You remind me of how I felts during the Second Intifadeh on Shabbos
Mevorkhim. Everyone was crying over the people murdered by terrorists
in the latest that week. But we can not ruin Shabbos Mevorkhim by saying
Av haRachamim?!
The broader question is how often hilkhos tefillah can get in the way
of the spiritual expression that should be tefillah itself. Why? And/Or
what should be do about it?
Tir'u baTov!
-Micha
RMB writes:
You remind me of how I felts during the Second Intifadeh on Shabbos
Mevorkhim. Everyone was crying over the people murdered by terrorists in the
latest that week. But we can not ruin Shabbos Mevorkhim by saying Av
haRachamim?!
No, this is the opposite of what was saying when I said ", it feels
intrinsically wrong, at least to me, to be carefully avoiding weddings
during sefira due to a plague that occurred nearly two thousand years ago,
and yet not be prepared to
defer such weddings due to our very own plague, right here and now."
The feeling you had during the Second Intifadeh on Shabbas Mevorkhim is the
feeling that many, many avelim have, particularly when their shiva is broken
due to the requirements of v'samchta b'chagecha. The halacha is pulling in
one direction, while one's heart is pulling in the other. It feels like
one's heart wants to go against the grain of the halacha. It does not want
to be samachta, despite that being the mitzvah.
I am describing something very different. The halacha (in the form of
minhag k'din) tells us that sorrow, most commonly attributed as being due to
a plague, is a reason to postpone weddings during certain days of sefira,
even though that sorrow happened nearly two thousand years ago. Nowhere
does the halacha say that you MUST have a wedding on Lag B'Omer, or any
other day that is not considered to be part of the sefira prohibition.
Surely it would therefore be working *with* the grain of the halacha to say
that weddings are assur now due to our very own plague, from which so many
are suffering! To technically avoid having weddings on the days of sefira
prohibited by minhag, but to have them on other days would seem to be saying
that the technical halacha is solely what is important, but that no messages
can be learnt out from it, even though the message is about as
straightforward and blatant as it would seem possible to be.
The broader question is how often hilkhos tefillah can get in the way of
the spiritual expression that should be tefillah itself. Why? And/Or what
should be do about it?
That is a very different question. It is a question, but a very different
question. How can one say modim, when at the time, that is the last feeling
one has? The halacha does acknowledge that, by banning an onen from saying
it, but it then demands that from the onset of aveilut normal davening
resumes, despite many, many aveilim not necessarily feeling they are ready.
And the same is true about your Shabbos Mevorchim. The message of the
halacha is that life goes on, even if one is not really sure one wants it
to, or in fact one is absolutely sure at that time that one does not. It is
not wrong to feel contrary to the halacha in these circumstances. Indeed
the tension may be exactly the type of dialectic that the halacha intends to
set up. But I can't see any such dialectic being set up in our wedding
case. Can you not see the difference?
Micha
Regards
Chana
The comment was made that
The statement was made that
it feels intrinsically wrong, at least to me, to be carefully avoiding
weddings during sefira due to a plague that occurred nearly two thousand
years ago, and yet not be prepared to defer such weddings due to our very
own plague, right here and now.
I feel that it misses the point of the s'fira prohibitions to
attribute them to "a plague that occurred nearly two thousand years ago."
The commemoration was not decreed because of the loss of lives during the
plague; it was because of the major diminution of Torah knowledge which
resulted from it. It was not because there were deaths, but because of who
died and because of the effect on klal Yisraeil of their deaths. Hence,
there can be no comparison to today's tragedy, which thus far, and halevai
veiter, does not have that negative effect.
EMT
I would have said it was because their deaths had insufficient effect
on the attitudes of kelal Yisrael, and therefore what we should have
gotten in the years of shock at the loss, we now have to spend time
on every year, working on kavod haberios incrementally.
Not really a disagreement, other than my shift of focus from loss of
Torah knowledge to a more middos oriented definition of loss of Torah.
Tir'u baTov!
-Micha
I wrote:
it feels intrinsically wrong, at least to me, to be carefully avoiding
weddings during sefira due to a plague that occurred nearly two thousand
years ago, and yet not be prepared to defer such weddings due to our very
own plague, right here and now.
And EMT replied:
<< I feel that it misses the point of the s'fira prohibitions to
attribute them to "a plague that occurred nearly two thousand years ago."
The commemoration was not decreed because of the loss of lives during the
plague; it was because of the major diminution of Torah knowledge which
resulted from it. It was not because there were deaths, but because of who
died and because of the effect on klal Yisraeil of their deaths.>>
So you are saying that we would still have had these prohibitions if there
hadn't been deaths, just that all of these talmidim had been struck by
amnesia during yamei sefira, forgetting all their learning?
But if losing Torah learning is a trigger for banning weddings, why don't we
ban wedding on zayin Adar and following (ie the mourning period for Moshe
Rabbanu)? After all, that is when the most significant loss of Torah
learning in our history occurred, after Moshe Rabbanu died, three thousand
halachos were forgotten (see Temura 16a). And unlike the case with Rabbi
Akiva's students, where Rabbi Akiva started all over again with new students
and there is no suggestion that the loss of Torah was permanent, with Moshe
Rabbanu it would appear, despite some reconstruction by Osniel ben Knaz, the
lost halachos remained forever lost.
Hence, there can be no comparison to today's tragedy, which thus far, and
halevai
veiter, does not have that negative effect.
Well not in our communities, which in some ways are learning more Torah by
Zoom than they ever have IRL. But in the community in which this particular
attempt to start weddings was announced, Zoom and such like, being internet
based, remain prohibited. I can't speak for the effect of that on the Torah
learning in Lakewood, but certainly those communities here in England that
have continued to ban the internet, and have merely loosened their
prohibition on kids having "brick" phones, so they can have telephone
conference calls from school, have significantly diminished the amount of
Torah being learnt by the kids (and adults) in their communities. Because
even if Tatte can learn and teach his kids, trying to do so at the level of
every one of his kids simultaneously in relatively small accommodation, not
to mention keep up his own learning without access to the range of sefarim
of a beis medrish, is quite a challenge, to say the least. The government
here is worried that prolonged period out of school is extremely damaging,
and that is with assumed access to the internet. There is concern that due
to the slide when kids are out of school, they might lose almost a year. The
same is presumably true in spades for Torah learning without the internet.
Note as well that not holding weddings is one of the stipulations of the
Mishna in Ta'anis 12b in circumstances where the 13 fasts for rain have
failed to have an effect, and the people are to be considered "k'bnei adam
hanezufin LaMakom". That is not a case of loss of Torah learning either.
EMT
Shavuah tov
Chana