Michael el Chayil

For those of you who have never experienced a hangover, let me just note that even parts of one's body that are barely alive -- such as toenails -- become vibrantly alive with pain.  One would think, therefore, that one hangover would be enough to cure one forever of overindulging.  I can, to my shame, testify that it ain't so.  We seem to have this amazing ability to completely forget the pain and suffering for the anticipated ever so slight  pleasure of indulging once again. What's with that?  Why would HaShem makes things so hard for us?  Wouldn't it be better to easily remember the pain therefore be able to make a rational assessment of the loss versus the gain to come to the obvious conclusion?  Instead, I set loss to "well, gee... I can't seem to remember any real loss" and the anticipated gain to " amazing , as I recall"; let's go for it! I heard a story about a gadol who was thrown into prison.  The first morning he started to say...

And now for another in the "obviously because it's bad! oh yeah, sez who?!" series.  (The rest of the series -- all one of them -- is  אין לבטל איסור לכתחילה -- Why Not? ) Clearly it just seem wrong to designate a  שליח לדבר עבירה/agent to sin for you.  None the less, Chazal (TB Bava Metzia 10b) were interested enough to explore the issue.  To understand the discussion, we need to be more precise about what Chazal intended when the told us not to do that.  Moreover, just being a bad idea is no reason to enact a rabbinic decree.  It must be something that people would otherwise want to do and would also rationalize it is "ok, even though it smells bad". In fact, is is a mistranslation of אין שליח לדבר עבירה to render: one is not allowed to assign an agent to transgress a sin.  An accurate translation is just what it says, "there is no such thing as an agent to commit a sin".  In the vernacular, "I was only following orders" is not a valid ...

My manager at work (as opposed to all my managers at home, who range in age from one to 60) has been bringing in treats for the first few weeks of a new product launch (as a thank you for doing double duty as developers and support staff).  She was bringing cookies and doughnuts and whatnot; which I, of course, did not eat.  This engendered a discussion about what makes things kosher.  (I warned everyone, btw, that it was much each easier to get me started on this topic than to stop me.)  So I talked about ingredients and packaged food production and finally sent them a list of acceptable hechsherim.  The next morning yogurt covered pretzels and chocolate covered peanuts -- but with O-K Dairy designation -- appeared in the team room.  The next week, one of my coworkers said, "Hey, man, like I noticed there are kosher wines... I thought kosher just had to do with ingredients.  What could be, like, you know, non-kosher in the wine?"  (He is not a be...

A sizeable hurdle to transitioning from non-Torah religions with the name "Judaism" in them (such as Reform, Conservative, and Reconstructionist) to Orthodox Judaism is יום טוב שני של גלויות/second day yontif. Quick review: The new moon should really only be declared by the Sanhedrin in Yerushalayim.  When we had the Beis HaMikdash, that's precisely how it was done.  The Sanhedrin (based on eyewitness testimony) would at some point declare the new moon.  They would then send out messengers to inform the nation.  It could take more than two weeks to reach the farthest communities, but they needed to know when Rosh Chodesh Nissan and Tishrei were in order to celebrate Pesach and Sukkos, respectively.  Since we knew it had to be one of two days, Chazal mandated observance of both days for all communities outside of Eretz Yisrael.   I mean, come on... certainly it is understandable in pre-internet/telephone/telegraph days why you needed those two days, ...

There are a very few things I was told by my parents that I have resolved not to repeat to my children.  One of them is, "Well, if that's the worst thing that ever happens to you, then you are very lucky."  While I was usually able to appreciate the logic of that statement, I don't remember it ever making me feel comforted nor understood.  The other statement I vow, bli neder, not to repeat is to answer a child's complaint of "It's not fair!!" with "Life's not fair."  Besides all the other things wrong with that answer (see previous avowal to not say), I refuse to make that statement because it simply is not true; it is , in fact, fair. When I say the world is fair, I do not mean that I subscribe to some Pollyanna philosophy that everything works out in the end and we should just smile through it.  I mean that reality is fundamentally and profoundly fair.  In fact, it is an open verse in our Holy Writ (Devarim 32:4): 4 The deeds of...

