|
| Home > Religion > judaism > FAQ > |
| soc.culture.jewish FAQ: Torah and Halachic Authority (3/12) |
Section 5 of 5 - Prev - Next
All sections - 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5
illustration. In both, Rabbeinu Tam disagrees with the opinion of his
grandfather.
The first was on placement of the mezuzah. Rashi ruled that proper
placement is that the parchment be placed vertically. Rabbeinu Tam
sided with a horizontal placement. Today, Ashkenazim try to fulfil
both opinions by hanging the mezuzah on an angle. Sepharadim follow
the opinion attributed to Rashi, which is also born out by the
majority of archeological findings. (But they do so because it's the
opinion of Maimonides and the Shulchan Aruch.)
The better known one was about the proper order of chapters that are
placed in tefillin. We follow the opinion of Rashi. However, many
Chassidim also wear "Rabbeinu Tam tefillin" (as they are commonly
called) afterwards to fulfil his opinion. Some Sephardic kabbalists do
as well; while a rare few wear both forms simultaneously!
His style of Talmud study was more typical of the Tosafists. They
tried to understand the Talmud holistically, typically asking how one
discussion ought to be understood given a discussion in another part
of the Talmud.
------------------------------------------------------------
Subject: Question 4.13: What are she'elot u'teshuvot?
Answer:
"She'eilot" are questions, "teshuvot" are answers. The "u-" prefix
means "and". "She'eilot uteshuvot", literally "questions and answers",
are responsa. In real yeshiva jargon one would say "shu"t" (pronounced
like the word "shoot"), using only the acronym. They're a form of
halachic writing written in answer to questions mailed the decisor,
although sometimes the question is self-posed. What's nice about shu"t
is that the typical format is to provide the reasoning that lead to
the conclusion. As opposed to codes, which simply state conclusions.
------------------------------------------------------------
Subject: Question 4.14: What is the midrash halachah and the midrash agadah?
Answer:
Medrash is the material associated with the text of the Torah that
isn't in the text itself. These can be halachic thoughts or aggadic
(non-halachah) ones. The medrashei halachah predate the mishnah, and
were the original attempt to record the Oral Torah, and come from the
generations right before the Mishnah. There were two schools of
medrashei halachah, Rabbi Yishma'el's and Rabbi Akiva's. They had
different basic assumptions about the text, and different means of
associating rulings to the text.
Medrashei Aggadah are generally later recordings, such as Medrash
Rabba (the greater medrash; volumes are named "Bereishis Rabba", "Ruth
Rabba", and the like) or Yalqut Shim'oni (Simeon's Selections).
However, the material in the compilation dates back to the mishnaic
era. These are sometimes similar in form to medrashei halachah,
deriving things hermeneutically from the text. They are also sometimes
written in the form of parables. This is so as to balance the need of
recording the Oral Torah during traumatic shifts of exile with the
need of keeping the Oral Torah oral. Because so much of medrash is in
the form of parables, people loosely use the word "medrash" to refer
to aggadic (non-halachic, ie philosophical and ethical) material from
the Talmud(s) told in this manner.
(Note: "Midrash" is proper Aramaic grammar. "Medrash" is proper
Yiddish and yeshiva jargon.)
------------------------------------------------------------
Subject: How do I obtain copies of the FAQ?
Answer:
There are a number of different ways to obtain copies of the FAQ:
* WWW. If you are reading this on Usenet, and would like to see an
online, hyperlinked version, go visit [2]http://www.scjfaq.org/.
This is the "web" version of the FAQ; the version posted to Usenet
is generated from the web version. Note that the www.scjfaq.org
version is a copy of the actual master version; if you want to
access the master, visit [3]http://master.scjfaq.org/.
* Email. Scjfaq.org also provides an autoretriever that allows one
to obtain a copy of the FAQ by return Email. To use the
autoretriever, you send a retrieval request to
[4]archives@scjfaq.org with the request in the body of the
message. A more reliable way to retrieve these files is through
the [5]FAQ autoretriever
([6]http://www.mljewish.org/bin/autoresp.cgi). For the FAQ, the
request has the form:
send faq partname
For the reading list, the request has the form:
send rl partname
"Partname" is replaced by the name of the part, as shown in the
general index. The following is a short summary of the mapping to
partnames for the FAQ:
+ [7]01-FAQ-intro: Section [8]1: Network and Newsgroup
Information.
