeikher lamiqdash. The Rambam (asei 161) refers back to asei 140, counting yoveil, as well as points to the fact that there is only one berakhah to show that it's one mitzvah. He also notes that we do mention the weeks daily, unlike the Baal haMaor who only required numbering the week weekly.
In either case, R' "Meish" (Moshe) Taragin discusses it at length. Ayin sham.
The Rambam assumes that tefillah shel rosh rosh einah me'aqeves es shel yad and v.v. proves that they are separate chiyuvim. (Tekheiles and lavan within a single mitzvah of tzitzis is the exception.) I know this is the converse aand not the contrapositive, but does holding that counting days and counting weeks are mutually me'aqvos force one to count them as a single one of the 613?
Tir'u baTov!
-Micha
And so the Beat goes on. The Count goes on, Too
-RRW
Should the mourner discuss:
-RRW
See Leviticus 4:13
"When the entire congregation errs..."
Hazal equate the following :
Now, In the absence of any Sanhedrin it makes sense to go back to the original text. And it follows now to imply the converse - Viz.
---------------------
Illustration:
In the USA Congress - or in Canada the Parliament - Represents all of the people. In the absence of such a representative body then all of the people represent themselves.
RRW
The Rationalist sees everything as either making sense or as nonsense. He tends to see that Halachah should not play dice (similar to Einstein - G-D does nto ply dice with the univserse)
The Fundamentalist sees Halachah as a fixed target. Stable, but rigidly unyielding. He sees Halachah as another set of Tablets written in stone.
The Conscensus-Finder relies on peer review. He takes a wait-and-see attitude. Like R Joshua at Tanur Achnai, proofs don't matter, votes do.
The Rebel takes an ipcha mistavra point of view. He sees everything opposite of the common wisdom. He is creative and stimulating, but also divisive and needing to call attention to himself.
Let's play this game with a recent query regarding riding a bicycle on Shabbat:
Rationalists will concur that this is a close analogy to existing principles and equate it to musical instruments: Just as guitars are forbidden lest they be adjusted, so too with bicycles.
Fundamentalists will protest against anything but a rigid narrow construction of the text no matter how mindless. So musical instruments set no precedent re: bicycles even if the analogy were otherwise perfect
Consesus-seekers will see which team above wins the vote and follow THAT. They defer their ego reasoning to the greater whole (somewhat analogous to Catholic Israel). Therefore, If most posqim agree with the Rationalists, so do they.
Rebels will do the exact opposite of consensus seakers no matter how unreasonable that position might be in order to be "original". They will make convincing cases to show that the conventional wisdom is "wrong". Sometimes they serve as a check and balance. At other times they seek attention. Therefore, If most posqim agree with the Rationalists, so they protest it and find the few dissenting voices.
Avrum's blog recently had an interesting discussion/debate on capital punishment and Nishma's Rabbi Hecht was asked to submit a guest post on his view of the Torah's view. This post is available at :