I am one of the better fasters in my home, so I often get the job of keeping the children occupied for some portion of the day.  My go-to is the Museum of Science and Industry.  The downside for me, of course, is that my mind is more on watching the kids (and, frankly, the cool exhibits) than on the destruction of the Beis HaMikdash.  Given to whence my unoccupied mind wanders, though, I am probably better off on balance than siting at home whining about my stomach. On the way home, my six year old granddaughter asked -- out of the blue, pretty much de rigour for her -- if Jews were ever born blind.  I answered that, unfortunately, yes.  She then asked, "Is that a punishment for them?"  I obviously told her that being born blind is not a punishment since they were born that way.  (No, I did not think this was the time nor venue for introducing the topic of gilgulim.)  She wasn't finished, though (also de rigour for her); "But they...

We are all familiar with בטל בששים/nullified in 60 when it comes to nullifying forbidden substances (or milk in meat or meat in milk) in mixtures.  I didn't realize just how familiar that concept really is until I saw that Google translated בטל בששים as simply "insignificant".  There is an important detail, however regarding whether the mixture is מין במינו (comprised of similar ingredients) or מין באינו מינו (comprised of dissimilar ingredients).  When it comes to מין באינו מינו, the nullification is needed at a Torah level, whereas when the mixture is מין במינו, the nullification is a Rabbinic stringency.   That , of course, is important for any cases of doubt whether there is actually 60 times the volume in the permitted substance to nullify the forbidden one.  We'll call the forbidden substance (hoped to be small volume) the "solute", and the majority component of permitted substance the "solvent".  This both saves typing and also ta...

I had a friend in graduate school who was getting his masters in orchestral conducting.  He told me that the music theorists say that Beethoven's 5th Symphony is essentially defined by the first five notes.  I asked (I was a physicist, after all) if that meant I could give him any five notes and he could give me back a symphony.  Of course the answer was "no"; what he really meant was that one can hear the theme defined by those first five notes throughout the entire symphony. Understanding Chazal is something like that.  We know, for example, that Chazal instituted brachos before benefiting from this world.  However, not all pleasures have an associated bracha.  That doesn't mean there are no rules.  It only means that we sometimes have to "reverse engineer" the intent before we can understand how to apply they bracha when technology affects how do things. Some time ago, the general rules of saying שהחיינו on a new fruit was discussed in a TftD . ...

One of the arguments that the Ramban made in his famous debate, known as The Disputation of Barcelona , is that it is unconscionable to believe that the Creator would make a public contract -- witnessed and unanimously ratified by the entire Jewish nation of something like three millions men, women, and children -- and then change the whole deal by whispering into the each of a solitary Jew, "Oh, by the way, I changed My Mind."  When I was coming to Orthodox Judaism I also noticed that HaShem gave one mitzvah to Adam, then (when that didn't work out so well) gave seven to Noah, then (when ... sigh... that also didn't work out so well) gave 613 to the Jewish People.  It seemed pretty unreasonable to me, therefore, to believe that HaShem would then drop that to one (or zero, depending on how you understand Christianity); basically just love their god and you are good to go. Be that as it may, there seems to be a fly in that ointment place there by Chazal.  Chazal tell...

Ok, I know the title is tedious -- bear with me, 'k? Facebook has a very advanced face recognition feature.  The company for which I work uses a similar technology to automatically estimate repair costs from photos taken by the owner at the accident site.  Very cool.  the core of the algorithm, by the way, simply gets fed millions of pictures and internally adjusts dozens of parameters to get the right answer.  I was complaining (more whining, really) about that, because it doesn't offer any insight into how we humans actually recognize faces so fast.  A coworker replied, "But it lets us automate a job down that would otherwise be completely manual." That's the difference between a scientist and an engineer.  It's also the difference between learning Torah לשמה and learning Torah just to know what do to.  Klal Yisrael accepted the Torah with a resounding נעשה ונשמע/we will do and hearken.  Learning Torah to know how to do is just the...

