Michael el Chayil

Rashi (explaining the mishna at the bottom of Shabbos 93b, and elucidated by yours truly here .) says that חי נושא אה עצמו/a living being carries itself means that a living being lightens itself. You may be (and, I daresay, should be ) asking yourself: What in the world does that mean? Perhaps you think it means "a living thing feels lighter... it can adjust itself and stuff." I respectfully submit that you should think again. First, Rashi does't say "makes itself feel lighter", but "makes itself lighter". Moreover, R' Moshe (Igros Moshe, O. Ch. IV, 90) explains that Rashi means that the כבדות/heaviness is less that expected for something of that משקל/weight and volume. Again, not "seems", just "is". You may argue that the "seems" is self-understood and obvious. I disagree; respectfully. Lastly, I think a mean-tempered cat (and what cat is not mean-tempered) is much  easier to carry when bound. But, wait, there...

In my youth, we all understood and knew that the Shabbat restrictions in the ancient world were an accommodation to how hard life was. Building a fire was hard without matches, after all. We also knew that the ancients did not know about trichinosis. They were also unable to notice that some shellfish were poisonous only in months that have an 'R' in them (or whatever the ancient equivalent was). Because of all that and more, we were able to conclude two things as obvious: (1) The smart Jewish nation (Jews have always been smart, you see)  banned work on Shabbat and eating pork and shellfish. (2) None of that is relevant today, so us modern and reformed Jews could gleefully life a life without restrictions while calling ourselves faithful to our religion. Then I grew up and learned that carrying even a key in your pocket is forbidden on Shabbos, the ancients knew how to cook meat well, and people who lived in the sea definitely knew many more details about the denizens of the...

My kids have a joke about me. Scratch that; rewind. One of the jokes my kids have about me is this: When R' Fuerst learns some new, obscure halacha and thinks to himself, "Who would do this? I know! Michael will." Guilty. As proof, I offer the following incident that occurred just this last Pesach. Before Pesach I had been discussing some issue with R' Fuerst, in the midst of which the rav said: "A person like you should only eat hand matzah on Pesach." It was more or less out of the blue, so I was taken by surprise and didn't ask any clarification questions. Besides, it was easy enough; only money. We had a beautiful Pesach in Boca Raton and were invited to have the last s'duda with the rav, R' Noach Light, and his family. Wonderful. As the s'uda is tables are being set and the kids are all playing, I noticed only machine matzah on the table. I asked the rav about hand matzah and he said, "Funny thing; we ran of out hand matzah just...