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Everyone Holds Of The Prohibition Against Fasting On Rosh Hashana

One terutz, in a nutshell [poor terutz - stuck in a small nutshell....]: Even according to the opinions that allow one to fast on Rosh Hashana, it is ALSO a mitzvah to eat. Meaning, that if one fasts according to all of the details of the laws of fasts i.e. he accepted upon himself the fast in advance, then the fast OVERRRIDES the mitzvah to eat. This is because fasting is an act of teshuva. But if one does NOT accept the fast in advance, and just ends up not eating until chatzos because there was no food around, he must now go ahead and eat and may not finish the day with a fast. The MITZVA require a קבלת תענית in advance while the איסור to fast does not.

So it emerges that according to EVERYBODY there is a mitzvah to eat on Rosh Hashana as the pasuk in Nechmiah says "אכלו משמנים ושתו ממתקים". Just according to some, the value of a fast of teshuva overrides that mitzvah under certain circumstances. But the mitzvah to eat [and איסור to fast] never went away.

[עפ"י דברי הפחד יצחק ראש השנה מאמר כ"ב]

So now we can understand the gemara's question לכולי עלמא: Why do we need the third of Tishrei in Megillas Taanis to forbid fasting on the second - one should be forbidden because it follows the first of Tishrei which in principal is a day that one is forbidden to fast!!  

    

Fasting On Rosh Hashana

There are opinions in the Rishonim that it is permitted or even a mitzva to fast on Rosh Hashana. After learning the following gemara [Rosh Hashana 18b-19a], those opinions will be under threat of extinction. 

מותיב [מקשה] רב אחא בר הונא: נאמר במגילת תענית בתלתא [בשלושה] בתשרי יום שמחה הוא כי בו בטילת אדכרתא מן שטריא [בטלה אזכרת שם שמים מן השטרות. ומבואר שם, ש]גזרה מלכות יון גזרה על היהודים, שלא להזכיר שם שמים על פיהם, וכשגברה מלכות חשמונאי ונצחום התקינו שיהו מזכירין שם שמים אפילו בשטרות. וכך היו כותבים: בשנת כך וכך ליוחנן כהן גדול לאל עליון. וכששמעו חכמים בדבר אמרו למחר זה פורע את חובו ונמצא שטר מוטל באשפה וביטלום ואותו היום עשאוהו יו"ט ואי סלקא דעתך בטלה מגילת תענית קמייתא בטול אחרנייתא מוסיפין.
ומשיבים: הכא במאי עסקינן, בזמן שבית המקדש קיים [ואז נשמרו כל הימים המנויים במגילת תענית. ואף הוסיפו מפעם לפעם ימי זכרון נוספים. ומה שאמרנו שבטלה — זה לאחר החורבן].

[ומקשים: אם היה זה בזמן שבית המקדש היה קיים] ותיפוק ליה [ויצא לו דין זה שהוא יום שמחה מטעם אחר כי] דהוה ליה [הרי הוא] יום שנהרג בו גדליה בן אחיקם, [והרי אמרנו שבזמן בית המקדש עשו את ימי הצום לימי שמחה!] אמר רב: לא נצרכה [תקנה זו של שמחה בשלישי בתשרי] אלא לאסור את יום שלפניו. [כי ימי השמחה הקבועים לחגים במגילת תענית לא רק הם עצמם אסורים בתענית אלא גם היום שלפניהם ושלאחריהם, ודין זה לא היה קיים קודם, גם כאשר בטל צום גדליה.]

ומקשים: שלפניו נמי [גם כן], תיפוק ליה [תצא לו הלכה זו ממקום אחר] דהוה ליה [שהרי הוא] יום שלאחר ראש חדש, [ואמרנו שיום אחד לפני כל חג ואחרי כל חג אין מתענים בו! ודוחים:] ראש חדש דאורייתא הוא ודאורייתא לא בעי [וחגים מן התורה אינם צריכים] חיזוק [ולכן לא קבעו בהם תקנה שגם בימים שלפניהם ולאחריהם אסור יהיה להתענות].

Rav Aḥa bar Huna raised an objection: It is stated in Megillat Ta’anit: On the third of Tishrei the ordinance requiring the mention of God’s name in legal documents was abolished, and on that day fasting is forbidden. For the kingdom of Greece had issued a decree against the Jews forbidding them to mention the name of Heaven on their lips. When the Hasmonean kingdom became strong and defeated the Greeks, they instituted that people should mention the name of Heaven even in their legal documents. And therefore they would write: In year such and such of Yoḥanan the High Priest of the God Most High.


And when the Sages heard about this they said: Tomorrow this one, the borrower, will repay his debt, the lender will no longer need to save the loan document, the document will be cast on a dunghill, and the name of Heaven written there will come to disgrace. And so they annulled the ordinance to mention God’s name in documents, and they made that day into a Festival. And if it enters your mind to say that Megillat Ta’anit has been nullified, can you say that the first prohibitions against fasting they annulled, and then later ones were added?


The Gemara answers: With what are we dealing here? This is referring to a time when the Temple was standing and all the days listed in Megillat Ta’anit were in force. From time to time new days of commemoration were added. When the amora’im stated that Megillat Ta’anit was nullified they were referring to the time after the destruction of the Temple.

The Gemara raises a difficulty: But if this was at the time that the Temple was standing, derive the prohibition against fasting on the third of Tishrei from the fact that it is the day that Gedaliah, son of Ahikam, was killed. During the time of the Temple the biblical fast days were celebrated as days of joy. 

Rav said: It was only necessary to include the third of Tishrei in Megillat Ta’anit in order to prohibit fasting on the preceding day as well. Fasting was forbidden not only on the actual days listed in Megillat Ta’anit, but also on the preceding day and the following day.

The Gemara raises another difficulty: With regard to the prohibition against fasting on the preceding day, the second of Tishrei, also derive it because it is the day after the New Moon, and fasting is forbidden not only on festive days, but also on the preceding day and the following day. The Gemara rejects this argument: The New Moon is by Torah law, and festive days that are by Torah law do not require reinforcement. Therefore no decree was ever enacted prohibiting fasting on the days before and after.

Asked the Shaagas Aryeh [101] - If it is correct that one may fast on Rosh Hashana, or that it is even a mitzva to fast on Rosh Hashana, then how can the Gemara ask that we should derive the prohibition against fasting on the second of Tishrei from the fact that it is the day after Rosh Chodesh?? This Rosh Chodesh is DIFFERENT from all of Roshei Chodesh insofar [three words for the price of ONE!!:-)] as that it is permitted to fast. So how can the day following Rosh Chodesh be forbidden to fast when Rosh Chodesh itself is permitted??!!! 

The only way the Gemara's question makes sense is if we say that it is forbidden to fast on the first day of Rosh Hashana and thus the second day will also be forbidden?!  

What Is Memory? Who Is Mom??

What is the deeper meaning of memory? 

Memory CONNECTS THE DOTS!! If not for memory - every moment would be a disjointed, disjuncted, meaningless point in time. There would be no relationship between one second and the next. You go to the kitchen but you have no idea why. You see your mother there and you haven't the FOGGIEST IDEA who she is. You see a big box but without memory, you don't know that it is a refrigerator and what it's purpose is [i.e. to enable us to get fat]. Life would be completely unmanageable. You wouldn't understand a word of what is being said to you because all of our understanding is based on our memory of what words mean. We wouldn't be able to get dressed in the morning or even know that we are supposed to because that too is memory based. EVERYTHING we do and say is predicated on the memory that we SOOOOO take for granted. So THANK YOU O LORD FOR MEMORY!!!:-):-)!!!