I was asked last Shabbos to discuss some of the ideas of the Three Weeks and תשעה באב.  As I sat down to prepare, I knew I would start with something like: We now find ourselves in the Three Weeks, also know as בֵּין הַמְּצָרִים; which means "between the straits", so named because it the like the lull between two waves of disaster.  Then I stopped.... "between the straits"?  תשעה באב commemorates the destruction of the Beis HaMikdash -- may it be rebuilt soon and in our days -- that is a disaster of unimaginable proportions.  But שבעה עשר בתמוז commemorates the breach of the wall of Yerushalayim.  Putting those together sounds like someone complaining about stubbing their toe before being hit by a truck.  Really? If breaching the wall were considered the beginning of the destruction, then I would understand.  But it's not.  The term "בֵּין הַמְּצָרִים"/between the straits, puts the breach of the wall as (a) an event in and of itself, just l...

I had forgotten to bring my Shabbos tallis back to shul since our return from visiting the grandchildren in Florida (we have children there also, but I only travel for grandchildren).  Being as it was Friday, I decided to drop it off on my way to work... by bike... in my shorts, helmet, and whatnot.  I got there before the throng of after davening learners had left.  They are all my friends, so of course the all gave my (good natured) grief about coming to shul dressed like that.  On the heels of the ribbing we all agreed, of course, that being embarrassed by the way he is dressed is no excuse to miss a minyan. Halacha mandates that (besided t'fillin) a man should wear a tallis gadol and be dressed as one would for a formal meeting (I interpret that to mean as I would dress for a job interview).  Now, no matter how beautiful his suit and hat are, he can certainly wear them into the bathroom.  On the other hand, no matter how chintzy his tallis gadol is, h...

Pretty much, people pouring milk into hot meat stew are not calling the CRC.  The people calling the CRC are more likely to have just stuck a dairy spoon into a meat pot in which they are cooking broccoli.  Let's explore that, shall we?  As usual, we need some background. You know good and well that when you call the rav with that question, his  first question is going to be, "Did you cook anything fleishig in that pot in the last 24 hours?  Did you use that spoon in any hot dairy in the last 24 hours?  Was the broccoli host when you stirred it?"  Why is he asking that?  Heat facilitates transferring taste.  Therefore, if you cooked something in the pot or stirred hot milk with that spoon, then taste has been transferred.  The Torah forbids eating foods that have intermingled taste of milk and meat.  So... when you cooked the broccoli, you caused a transfer of  meat taste from the meat taste absorbed in the pot.  When yo...

When Klal Yisrael first came to Eretz Yisrael (nee K'na'an), Moshe Rabeinu decided that sending spies first was a good idea.  As we all know -- especially as we enter into the dark period of our year known as "the three weeks"; that decision was a disaster.  40 years later, Y'ho'shu'a also decided to send in spies before entering the land.  While everything turned out fine this time, many wonder why he took a chance like that, given the distressing historical precedent four decades earlier.  The Malbim has a lengthy piece on that topic, but the basic answer is that even though the execution was similar (spies were sent both times), the motivation and intent of the operation were completely different.  In a nutshell, the spies that Moshe sent were looking to see if entering the land was a good idea, whereas Y'ho'shu'a's (yikes that's a lot of apostrophes!) spies were looking for the best way to enter. Almost 40 years ago to the day som...

I have learned how to deal with the hordes of hawkers who stand at Thompson Center downtown (Chicago, dude, Chicago) at lunch time; this one for food, this one for Green Peace, this one for... well, you'll see.  I run into them as I am walking to (and sometimes from) mincha.  I don't engage them, but neither do I avoid them.  My only interest is to get to mincha (or back to work); but if they accost me and invade my privacy, I have a ready answer.  To food hawkers I simply query, "Kosher?"  To Green Peace and Save the Children I request, "Please walk with me and explain why this is important."  To which they respond, "I can't."  I then call back, "Ah.  Well if it is not important enough for you to walk a few steps with me, then it's not important enough for me to stop."  The most pointed rejoinder I have received to that is, "Oh yeah!?" That is how I came to have a "conversation" with Planned Parenthood volu...