+ [9]02-Who-We-Are: Section [10]2: Who We Are
+ [11]03-Torah-Halacha: Sections [12]3, [13]4: Torah; Halachic
Authority
+ [14]04-Observance: Sections [15]5, [16]6, [17]7, [18]8:
Jewish Holidays; Jewish Dietary Law and Kashrut; Sabbath and
Holiday Observance; Woman and Marriage
+ [19]05-Worship: Sections [20]9, [21]10, [22]11: Jewish
Worship; Conversion, Intermarriage, and "Who is a Jew?";
Miscellaneous Practice Questions
+ [23]06-Jewish-Thought: Section [24]12: Jewish Thought
+ [25]07-Jews-As-Nation: Section [26]13: Jews as a Nation
+ [27]08-Israel: Section [28]14: Jews and Israel
+ [29]09-Antisemitism: Sections [30]15, [31]16, [32]17: Churban
Europa (The Holocaust); Antisemitism and Rumors about Jews;
Countering Missionaries
+ [33]10-Reform: Section [34]18: Reform/Progressive Judaism
+ [35]11-Miscellaneous: Sections [36]19, [37]20: Miscellaneous;
References and Getting Connected
+ [38]12-Kids: Section [39]21: Jewish Childrearing Related
Questions
+ [40]mail-order: Mail Order Judaica
The following is a short summary of the mapping of partnames for
the Reading Lists:
+ [41]general: Introduction and General. Includes book sources,
starting points for beginners, starting points for non-Jewish
readers, General Judaism, General Jewish Thought, General
Jewish History, Contemporary Judaism, Noachide Laws, Torah
and Torah Commentary, Talmud and Talmudic Commentary,
Mishnah, Midrash, Halachic Codes, Becoming An Observant Jew,
Women and Judaism, and Science and Judaism.
+ [42]traditional: Traditional Liturgy, Practice, Lifestyle,
Holidays. Includes Traditional Liturgy; Traditional
Philosophy and Ethics; Prayer; Traditional Practice; The
Household; Life, Death, and In-Between; and The Cycle Of
Holidays.
+ [43]mysticism: Kabbalah, Mysticism, and Messianism. Includes
Academic and Religious treatments of Kabbalah, Sprituality,
and the Jewish notion of the Messiah.
+ [44]reform: Reform/Progressive Judaism
+ [45]conservative: Conservative Judaism
+ [46]reconstructionist: Reconstructionist Judaism
+ [47]humanistic: Humanistic Judaism (Society for Humanistic
Judaism)
+ [48]chasidism: Chassidism. Includes general information on
historical chassidism, as well as specific information on
Lubavitch (Chabad), Satmar, Breslaw (Breslov), and other
approaches.
+ [49]zionism: Zionism. Includes Zionism and The Development Of
Israel, The Founders, Zionistic Movements, and Judaism in
Israel.
+ [50]antisemitism: Antisemitism. Includes sections on
Antisemitism, What Led to The Holocaust, Medieval Oppression,
Antisemitism Today (Including Dealing with Hate Groups),
Judaism and Christianity, and Judaism, Freemasonry and other
rumors.
+ [51]intermarriage: Intermarriage. Includes sections on "So
You're Considering Intermarriage?", The Traditional
Viewpoint, Conversion, and Coping With Life As An
Intermarried.
+ [52]childrens: Books for Jewish Children. Includes sections
on Birth and Naming, Raising a Child, Family Guidebooks,
Upsheren, Bar/Bat Mitzvah, Confirmation, Holiday Books for
Children, Liturgy for Children, Bible and Torah for Children,
Jewish History for Children, Jewish Theology for Children,
Israel, Learning Hebrew, and Jewish Stories.