Says the Medrash: The Melachim told Hashem not to create man with the words of Tehillim מה אנוש כי תזכרנו - Who is man that you should REMEMBER him. Should they not have said כי תבראנו - That you should CREATE him??

Memory - on yet a deeper level, connects us to our point of creation. Every morning we say נשמה שנתת בי טהורה היא אתה בראתה וכו' אתה נפתחת בי - The neshama that You put into me is pure, You created it etc. You blew it into me. 

The angels were saying that man doesn't use his memory to remember from whence he came. Man doesn't remember the most important part of his being - so why should YOU "remember" him and give him this power of memory that he will misuse?? 

Hashem didn't accept their claim and created man anyway. To commemorate this, on "Yom Hazikaron" [Rosh Hashana's name according to Chazal] we blow the shofar and say psukim of זכרונות - memories. These memories are intended to instruct us as to what is important in life and to give us the proper perspective. The blowing of the shofar brings us back to the most primordial memory of Hashem blowing into our nostrils ויפח באפיו נשמת חיים and Chazal say that this means that He blew from deep inside himself כביכול to create man.    

When we connect to that point with our memories we make ourselves worthy of being recreated for a new year. 

The gemara says about the blowing of the shofar כיון דלזכרון קאתי כלפני ולפנים דמי - Since it comes as a זכרון - memory, it is like it is in the Holy Of Holies [and therefore it may not be made with gold]. The memory of the original ויפח באפיו takes us to the Holy Of Holies. 

[עי' פח"י ר"ה מאמר כ"ה]

Elchonon Ehrman - Sfas Emes Shoftim 5641-2

Elchonon Ehrman - Sfas Emes Shoftim 5640

Elchonon Ehrman - Sfas Emes Shoftim 5639

EXCIIITIIINNGGGGG!

NEXT WEEK THE NEW WEBSITE "MEVAKESHLEV.COM" IS MAKING ITS GRAND APPEARANCE!

I again thank all those TZADIKIM who made it po$$ible!

I coulda done it without you - but then I would have had to raid the cash registers in the local supermarket.

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What Is The Act Of Divorce?

לע"נ סבתי מרת אלטע חנה בת ר' מאיר זאב  

Going back to the Rashi in the previous post. 

Why does he need to quote the pasuk of ונתן בידה to prove his point that the שליחות is invalid and the divorce is off? Is there not a rule in כל התורה כולה that when the שליחות is canceled, the entire act is nullified? 

Maybe it is because he wanted to bring an explicit pasuk to that effect. But we already have a different pasuk - the same pasuk that teaches us שליחות can also teach us this rule. Since the שליח has been canceled, there is no more שליחות and hence no גירושין??? 

Based on what we wrote in the previous post, learning from the pasuk teaching us שליחות would not be an option because the לימוד of שליחות from the pasuk is not explicit so that would be called דברי סופרים according to Rashi and the gemara asks that חזרה is דאורייתא. So Rashi HAD to bring the explicit pasuk. 

But we can traverse a different path to explain Rashi, based on the writings of the great Rosh Yeshiva of Be'er Yaakov, Rav Moshe Shmuel Shapiro z"l. [Rav Shmuel Rozovsky ztz"l said, if I recall correctly, that the ONLY Rosh Yeshiva whom he is מקנא in learning is Rav Moshe Shmuel]. 

What is ונתן בידה teaching us? On the surface, if there is no ונתן בידה then we run into the problem of טלי גיטך מעל גבי הקרקע, a husband places the גט on the ground and instructs his wife to take it, which is no good. 

But in fact, it is more than that. The act of divorce is different than other קנינים. Normally, one performs an act and as a result, makes the קנין. He gives a woman money and as a result, she is married. He fences in a field and as a result, acquires it. 

But גירושין is different. The very act of handing her the גט IS the גירושין. Not that he hands her the גט and now something else happens - they are divorced, but that handing her the גט IS the divorce. It is not just a מעשה קנין but the very divorce itself. The Rambam begins Hilchos Geirushin with the words אין האשה מתגרשת אלא בכתב שיגיע לה וכתב זה הוא הנקרא גט. Then he goes on to tell us the ten conditions that are absolutely critical in order for the divorce to be valid. Meaning, first he defines what גירושין is - הכתב שיגיע לה, he hands her the גט. Then he tells us the laws of this גט. [See קובץ ביאורים סימן ע' אות ג where this is fleshed out nicely].  

What IS גירושין at the CORE? Handing over to her the get which separates between them. [But not that there are 2 stages. 1] He hands her the גט, a מעשה הקנאה. and 2] They are now divorced.]

Now we can understand why ביטול שליחות בכל התורה כולה wasn't enough for Rashi and he had to quote the pasuk ונתן בידה. He is telling us that normally when there is a מעשה קנין we understand on our own that if the מעשה קנין is done not by the person or his proxy it is invalid. But גט may be different than standard מעשי קנין because all that matters is that the גט is given. So who cares who gives it. The נתינת הגט is מגרש!!! That is why Rashi quotes the pasuk ונתן בידה and explains that he [or his שליח] must do the giving. [The pasuk that teaches us that there is שליחות for a גט would also not  have sufficed because maybe שליחות works for a גט even after being canceled as long as the גט was handed over to her by anybody. ונתן בידה  teaches that it must be her husband or his proxy].    

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!:-)!

  

What Is Called Di-oraisa?

לזכות ש"ב היקר הרב ישראל יעקב בן ר' אשר זיליג

ר' אברהם יצחק בן אסתר

ר' יוסף עזרא בן אסתר

גילה שושנה בת נעכא גיטל לזש"ק

וכל בני ביתם

Says the gemara in Gittin [9a-b]:

אחד גיטי נשים ואחד שיחרורי עבדים: תנו רבנן בשלשה דרכים שוו גיטי נשים לשיחרורי עבדים שוו למוליך ולמביא וכל גט שיש עליו עד כותי פסול חוץ מגיטי נשים ושחרורי עבדים וכל השטרות העולים בערכאות של עובדי כוכבים אע"פ שחותמיהן עובדי כוכבים כשירין חוץ מגיטי נשים ושחרורי עבדים וכדברי ר"מ בארבעה האומר תן גט זה לאשתי ושטר שחרור זה לעבדי רצה לחזור בשניהם יחזור דברי ר"מ.

The mishna teaches that both bills of divorce and bills of emancipation are the same in that the agent who brings them is required to say: It was written in my presence and it was signed in my presence. The Sages taught: In three ways the halachot of bills of divorce are equal to the halachot of bills of emancipation: They are equal with regard to one who delivers and one who brings, i.e., if one takes a bill of divorce or a bill of emancipation to a country overseas from Eretz Yisrael, or if he brings it from there, he is required to testify that it was written and signed in his presence. And any document that has a Kuti witness signed on it is invalid, except for bills of divorce and bills of emancipation, as Kusi witnesses are permitted to serve as witnesses for these documents. And with regard to all documents that are produced in gentile courts [arkaot], even though their signatories are gentiles, they are valid, except for bills of divorce and bills of emancipation. These documents are not valid when prepared by gentiles. And according to the statement of Rabbi Meir, bills of divorce and manumission are equal in four ways, the three aforementioned halakhot and also with regard to a man who says: Give this bill of divorce to my wife, or: Give this bill of emancipation to my slave. They are equal in that if he desires to retract his instruction with regard to both of these documents, before they have reached the woman or slave, he can retract. This is the statement of Rabbi Meir.