You should never stick a milchig spoon into a bubbling pot of cholent.  But in case it does happen, you know can always refer to the TftD on that topic understand the issues.  I even covered the case for both s'fardim and ashkenazim.  I only mentioned the case of sticking the same spoon in twice, since that's the case of the Shulchan Aruch.  A chaver of mine noted that two is not just an example, but is the max.  My first thought was that he was mistaken.  Before I replied, though, I decided to investigate further.  I did and I found that my first thought that he was mistaken was actually mistaken.  Hence today's TftD. Where did my mistake start?  The comparison to the t'ruma case.  T'ruma, the mishna tells us is בטל in 100 (not 60).  Suppose you have 100 oz of Kedem grape juice and 10 oz of t'ruma grape juice.  If you drop one oz of t'ruma into the bottle of Kedem, no problem; it's בטל.  Now suppose you dro...

I had a boss who was a fanatical atheist.  He saw it as his life's mission to stomp out religious belief.  He once came running (yes, running) into my "office" (four temporary partitions with a door) with a wild look in his eyes and squealed, "So... you can't eat pork.  Right?"  I affirmed.  "And you can't eat any  amount of pork.  Right?"  I again affirmed, then added, "Of course, if it is less than one part in 60 it is considered nullified and there is no problem eating it."  The gleam went out of his eyes and his whole countenance darkened noticeably.  His plan, he explained with sadness, was to say it was impossible to know if some molecule of pork (there is no such thing, of course, but he was already defeated so why rub it in?) had landed somehow gotten mixed with my food.  "Ah." I said, "No, nullified is nullified pretty much for the reason you said.  Except, of course, there is no such thing as a molecule of por...

I made it to work today in just over 40 minutes of bike travel time (that is, not including time spent waiting for signal lights at intersections).  That's 14.3 mph.  I had mixed feelings on pulling up to the parking garage gate; both exhilaration and trepidation.  Exhilaration at having achieved my best time so far.  Trepidation at the thought of trying to beat or even reproduce that time.  I had the wind at my back, hit several traffic lights just right, and was not blocked by blokes on Divvy bikes.  I wonder if I'll ever again find myself with a confluence of all those external factors  and  feeling physically capable of pushing harder than before. Of course, that's the nature of any endeavor to improve.  Each achievement become the new bar by which future achievements are measured.  It is very difficult, therefore, feel pride in any given achievement; both because it depends on so many external factors and because, frankly, I am no...

One of the favorite proofs used by college students who have had a couple of beers and don't really want to deal with any issues anyway (after all, they are in college, right?) that they can dismiss belief in a  supreme being goes like this: "Well, can your alleged supreme being (I know you  would capitalize that, but I am 19 and more enlightened than you) make a rock so heavy that he can't lift it?  Whether he can or can't, I have just proven that there are things beyond his ability.  I have just swept away all religious ignorance with one easy question.  Let's have another beer." As with most things, easy challenges are easily deflected.  The short answer is that he really asked, "Can anything be both perfect and imperfect?"  The answer is "no".  I wrote up a more detailed answer and explanation , but for now I just need one idea: HaShem can't be surprised.  I, on the other hand -- being more imperfect than I really care to admit, a...

I have three children, I was/am a very involved father.  I have survived three teenagers; a fact that I use to explain to coworkers why I am so calm at work.  After all, no matter what happens, no matter how unreasonable people are, it just can't compare to what can happen and how unreasonable a teenager can be.  I therefore had not the smallest reservation about babysitting four of my grandchildren for one Sunday afternoon.  Over the four hours and 47 minutes that I was the lone adult, though, I learned a new level of chaos management.  True enough that I have seen plenty of chaos and unreasonableness with my own children, but I never before experienced the quantity  of chaos and unreasonableness than can be generated by four children from one year to six years old.  I gained new respect for my daughters and a new appreciation for how fragile my veneer of calm really is. There is a mitzvah to love every Jew.  If you really love someone, of cour...