Alternatively, you may send a message to
[53]mail-server@rtfm.mit.edu with the following line in the body
of the message:
send usenet/news.answers/judaism/(portionname)
Where (portionname) is replaced by the appropriate subdirectory
and filenames; for example, to get the first part of the reading
list, one would say:
send usenet/news.answers/judaism/reading-lists/general
* Anonymous FTP: All portions of the FAQ and of the reading lists
are archived on [54]rtfm.mit.edu and are available for anonymous
FTP from the pub/usenet/news.answers/judaism/FAQ directory (URL
[55]ftp://rtfm.mit.edu/pub/usenet/news.answers/judaism/FAQ/).
Similarly, the parts of the reading lists are stored in the
pub/usenet/news.answers/judaism/reading-lists directory (URL:
[56]ftp://rtfm.mit.edu/pub/usenet/news.answers/judaism/reading-lis
ts). Note that the archived versions of the FAQ and reading lists
are the posted versions; that is, they are each one large ASCII
file.
------------------------------------------------------------
Subject: Who Wrote the FAQ?
Answer:
The original version of the Frequently Asked Questions was developed
by a committee consisting of Mike Allen, Jerry Altzman, Rabbi Charles
Arian, Jacob Baltuch (Past Chair), Joseph Berry, Warren Burstein,
Stewart Clamen, Daniel Faigin, Avi Feldblum, Rabbi Yaakov Feldman,
Itzhak "Jeff" Finger, Gedaliah Friedenberg, Yechezkal Gutfreund, Art
Kamlet, Joe Kansun, CAPT Kaye David, Alan Lustiger, Hillel Markowitz,
Len Moskowitz, Colin Naturman, Aliza Panitz, Eliot Shimoff, Mark
Steinberger, Steven Weintraub, Matthew Wiener, and headed by Robert
Levene. The organization and structuring of the lists for posting
purposes was done by [2]Daniel Faigin, who is currently maintaining
the lists. Other contributors include Aaron Biterman, A. Engler
Anderson, Ken Arromdee, Seymour Axelrod, Jonathan Baker, Josh Backon,
Micha Berger, Steven M. Bergson, Eli Birnbaum, Shoshana L. Boublil,
Kevin Brook, J. Burton, Harvey Cohen, Todd J.Dicker, Michael Dinowitz,
Rabbi Jim Egolf, Sean Engelson, Mike Fessler, Menachem Glickman,
Amitai Halevi, Walter Hellman, Per Hollander, Miriam Jerris, Robert D.
Kaiser, Yosef Kazen, Rabbi Jay Lapidus, Mier Lehrer, Heather Luntz,
David Maddison, Arnaldo Mandel, Ilana Manspeizer, Seth Ness, Chris
Newport, Daniel Nomy, Jennifer Paquette, Andrew Poe, Alan Pfeffer,
Jason Pyeron, Adam Reed, Seth Rosenthall, JudithSeid@aol.com, David
Sheen, Rabbi John Sherwood, Michael Sidlofsky, Michael Slifkin, Frank
Smith, Michael Snider, Rabbi Arnold Steibel, Andy Tannenbaum,
marktan@aol.com, Meredith Warshaw, Bill Wadlinger, Arel Weisberg,
Dorothy Werner, and Art Werschulz, and the
soc.culture.jewish.parenting board. Some material has been derived
from other sources on the Internet, such as
[3]http://www.jewishwebsite.com/, [4]http://www.jewfaq.org/, and
[5]http://www.menorah.org/. Comments and corrections are welcome;
please address them to [6]maintainer@scjfaq.org.
A special thank you... Special thanks for her patience and
understanding go to my wife, Karen, who put up with me hiding at the
computer for the two months it took to complete the July/August 2000
remodel of the entire soc.culture.jewish FAQ and Reading Lists. If you
think the effort was worth it, drop her a note c/o
[7]maintainer@scjfaq.org.
------------------------------------------------------------
--
Please mail additions or corrections to me at faigin@pacificnet.net.
End of SCJ FAQ Part 3 (Torah and Halachic Authority) Digest
**************************
-------
Section 5 of 5 - Prev - Next
All sections - 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5
| Back to category FAQ - Discuss "soc.culture.jewish FAQ: Torah and Halachic Authority (3/12)" |
| Home - Search - About the project - Forum - Feedback |
© allanswers.org | Terms of use