The gemara says further that the braisa only listed דינים דרבנן and not דינים דאורייתא. Then the gemara questions this premise by asking 

והא חזרה דאורייתא וקתני

But the halakha of retraction applies by Torah law, as according to the opinion of Rabbi Meir the husband can retract his instruction to give the bill of divorce and the master can retract his instruction to give the bill of emancipation by Torah law, thereby canceling the agency. And yet the baraita teaches it among the ways in which bills of divorce are equal to bills of emancipation. This indicates that the tanna does not distinguish between a case that applies by Torah law and one that applies by rabbinic law.

Says Rashi: 

חזרה - רצה לחזור בשניהם לר"מ פסולה דאורייתא הוא, דהא כיון דבטיל משלח לשליחותיה דשליח, נמצא שאינו שלוחו ואין כאן גירושין כלל והיינו דאורייתא דרחמנא אמר ונתן בידה וזה לא נתן לא הוא ולא שלוחו:

Rashi says that since the husband nullified the שליחות the שליח is no longer his שליח and there is no divorce. This is דאורייתא as we see from the pasuk requiring ונתן בידה - and here he didn't hand it to her nor did his שליח. 

Rashi, the Master of Brevity, seems to more verbose than he has to be. It is PASHUT that since he is מבטל the שליחות that he is no longer his שליח. Why does Rashi find it necessary to marshal proof from psukim to bolster his point?

Rav Mann ztz"l suggests as follows: The Rambam lists 14 שורשים in his Sefer Hamitzvos. These are principals related to the mitzvos, their count etc. It is כדאי מאאאאאד to learn:-). Anyway, the Rambam writes in the שורש השני that whatever is derived from the י"ג מידות and הלכה למשה מסיני is called "דברי סופרים" except where the Gemara says explicitly that it is דאורייתא. 

Does Rashi subscribe to this notion as well? We see that he apparently does. He defines שחיטה as דברי סופרים in [ד"ה כל מצוה] even though it is clear that שחיטה is מדאורייתא.

Now we can understand what Rashi was driving at [although he could not have had a drivers license because he lived centuries before the invention of automobiles]. The gemara here says that חזרה is דאורייתא. Rashi is telling us that we should not think that this halacha is merely derived from the י"ג מידות or הלכה למשה מסיני. If that would be the case it would be defined as מדברי סופרים. In fact, it is learned from EXPLICIT psukim, so the gemara's assertion that it is דאורייתא is absolutely true. 

והדברים הם כפתור ופרח!    

How To Change

A story is told of a caterpillar named Yellow who was trying to find out what she should be doing with her life. In her wanderings she discovered another caterpillar seemingly caught in some gauzy, hairy filament. Concerned, she asked if she could help. He explained that this was all part of the process of becoming a butterfly.

When she heard the word butterfly, her whole insides leapt. “But what is a butterfly?”

The cocooned caterpillar explained: “It’s what you are meant to become.”

Yellow was intrigued but a bit defiant. “How can I believe there’s a butterfly inside you or me when all I see is a fuzzy worm?”

On further reflection, she pensively asked, “How does one become a butterfly?”

And the answer? “You must want to fly so much that you are willing to give up being a caterpillar.”

Do you want to change? Change means having to LET GO of things you hold dear. Behavioral patterns, thought patterns, bad habits etc. etc. Most people are not willing to do that. That is why they don't change and spend a lifetime in the same rut. 

The secret? RATZON. A strong will. A powerful, indomitable spirit.  

Why Is America So Prosperous

Chazal say "עשר בשביל שתתעשר" - Give maaser on order to become wealthy. That is Torah. 

Here is the data: 

Arthur Brooks

President Of The American Enterprise Institute 

I’m going to talk to you today about something that you’ve probably given a lot of thought to: charity. But I want to talk about it in a way you maybe haven’t thought about it: about how you can use it in your lives and in the lives of others. I want to talk to you about how charity can and should prominently figure in the lives of [religious] people—but in a way that maybe hasn’t quite occurred to you before. I want to start with a quote from the famous industrialist John D. Rockefeller from 1905.

Rockefeller was famously quoted in that year as saying, “God gave me my money”. God gave him his money? Some have used the quote as evidence that John D. Rockefeller was a bad man—that he believed he deserved to be rich when other people were poor. But that’s not actually what he meant.

In 1906 Rockefeller went on to tell a newspaper reporter for the New York American: “I believe the power to make money is a gift from God . . . to be developed and used to the best of our ability for the good of mankind” (to William Hoster, quoted in Jules Abels, The Rockefeller Billions: The Story of the World’s Most Stupendous Fortune [New York: Macmillan, 1965], 279–80).

What Rockefeller meant was this: He believed that he made money because he was charged with helping others with his money, and he honestly believed (as he wrote at other times) that if he stopped giving his money and giving it in the right way, then God would take his money away.

Now, that still might trouble you theologically that God would intervene in the direct finances of John D. Rockefeller, but you have to admit that it doesn’t sound so weird at that point. John D. Rockefeller believed that he was rich because he gave so much, and throughout his life, before he was a rich man, he gave a lot. He was a charitable person.

A lot of entrepreneurs believe that one of the reasons that they’re rich is because they give. Entrepreneurs in this country are some of its most charitable citizens. And I’ve always heard this, because for years I taught in a department of entrepreneurship, so I got to know the modern John D. Rockefellers who thought that they were rich partly because they gave. But, you know, I never believed it—never believed a word of it—because I was trained as an economist.

A lot of you have taken classes in economics. When you walk into your first class in economics, here’s what the professor doesn’t say: “You want to get rich? Give all your money away.” That’s not the advice you hear. It doesn’t make sense. No, you have to have money first, and then you can give it away. That’s what economists like me think. So I set out to test John D. Rockefeller’s view that he was rich because he—and all the other entrepreneurs I talked to—gave. That way, the next time I heard somebody say that you could get rich by giving your money away, I was going to respond, “No, you’re wrong. I have the data that say you have to have it before you can give it away.”

Well, I’m going to tell you what I found, and in a nutshell what I found was that Rockefeller was right and I was wrong. I’m going to show you the evidence that proves how wrong I was and tell you how you can use this information in your life and how I’m using it in mine.

But first a little background on charitable giving in America: Americans give. Americans give a lot. In 2006 American citizens privately gave about $300 billion away to charity. Now, $300 billion—is that a lot, or is that a little? Who even knows these days? The president with the stroke of a pen could give away three times that to people who cannot pay their mortgages, for all we know. It’s a crazy time out there, but to put it into perspective, $300 billion is more than the entire national income of Sweden. We give away to charity more than the whole country of Swedes makes in income. That’s a lot of money. Seventy-five percent of America’s families give every year. Fifty percent volunteer their time, and many Americans give in myriad other ways that are not captured in data.

Now, given this, one often asks, How do Americans compare in charitable giving with people around the world? There’s a perception out there, if you listen to politicians, that we’re stingy. Jimmy Carter, the former president of the United States, said in a relatively recent speech that Americans are indifferent to the suffering of the poor around the world: “The problem lies among the people of the U.S. It’s a different world from ours. And we don’t really care about what happens to them” (16th Annual Nobel Peace Prize Forum, 21 February 2004, St. Olaf College, Northfield, Minnesota).

The data says that President Carter is wrong. If we look at how much money Americans give per capita compared to citizens in other countries of the world, we will find that the average American citizen gives away three-and-a-half times as much money each year as the average French citizen, seven times as much as the average German, and 14 times as much as the average Italian.

