You know about the guy who went to buy a couple of new pairs of socks and ended up with new shoes, three new shirts, two ties, a new suit, besides the socks? The pants looked a little shabby with the new socks, you can't just buy suit pants, obviously you'll need updated ties, and who doesn't always need new shirts? (That's not me, by the way. I am the guy who sees the price of socks and figures he can get a bit more wear out of his current wardrobe.)
I feel that way, though, regarding my efforts to just have a relaxing drink on Shabbos between the fish and the meat. At least we are finally done, right? I mean, after the segue from a vegetable peeler and then an investigation into Shprintze's cholent and פסיק רישא, what else is there to say? Well...
I arrived at shul for mincha/ma'ariv a few minutes early yesterday and just as I was opening the door, who should drive up, but the dayan himself. Of course I respectfully waited, held the door for the dayan, and actually let him get inside before I said, "I have a couple of questions..." The dayan knows me very well, Baruch HaShem and Chasdei HaShem. Not to waste the dayan's precious time, I used the time it takes to walk up to his shtender to begin the discussion. I clarified a bit more what I wanted to do and asked about peeling and eating and orange in order to have the twisted peel available. The dayan asked, regarding having the aromatic oils expressed onto the surface of the peels, "So you are מקפיד? Then you shouldn't. Look at the Biur Halacha שב; the one down at the bottom of the page."
Ok, as I thought, I still don't have a היתר/permit to make my scotch with a twist, but now I have an assignment. I figured, "Heck, if it is down at the bottom, how long can this take?" So siman שב actually has 13 syefim and is not short. The siman is about folding and shaking out clothing, so I was confused. Then I say the Shulchan Aruch is talking about shaking dew off a new, black tallis/cloak. Does that sound relevant to scotch with a twist to you? Nope, me neither. Then I saw the key phrase with the asterisk leading to the Biur Halacha -- and he is מקפיד about having dew on it; that is, he would never, ever wear that garment if it had dew on it. I use the Dirshu Mishna Brura, so all I saw was a five line Biur Halacha at the bottom of page 170. The Dirshu has a page of explanation inserted between each page of Mishna Brura. Beautifully efficient and does not disturb the original format of the pages. But it does block seeing the next page, which I now turned... and discovered that little five line Biur Halacha exploded into a full page -- leaving nearly no room for the main Mishna Brura text. The dayan had played me... but I wasn't about to give up now. I spent the rest of my evening digesting that Biur Halacha.
The basic idea of that Biur Halacha is to show that we should not read that shaking dew and/or dust off a garment on Shabbos is only forbidden if the garment is new, black, and you are מקפיד; rather read: you are not allowed to shake dew and/or dust off a garment that is new and black on Shabbos, because since it is new and black, you are obviously מקפיד. In other words, the factor that controls whether or not one is allowed to shake dust off his coat on Shabbos is whether or not he is מקפיד, not the color nor freshness of the coat. That is a quite different way to read this halacha. (It is also, now obviously, why the dayan directed me to learn this Biur Halacha.)
How does the Mishna Brura come to this conclusion and make that they p'sak halacha? He had a question on the gemara. Something about the story -- upon which this gemara rests -- just didn't sit right with him. Moreover, Rashi's explanation didn't fit the narrative, either. But when he changed the reading from "and מקפיד" to "because he is מקפיד", it all made sense. The gemara read smoothly, Rashi's explanation fit. Amazing.
From this point on we get some insight into the profound research the Mishna Brura put into each and every halacha. R' Yisrael Kagen wrote:
With all that, I did not want to rely (solely) on my careful reading and analysis. I searched the works of the rishonim and, with the help of HaShem, I found that my reading was consistent with their works.
The Mishna Brura lists five sources in support of his reading. He found one objection; one that required changing a single letter, but he rejected that because: How could that change in text be correct, when so many s'farim have the text as we have? That would mean that they all also got the text wrong?! Moreover, the (then) recently published Rabeinu Chananel also supports the way the Mishna Brura understands the halacha.
Let's take a step back. The Mishna Brura must have spent days researching this topic. He didn't have bookstores and kollelim and shuls that all had Shas and a myriad of s'farim. He was in Radin, Poland in the late 1800s. Yet he searched and searched because something "just didn't feel right" to him. That means every single halacha and conclusion in the Mishna Brura got this kind of scrutiny and analysis by one of the most brilliant and holy minds of the last 200 years.
That's just beyond cool. Now you know why the Mishna Brura has become the first (and often last) stop for halacha l'ma'aseh since it's publication.
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