Now, as an economist I want to know whether or not that’s because we are richer. However, when you correct for income differences and tax differences and all the things that make the United States a different country, you find that the gap doesn’t close. This is an authentic difference in culture—once again something I do believe we can be quite pleased with. The questions, then, are why does it matter and which is pushing and which is pulling? Is the fact that we’re, generally speaking, a richer country the reason that we give so much, as I’d always thought? Or is what John D. Rockefeller would have said true: that the fact that we give so much is one of the secrets to our success?

That’s what I set out to show. I set out to show that Rockefeller was wrong: that you have to have the money before you give it away, that we all need to go to work, and that we need tax policy that puts plenty of money in our pockets—then we’ll help each other. That’s what I intended to show.

The way I set out to show that was by gathering data on 30,000 American families from all over the country. Actually, colleagues at Harvard University collected the data in the year 2000. Working from coast to coast, they collected the data from 41 communities big and small and towns north and south. Salt Lake City was one of the communities we looked at. We also looked at Washington, D.C., and Seattle, Washington (my hometown)—lots of places were in there. Thirty thousand families were asked questions about how much they gave, what they gave to, how much money they made, their education, their family life, and everything in between. It was the most comprehensive look at people’s service behavior and their charitable giving that we’ve ever had before, and I eagerly anticipated these data because I was going to show what I’d always thought. This was going to give me a statistical way to show that you have to have the money first.

So I charted it up and did the statistical analysis. I worked for months with my computer in my darkened office to get my conclusion. The conclusion was, sure enough, that when people get richer, they tend to give more money away. But I also came up with the following counterintuitive finding: When people give more money away, they tend to prosper.

Specifically, here’s what I found. If you have two families that are exactly identical—in other words, same religion, same race, same number of kids, same town, same level of education, and everything’s the same—except that one family gives a hundred dollars more to charity than the second family, then the giving family will earn on average $375 more in income than the nongiving family—and that’s statistically attributable to the gift.

Now, when I got this I was perplexed. I was really confused because it didn’t go with my theory. In psychology this is what we call cognitive dissonance—two competing ideas in conflict with each other. On the one hand I had the theory that I’d always worked under. On the other hand I had data that completely contradicted the theory. So I did what college professors always do in this case: I got rid of the data. I said, “That can’t be right. I’ve obviously messed something up.” I got new software. I looked for new data. I recrunched the numbers. I kept coming up with the same thing.

I ran the numbers again, and I looked at volunteering. I found the same thing: People who volunteer do better financially. I ran the numbers on blood contributions and blood donations. Think about that—giving blood. You’re not going to get richer if you give blood, are you? Well, yes, you are.

I figured it couldn’t be right, so I ignored the findings. I didn’t publish them. I let them roll around in my head for a long time. And I thought, you know, I’ve got a better way to test this—I’m going to look at the whole United States. I wanted to see how charitable giving had changed over a 50-year period and compare it to how income had changed. Then I could see which was statistically pushing and which was pulling.

I examined the average family between 1954 and 2004 and found (adjusted for inflation) a 150-percent increase in real purchasing power. This is great news. This is actually an amazing thing worldwide. You simply don’t see growth like this in real purchasing power in already rich countries. It’s an incredible achievement that the United States has undertaken. This is a testament to prosperity that comes from productivity and hard work and dedication. This is a good thing.

Charitable giving also increased over the same period per family on average by 190 percent. And this is an even better story because what this says is that we’re getting more prosperous in this country, but we’re getting even more generous over time. I’m pleased with this result. It tells me once again that what Jimmy Carter said about this country is not right. We’re not a stingy country. Could we be more generous? Of course we could. But we’re not getting stingier.

Here’s the real question: Which is pushing and which is pulling? Is income driving up donations or are donations driving up income or what? And the answer, once again, is both. You find that when our country gets richer, people do give more away. And as we give more away, that translates into better economic growth for this country.

Statistically what we find is that if we were to increase our private charitable donations by just 1 percent, which is about $2 billion a year—$2 billion a year from people like you and me writing checks for our favorite causes: our churches and our favorite charities—if we just did that, that would translate into a gross domestic product of about 39 billion new dollars. That’s a great multiplier.

Now, $39 billion by today’s stakes is nothing. The president pulls $39 billion from behind the cushions of the couch at the White House. It’s laundry money. It’s three months in Iraq. It’s 5 percent of the stimulus package. It’s nothing. But it’s a great multiplier. If I can take your $2 billion in charity and turn it into $39 billion, then suddenly charitable giving is not just a great investment for you. It’s also a patriotic act for our country because it translates into jobs and growth and opportunity and tax revenues and all the stuff that we really like.

The more I ran the numbers, the more I kept getting this crazy result. I kept getting the same thing over and over and over. Rockefeller was right, but I still refused to believe it. So in desperation I finally went to a colleague who specialized in the psychology of charitable giving, and I said, “I’m getting this result I can’t understand. It doesn’t make sense. It’s like the hand of God or something on the economy, and I can’t believe it’s true.”

And the first thing he asked was, “Why don’t you believe it’s true? You’re religious, aren’t you?”

This shook me a bit, but just for a second. “Yeah, but I’m a social scientist,” I shot back. “We’re not supposed to believe those things. I need a more earthbound explanation.”

“Well, I’ll give you one,” he said. “We’ve known this for 30 years in the psychology profession.”

And I said, “Well, tell me, tell me.”

He said, “We haven’t just been talking about money. You economists—you worry about money all the time, and money is boring. We worry about something that people really care about—the currency by which we really spend our days—and that’s happiness. We’ve known for 30 years that people who give get happier as a result. Can you use that?”

And I said, “Oh, yeah.” Because I know from teaching at a business school that the best way to run a successful business is to hire happy people. That’s really where the action is. Some of you know that too. If you want to have a productive business and if you want to be a productive person, work on your happiness. Happy people show up for work more, they work longer hours, they work more joyfully, and they’re happier with every aspect of their productive lives. Happiness is the secret to success, and if that’s true, I’ve got the answer. Charity brings happiness, happiness brings success, and now I’m onto something.

It turns out that the data on happiness and charitable giving are beyond dispute. People who give to charity are 43 percent more likely than people who don’t give to say they’re very happy people. People who give blood are twice as likely to say they’re very happy people as people who don’t give blood. People who volunteer are happier. The list goes on. You simply can’t find any kind of service that won’t make you happier.

Laboratory experiments using human subjects find that when people are asked to give to other people, it elevates their mood. Furthermore, if you increase your level of charitable giving, you can permanently alter your level of what psychologists call positive effect—which is to say, being in a good mood. You can be a happier person that way. It’s the secret, basically. The real question is not whether that’s true; the question is why that’s true.

There’s a very interesting set of studies that tell us why it is that giving will make you into a happy person. The first has to do with how it changes your brain. I’m going to explain that in a minute. The second is what it does to how other people treat you. Let me explain. The first is that the wiring of our brains is conducive to charitable giving, and it works something like this. In the late 1980s there was a famous study of charitable giving that looked at how people reacted with respect to the endorphins that they experienced. Endorphins are neurochemicals that make you feel a sort of euphoria. If you like to run marathons, it’s probably because afterward you feel really good—you feel sort of high in a way. Psychologists came forth with studies that showed that when people volunteer to help other people, they get what they call “the helper’s high.” Volunteering actually gives people a mild sense of euphoria.

I think that’s an interesting study, but it doesn’t help me explain prosperity. The helper’s high doesn’t get me there, and the reason is this. When I was in high school I went to school with a lot of kids who specialized in getting high. And it turns out that that was not a secret to success. Now that I’m 44 years old and keeping in touch with a couple of people from high school, I can assure you that the pathway they took was not the one to great prosperity. So it’s interesting that you get this helper’s high, but it doesn’t help us explain all this worldly prosperity that I keep finding in my data.

Later studies of the brain came up with a more compelling explanation. These studies showed that when people give, it lowers their levels of stress. This is really important to understand in prosperity because one thing that we know is that people who do their jobs with less stress tend to be more productive and more successful than those who perform it with more stress. You’ll find throughout your lives that if you can find ways to relax, you will profit from this level of relaxation. Studies have shown that charitable giving will objectively lower the stress levels that people feel in their everyday lives.

There is one famous study from the Duke Medical School in 1996. It’s a study that I love because it’s so strange. Senior citizens were asked in an experiment to give massages to infants, to little babies—which is a funny thing. It just goes to show you that in the university community you can get tenure for doing anything. Of these senior citizens, half of them gave massages to infants and the other half didn’t. The researchers monitored the stress hormones in the senior citizens’ brains to see what happened.

There are three stress hormones, for your information. (This is the kind of thing that, when you’re like me and write books for a living, you find out about.) What are the three stress hormones? They’re called cortisol, epinephrine, and norepinephrine. When somebody cuts you off in traffic or insults you or you get a D on an exam or something like that, those chemicals are lighting up your brain like a Christmas tree, and you’re unhappy as a result because you’re stressed out. What you want to do is go through life with less cortisol, epinephrine, and norepinephrine in your day-to-day life. And what they found in the study of the senior citizens was that those who gave the massages to the babies cut their stress hormones in half. Big finding! Their interpretation was that this is great advice for people who want to be more effective, and this tells us something about why people who give a lot as part of their regular lifestyles are going to be more successful.

The second set of studies has to do not with what happens in your brain when you give but with what happens in other people’s brains when you give. A study from the University of Kent in southern England was dedicated to figuring out how people see others who are givers. There is an experiment called a cooperation game in which people are gathered in a large room, given a little bit of money, and asked to contribute to a common fund. Then the researchers look in the common fund, double it, and pass it out equally among the participants. If you think about that game, the best thing for everybody to do is to put in all of their money and have it doubled. But if you’re crafty, what you want to do is hold back all your money when everybody else puts in theirs and don’t cooperate. That way you get your own money and a chunk of everybody else’s. That’s the idea. And, as the experiment showed, there is always a proportion of people who opt to do so.

Now, researchers have been studying this kind of thing for years. What made it interesting when the University of Kent studied it was this. There was a second phase in which people in the game who had witnessed each other cooperating in giving to each other were asked to break up into teams and elect leaders. What they found was that in 82 percent of the cases, the leaders who were elected were the biggest givers from the first phase.

Their conclusion, a conclusion that has been verified in subsequent experiments, is that when people see strangers giving charitably, they recognize a leadership quality in those strangers. If people witness you as a giver, they will see a leader. Servant leadership is no joke, and it’s a secret to success, whether you’re looking for success or not. When people see you giving and cooperating and serving others, they will see in you a leader, or a future leader, and they cannot help but help you.

There are many other studies that show that givers have better health and that givers are better citizens. It goes on and on. The bottom line is this: Givers are healthier, happier, and richer in this country—and probably around the world. It gives us stronger communities; indeed, it gives us a more prosperous nation.

The question for me now is this: Who gives the most? And who’s getting all this benefit—wonderful benefit—for themselves and for their communities? Well, I told you before: people from Utah. But that doesn’t get me far enough, because if you move across the border from Idaho you are not suddenly going to start coughing up to charity. You’re just not going to do it.

There is something else going on, and you know what it is. It’s practicing faith. The number-one characteristic of those who give in this country is that they practice a faith. Of people who practice their faith regularly—which is to say, they attend worship services every week—91 percent give to charity each year. Of people who don’t attend every week, 66 percent do. This translates into millions and millions of people who are healthier, happier, and more prosperous than their neighbors, and it charts back to a lot of their religious experiences.

There are two ways to explain this link between God and giving. Explanation number one: You’re better people. Explanation number two: You’ve been given a special gift—the gift of giving. Now I’m going to ask you to take a pretty sophisticated understanding here of charitable giving. I’m telling you that the data say giving helps you, so if you want to help others, don’t just give to them—think about what you can do today to help somebody else to give. The main beneficiary of a charitable gift is the giver him- or herself.

Let me summarize that. What does the data tell me? They tell me that I am the big beneficiary of my own giving, that people similar to me who take their faith seriously are the beneficiaries because we tend to give a lot. We’ve been taught to do what is right, and we are reaping the reward. So how can we, given this fact, reinterpret the scriptures about charitable giving? How can we take it to the next level?

How are you going to do that? How are you going to help somebody to give more today? There are a lot of ways to do it. Let me tell you how you’ve done it for me.

Myth number one: Giving makes us poorer. You hear this all the time. This is what the economist like me thinks. It’s wrong; you have to fight thinking that way. And there are arguments that say the way it works is not just the hand of God—at least not directly the hand of God. Instead, maybe it’s the hand of God through our neurochemistry, having to do with the structure of our brains. But there are good explanations for why this is not true.

Myth number two: People are naturally selfish. I hear this constantly: “They are not going to give. People are just selfish.” People are selfish, it’s true, but they’re not naturally selfish; people are unnaturally selfish. When we are our best selves, when we are in equilibrium, when we are where we’re supposed to be cognitively, neurochemically, and spiritually, then we are giving people.

Myth number three: Giving is a luxury. It’s not. It’s a necessity—the first 10 percent, not the last 10 percent. And the reason is that if we want to be better, we have to give.

Myth number four: This is not a public policy lecture, but I’m a public policy professional, so I’m going to make one public policy point here today. You will hear in the coming days and weeks and months that if our country were doing what it should be doing for people in need, then we wouldn’t need private giving, that the government would be taking care of people who need it, and that we would not need you to step in to provide needs. Having looked at the data, I am here to tell you today that the day the government takes over for you in your private charity is the day we get poorer, unhappier, and unhealthier. The process starts right now on the day the government crowds us out. We must demand to take our place as givers and to support our communities of need and people who need the services that we can provide.

Second, how else can we help others give more? Well, by teaching. We’re teachers. I’m a teacher. You’re a teacher. We’re leaders in our communities. Everything we do demonstrates what we believe. People mimic those who are successful, happy, and well adjusted. You’ve heard many times throughout your training in church and in school that you’re never really alone. Somebody is always watching you. You’re always creating an example, and, as such, you’re a teacher. What you do today people will see. Make sure that it’s clear that you’re a charitable giver—and they will emulate you.

And third, how can we bring our creativity to bear more in our families? How can we create a curriculum where giving is a core competency? We’re very good at teaching reading and writing—well, we’re not that good at that either, but in theory we’re pretty good at teaching reading and writing. We’re not very good at taking teaching giving seriously, yet this is a core competency for successful citizenship and a happy life. We need to be better about teaching this.

What I charge you with today is what I charge myself with, which is to discover more creative solutions to working these concepts into our everyday lives. You can tell this has changed my life a lot. I hope you can tell that it really has. When I was working on this research four years ago, I came home with a chapter from a book that showed these data analyses, and my wife read it. She reads everything I write. She tells me pretty honestly when it’s not so good. She read the chapter and said, “I think this is really something. I think we can use this.”

“Yeah, we should give more,” I answered. “We should write bigger checks. We should take this seriously.”

She said, “No, no, no. I think we should do something bigger. I think we should adopt a baby.”

And I said, “Sweetheart, it’s only a book.

But I had no argument. We had to do it. And we did it. It was the best thing we ever did. And that changed our lives even more.

As for your money being cheerfully refunded, I can’t guarantee that, but I promise you that this stuff really works. It works—if you want—because of God in heaven, or it works—if you want—because of your neurochemistry, but it really works, and I leave you with that and one more thought.

As an American citizen and as a person with great delight to be here and living in this great country, one of the things that I’ve learned as a result of my research is that I’m a happy prosperous person because I live in a country with people who serve. Because you give to your causes that you care about here in Utah, I have a richer, happier, and healthier life even though I live in Washington, D.C. So for all that you do between your student life and your giving and everything else that characterizes your life of service that helps me so much, my last words to you are thank you.

Rashi On Shtaros In Gentile Courts - The Sequel

Continuing where we left off..... 

The gemara says that שטרי מתנה are kosher in Gentile courts because of דינא דמלכותא. But that is difficult to understand, because if so, why only שטרי ערכאות, documents that are processed in court, ALL שטרות should be kosher because of דינא דמלכותא?? [See the Ro"sh]. 

It is also difficult to understand according to the numerous opinions that דמ"ד is not valid if it opposes דין תורה. If we assume that these שטרות are פסול מדין תורה then how can we validate them by dint of דינא דמלכותא?? [See באר מרים פ"ד מהל' מלכים ה"א אריכות נפלאה].

Other opinions hold that דמ"ד is only with regard to those laws that were promulgated for the sake of the king. What do שטרי ערכאות have to do with the king's needs?? 

Therefore Rashi explained that the דינא דמלכותא we are talking about in our sugya is referring to מצות דינים of בני נח and not the classical דינא דמלכותא. According to the Ramban [פרשת וישלח] and the Ramah [סנהדרין נ"ה, ב] this means that the Gentile courts [so not all שטרות are kosher because of דינא דמלכותא as we asked] can make תקנות in דיני ממונות and this obligates the בני נח. [See also לח"מ פ"ט מהלכות מלכים הלכה ד' שזו גם שיטת רש"י בסנהדרין נ"ו,ב]. And this is not merely a הנהגה - encouraged behavior - but rather they have the power to promulgate new laws that are a חלות דין בעצם - an inherently binding law. [עי' בזה אריכות נפלאה בס' באר מרים הלכות מלכים פ"ט הי"ד]. After the Gentile legislators say not to steal - thievery becomes an inherently forbidden act. 

If so, when they write a שטר, this שטר receives a חלות שם שטר just like להבדיל a שטר that emerges from a Jewish court. Also, through the תקנות of the מלכות that creates דינים for בני נח, they become kosher writers of שטרות, and thereby also become kosher to write  שטרות for Jews since they are not פסולים לעדות according to Rashi. Therefore, regular people who write שטרות outside of court and are thus suspected of being dishonest [in court people are much less likely to lie] cannot write a valid שטר even though the דין מלכות says that they are kosher, for they are not valid witnesses. Only when שטרות go through the courts where the only possible issue would be that they are not בני שטרא - valid שטר writers [but not because they might lie], by means of the דין מלכות [i.e. בני נח נצטוו על הדינים] they become empowered to write שטרות and by extension their שטרות become kosher for Jews as well. 

So Rashi holds that מדין שטר there is no difference between a שטר מתנה and a שטר גט. A Goy is kosher for both. So he was bothered - Why can't he sign a גט? If there is no שטר problem [by virtue of דינא דמלכותא] then what is the problem?? He answered that we have a special derivation that requires one who signs a גט to be a בר כריתות - One who could get divorced, which the Goy lacks. Then Rashi added that they were נצטוו על הדינים so they are cool to write a שטר מתנה, referring to the דינא דמלכותא דינא the gemara talks about later on. Then he added that they are פסולים for שטרי שחרור as well because of the לימוד of לה לה from אשה. 

And, as they say in the yeshivos - פארענטפערט אלע קושיות - Everything is answered. 

The answer to the first question - There was reason to believe that they would be kosher for גיטין as well because the מלכות has the power to grant them the ability to be בני שטרא - Shtar writers and to create bonafide kosher li-mehadrin שטרות. That is why Rashi had to tell us that they are pasul is because they not בני כריתות.

The answer to the second question - Rashi had to explain that נצטוו על הדינים in order to teach us why they are kosher to write other שטרות. [There was already an unspoken assumption that they are בני שטרא when Rashi said that they can't write גיטין because they are no בני כריתות and now Rashi tells us from whence this assumption]. 

The answer to the third question - Rashi tells us נצטוו על הדינים to teach us that the דינא דמלכותא in our case stems from their מצוה to promulgate laws, "מצוות דינים", which gives them power from the TORAH to create [among other things] שטרות that have a חלות דין שטר בעצם. If we were talking about the classical דינא דמלכותא [not coming from the courts], they could not do this for it is against Torah law and also not for the sake of a king.  [This requires more explanation - See באר מרים פ"ט הי"ד.]  

The answer to the fourth and fifth question is that since they are בני שטרא according to דינא דמלכותא, you might think that they can sign שטרי שחרור as well. So Rashi tells us that there is a ילפותא of לה לה from אשה that disqualifies them. 

In fact, the Tosfos Ha-rosh writes that through דינא דמלכותא the Goyim become בני שטרא - kosher שטר writers. That verifies the basis of our thesis.  

WOWWWW!!!!!

[דברי הגרד"י מן עפ"י הבנתי הדלה]

Rashi On Shtaros In Gentile Courts

לע"נ ידי"נ ר' יואל בן פנחס הלוי 

לזכות ידי"נ כאח לי ר' אברהם יצחק בן אסתר

ידיד נפשי כאח לי ר' יוסף עזרא בן אסתר 

וכל משפחותיהם

The Rashi under investigation

The gemara [Gittin 9a-b] says that all שטרות that come up in gentile courts are kosher EXCEPT for גיטין and שחרורי עבדים [documents of emancipation]. 

Writes Rashi:

חוץ מגיטי נשים - דלאו בני כריתות נינהו ולא שייכי בתורת גיטין וקידושין אבל על הדינין נצטוו בני נח.

Rashi explains that since Goyim are not בני כריתות - in the category of those who can divorce, they are not included in the laws of gittin and kiddushin and are thus invalid witnesses. But, adds Rashi, when it comes to other shtaros they are kosher because one of the sheva mitzvos bnei noach is establishing a court system.  

Hold on tight. It might seem simple and straightforward but things are going to get THORNY!!:-) The following questions were asked by a variety of אחרונים but Ha-Gaon Hamufla ME-OD הרב דוד יצחק מן זצ"ל asks them all and also provides a brilliant response to them. This is going to be GOOOOODDDDDD. Like eating מן!!!

1] Just say that the problem with גיטי נשים in a secular court is that there is no דינא דמלכותא?

•  We see from Rashi that the reason they are פסול for גיטין is not because they are not עדים. The problem is that they are not בתורת גיטין וקידושין. The Tumim [סי' כ"ח] and Ktzos [שם] both say that we see from this Rashi that he holds like the ספר החכמה  cited by the מרדכי, that Goyim are kosher witnesses when we don't suspect them of lying and when שטרות go through a court we don't suspect them of lying. When the gemara [10b עיי"ש] asks that a שטר מתנה in a Gentile court is a mere clay shard [חספא בעלמא] it means that they can't create a valid שטר. So how then can we validate their שטרות? We are compelled to say as the gemara answers and Rashi quotes in our sugya: שטרות are kosher because of דינא דמלכותא דינא [which we will call דמ"ד]. Now, since it is PASHUT that דמ"ד is a category that applies only to דיני ממונות and not to דיני איסורים we are left in a quandary: Why did Rashi have to explain the disqualification of Goyim from signing a גט as a result of their not being בני כריתות  - why doesn't he say more simply, that there is no דמ"ד with respect to גיטין??

AHHHHHHHH!!!

2] If the problem with גיטין in secular courts is that לאו בני כריתות - shouldn't the default be that all other שטרות are kosher??

• We also have to understand Rashi's words "אבל על הדינין נצטוו בני נח" meaning he was bothered by the fact that other שטרות are valid. On that question, he answered that they were commanded about דינין [to set up a court system]. Why does he need to say that??? The only problem with a גט is that גויים are not בני כריתות which is obviously not a problem regarding other שטרות, so the default position would be that they are valid even WITHOUT having to explain that נצטוו על הדינין. 

AHHHHHHH!!!

3] Why נצטוו על הדינין when we already have דינא דמלכותא דינא??

• Also, why does he say נצטוו על הדינין when he himself said earlier that דמ"ד. Why isn't that enough?? [עי' באבן האזל בפ"ח מהלכות נז"מ שעמד על זה.]  

4] Why do we need a גזירה שוה to disqualify שחרורי עבדים?

• Another question: Rashi explains in ד"ה חוץ מגיטי נשים that the reason that שחרורי עבדים are also פסול if executed in a Gentile court is that we have a גזירה שוה of לה לה from אשה. Why does he have to say that? Just say that there is no דמ"ד with respect to שחרורי עבדים [because it is not ממון but איסור] and that suffices to explain its invalidity. 

5] Why not say that Gentiles are pasul for שחרורי עבדים because they can't free slaves as Jews do?

• There is more: Rashi explains that the only problem with שחרורי עבדים is that לאו בני כריתות נינהו because of the גזירה שוה of לה לה from אשה. I have a better idea [I think...] - say that they are not בני שחרור??!! Then we won't have to resort to the גזירה שוה?? 

STAY TUNED!! TO BE CONTINUED - I HOPE בעז"ה!!:-)

  

Shtaros From A Gentile Court - Turtles And Smartphones - "Implies" In French

לזכות ידי"נ ר' אברהם יצחק בן אסתר
וידי"נ יוסף עזרא בן אסתר 
וכל בני ביתם לברכה והצלחה בכל מעשי ידיהם


The gemara in Gittin [9b - my FAVORITE Daf in every masechta because I grew up in apt. 9b] says:

וכל השטרות העולים בערכאות של עובדי כוכבים אע"פ שחותמיהן עובדי כוכבים כשירין חוץ מגיטי נשים ושחרורי עבדים.

All documents that go through the Gentile courts, even if they were signed by idolaters are kosher except for divorce documents and documents of emancipation. 

Says Rashi: 

כשרין - דדינא דמלכותא דינא ואע"פ שהנותן והמקבל ישראלים.... אבל על הדינין נצטוו בני נח. 

Rashi implique ["implies" in French and Rashi spoke French] that these documents are kosher מן התורה! So writes the Tos. Harosh according to Rashi unlike Tosfos who say that it is a תקנה מדרבנן. 

This Rashi is puzzling: Yes, as he write Bnei Noach were commands to have a court system [נצטוו על הדינים] but that is for THEIR disputes and law and order [is that a TV show or something?] but not for us [see Gittin 88b]. Their courts are as meaningful for us as a smartphone is for a turtle. So how can these shtaros be biblically mandated?? 

The Ohr Zarua sheds some light: 

"ואלה המשפטים אשר תשים לפניהם לפניהם ולא לפני דייני עכומ"ז - שמעינן מהתם דאסור לדון לפני דייני עכומ"ז ואפילו בדיעבד אין דיניהם דין וכו' מיהו נראה בעיני דאם קבלו עליהם את דייני עכומ"ז שניהם התובע והנתבע מרצונם ודנו אותם כדין ישראל דיניהם דין, דאיכא למידק דדוקא בעל כרחם לא הוי דיניהם דין אפילו בדיעבד דומיא דעישוי דגט שמעשין אותו בעל כרחו ליתן הגט וכו' אבל היבא שקיבלו מרצונם אע"ג דעברו אלפניהם ולא לפני עבומ"ז אעפ"כ הואיל וישנם בתורת דיינים כדת"ר בפרק ד' מיתות שבע מצוות נצטוו בני נח דינין וברכת ה' וכו' דיניהם דין בדיעבד....."

WOW!!!! Yes, says the Ohr Zarua, one may not go to a Gentile court. We have our own court system. But if the parties involved accept upon themselves the judgment of the court, it is valid. The reason is that since the Torah mandated the establishment of Gentile courts, their decision has halachic import - even for us Jews. What does this mean? Their courts are for THEM, not for us?? We have our own set of rules, such as three judges etc. etc.

Explained HaGaon Rav Yaacov Chaim Yaffen z"l [Rosh Yeshivas Beis Yosef Novardik in Brooklyn]:

"ומוכרח מזה דשיטת האו"ז היא דכל הלכות דיינים ומינוי דיינים נאמרו במסויים רק לענין כפיית הדין על הבע"ד אבל לעצם ההוראה והפסק לא בעינן כלל הלכות דיינים ולא בעינן שלשה ומומחים ומשו"ה יכול בדיעבד גם גוי לדון בדקבלו עליהם הבע"ד משום דאיתיה בתורת דיינים דנצטוו על הדינים."

From this passage in the Ohr Zarua we learn that the laws of judges and appointing certain judges were only stated vis-à-vis forcing the judgment on the litigant but for the very psak we don't require all of the laws of judges such as 3 experts and because of this a Goy can judge בדיעבד. 

With this principal the Ohr Zarua explains Rashi who said that shtaros that emanate from a Gentile court are דאורייתא.  

Rav Geshtetner suggests that of course Tosfos agrees with Rashi that דינא דמלכותא דינא but that doesn't give the shtar דאורייתא status. The shtar has no halachic status qua "shtar" but it is just used because of the rule that דינא דמלכותא דינא. Just like the rabbis can say that we can use a coke bottle as a shtar if they wish, they can also tell us to use shtaros from a Gentile court.

I hope to return to this fascinating sugya on these pages.  

My Twins

If I would have twin boys I would name one "Shai" and the other one "Outgoing" and they would PERFECTLY complement each other. 

Rav Chaim Knievsky's Finances

I sometimes wonder how Rav Chaim Knievsky Shlita got through life financially. He might be happy with next to nothing but he had to raise and marry off children and he didn't get discounts on everything because of who he is [and until about 15 years ago he received very little attention or fanfare - I am sure he misses his days of relative anonymity]. 

The answer is ..... He didn't manage. Hashem managed for him. 

Here is what he related to Rav Eliyahu Mann about how he married off his children.

"תָּמִים תִּהְיֶה עִם ד' אֱלֹקֶיךָ" (דברים י"ח, ג')



"התהלך עמו בתמימות ותצפה לו… ואז תהיה עמו ולחלקו" (רש"י)



לא פעם באים אבות דאוגים אל מרן שר התורה הגר"ח קנייבסקי, ופורקים את מטען דאגות הפרנסה ומשא הנטל הכספי הכרוך בנישואי הילדים. רבינו מעודדם ומחזקם, ומחדיר בהם את הידיעה הברורה כי הקב"ה דואג לכל אחד ואחד בהשגחה פרטית מיוחדת.



סיפר רבינו על ההשגחה הפרטית שלו: "כאשר הגיעה בתי הראשונה לפרקה, נכנסה אימי ע"ה בעובי הקורה, ונטלה על עצמה הרבה מן העול הכספי. היה זה בערוב ימיה, אמא כבר היתה אז חולה. 'מה יהיה הלאה?', שאלה אז אמא, 'איך נחתן את יתר הילדים?'. אולם הקב"ה ברחמיו ובחסדיו שלח מקורות מימון בכל חתונה מחדש. אמא ע"ה היתה הנס של הבת הראשונה. לאחר פטירתה צצו ניסים חדשים, אשר התחדשו בטובם עם כל ילד שהגיע לפרקו.



"ארע, ובאחת השנים פנו אלי בבקשה לכתוב הערות על ספר ה'רוקח'. הבקשה היתה מלווה בהבעת רצון כלשהו, לשלם עבור הכתיבה, אולם המילים הכי מפורשות שנאמרו בנידון היו: 'אל תדבר על כסף…'. במשך שנה תמימה הקדשתי זמן מידי ערב לכתיבת הערות לספר, ובתום שנה של עבודה הגשתי את הערותי, אך לא קבלתי בתמורה לכך אף פרוטה. חלף חודש, חלפו חודשיים, חלפה שנה, חלפו שנתיים, וכסף – אין. כך חלפו להן חמש שנים.



"בחלוף חמש שנים זכינו לשדך את הבת, ואז, באופן מפתיע, לאחר חמש שנים, קבלתי את שכרי על כתיבת ההערות המתמשכת. סכום הכסף שקבלתי, היה סכום הכסף שהתחייבתי לשידוך במדויק!".



בכל צעד ושעל ניתן לראות השגחה פרטית, הוסיף מרן הגר"ח לספר:



"לאחר נישואיי היה לי גמ"ח של כסף. אברכים נעזרו בו לצרכי מחייתם. באחד הימים, פנה אלי אברך עני מרוד, בבקשת הלוואה של שבע מאות וחמישים לירות טבין ותקילין – סכום גדול מאוד באותם ימים. נתתי לו את מלוא הסכום, הלוואה בסדר גודל כזה רוקנה את קופת הגמ"ח.



"והנה, לא ארכו השעות, ועוד באותו היום בא יהודי, אשר הפקיד שבע מאות וחמישים לירות, ליטול את ההפקדה שלו. הקופה ריקה, ואני – אנא אני בא. הדרך היחידה לגייס סכום כה גדול של כסף מהיום להיום, היתה לגשת לאברך העני אשר קיבל את ההלוואה, ולבקש אותה בחזרה על אתר.



"אולם, לא הייתי מסוגל לגרום לו כזה מפח נפש. ולהתעלם מהמפקיד, גם בלתי אפשרי. זכותו לקבל את הכסף ששם בגמ"ח כהלוואה עד ליום בו יהיה זקוק לו. מה עושים? והנה בפעם השלישית באותו יום, זכיתי להתעסק עם סכום זהה בדיוק, העומד על שבע מאות וחמישים לירות: באורח פתע הגיע יהודי, והפקיד בגמ"ח שבע מאות וחמישים לירות בדיוק!".

No Contract

A fellow who lives on my block is Rav Shraga Feivel's great grandson. He told me that when he was hired as principal they wanted him to sign a contract. He's like - Contract? If you aren't happy with me then fire me and that's the end of it.

In other words - I am not here to "have my back" and ensure my own well being and security. I am here to help the institution for as long as you feel that I am beneficial. 

Rejection Or Acceptance of The Outside World?

What should our attitude be towards the outside world?

3 basic approaches:

One approach - Complete rejection. It is all false at best and evil at worst.

A second approach - Complete acceptance. People are enamored by Gentiles in general and Gentile wisdom in particular. They despise those who are so close minded as to look only at Jewish sources. They even often call for intermarriage. You know, to expand our horizons....

A third approach - Let's face it, Jews are talented but not the only talented people in the world. There are many many, many other people in the world who have talents and abilities on a level that exceeds that of the Jews. Denying reality just puts one in a fantasy world and that is the reality. Since we are living on the same planet that those people are, it would be foolish not to benefit from what they have to offer in areas of technology, scientific discovery etc. etc. etc. As Chazal say "יפיפותו של יפת ישכון באהלי שם" - "The beauty of Yefes shall dwell in the tents of Shem". Hashem wanted mankind to feel an overarching sense of unity so He spread out the talents among different peoples and nations. [Not to mention interactions through commerce]. Now we all need each other and can experience connection and togetherness. That is a great feeling so this dissemination of talents and means was a chesed of Hashem to us. Eventually, this will lead to Hashem being crowned as King to all peoples.  

On the other hand - We draw that proverbial line in the sand. When it comes to pnimiyus, to ruchniyus, to our religious life, we need not look further than our holy books. [Even though at times our holy books were also influenced by the Gentile world, such as the Moreh Nevuchim by Aristotle and numerous other examples. But at the end of the day, these foreign ideas were "converted" to Judaism by our Sages]. We don't want to know or care how people are worshipping in their churches and mosques. We experienced revelation by Hashem and need to look no further than Sinai. As the Ramban writes about the mitzvah of remembering Maamad Har Sinai - "ויהיו עינני ולבנו שם כל הימים". Everything we see and feel should be through the prism of Sinai. We RECEIVE on a more external surface level. We GIVE and influence on a deeper, soul level. Ultimately - we are alone, as the pasuk says "ה' בדד ינחנו ואין עמו א-ל נכר".  

צדקה עשה הקב"ה עם עולמו, מה שלא נתן כל הכשרונות במקום אחד, לא באיש אחד ולא בעם אחד, לא בארץ אחת, לא בדור אחד ולא בעולם אחד, כי אם מפוזרים הם הכשרונות, והכרח השלמות, שהוא כח המושך היותר אידיאלי, הוא הגורם להמשך אחרי האחדות המרוממה, המוכרחת לבא בעולם, והיה ביום ההוא יהיה ד' אחד ושמו אחד. אוצר סגולת עולמים בישראל הוא גנוז. אבל כדי לאחד במובן כללי ג"כ את העולם עמם מוכרחים צדדי כשרונות מיוחדים להיות חסרים בישראל, כדי שיושלמו ע"י העולם, וכל נדיבי עמים. ובזה יש מקום לקבלה שישראל מקבל מהעולם, וממילא פנויה היא הדרך כלפי ההשפעה, אלא שהקבלה היא מבחוץ וההשפעה מבפנים, כלומר פנימיות החיים שלמה היא בישראל, באין צורך להעזר משום כח זר בעולם, וכל שלטון-משרה בישראל מקרב פנימיות החיים הוא נובע, "מקרב אחיך - ממובחר שבאחיך", ולחיצוניות החיים מזדמן שצריך השלמה דוקא מבחוץ, "יפיפותו של יפת באהלי שם", "חיל גוים תאכלו ובכבודם תתימרו", ומשפע פנימיות החיים כנסת ישראל היא רק משפעת ולא מקבלת, ד' בדד ינחנו ואין עמו אל נכר.