You mentioned a four-letter name, a bachelorette party.
To Rabbi Shalom,
I’ll send a request here and not by email. I hope this is the right place for you.
1.
I read that historically they would mention the name of the Being as written in prayers, and it is not clear when they started saying the name of Lordship. Is it permissible to return to the ancient custom? And if not, why?
(And there are some jurists who permit saying the name, but not saying a name consisting of 42 letters.)
After all, when God said, “This is my name forever and ever,” it is clear that He said in His own voice to Moses, “Yahweh,” and not “The Lord, the God of your father.” And it is also clearly explained in almost all Torah literature that God’s personal name is Yahweh, and all the rest are secondary names and titles.
And it is said many times, such as the words “Give thanks to the Lord, call on His name” and “And Samuel, call on His name,” that His name should be said in prayer. And the plain meaning is His known name, Jehovah.
2.
In terms of the Rivash ruling on the baptism of single women, it prohibits it out of consideration and uniqueness.
Will someone who wants to do good to his partner when they are not married, according to the Torah of the commandment of kindness, and to make her enjoy and express love and not for his own pleasure, “like someone who has frozen a demon,” be permitted to do so?
After all, the contemplation that comes by chance is permissible (Ezer Mekodesh, Even HaEzer 23: “The Torah was not given to the ministering angels”), and when one does it for the sake of a mitzvah (kindness, pleasing others), the Wisdom of Solomon ruled in Even HaEzer 23 that even ejaculating semen is permissible (according to the book Hasidim) and in its works, it is trid.
(And surely there is no such thing as ejaculating for nothing, since the semen enters the woman’s body only because of the prohibition of contemplation, but ejaculating for the purpose of a mitzvah is also permitted in my opinion, as mentioned above in the Wisdom of Solomon, and it is not at all “for nothing,” which is the only thing prohibited in the Gemara and Shulchan Aruch).
(And by doing so, I mean not for his own pleasure to increase his pleasure, but rather what the husband feels compelled to do in the pleasure of the woman, for any unnecessary contemplation is not for the purpose of the mitzvah, and it is not said in “Abidatiya Trid” to permit contemplation on purpose, and yet the Torah was not given to the ministering angels.)
And for the sake of a mitzvah that must and can only be done with modesty and important work, it is certainly permissible to be alone with a gynecologist, and even with a psychologist, they did not object to being alone. And what is the prohibition of aloneness here?
And even with the prostitute Hosea, he was careful, when he had to come to her, whom he had known for many days, and he gave her a household, and he actually formed a bond with her that would make her his own, that they would not be for anyone else, and from that, he came to her and showed her kindness, in the parable of the kindnesses that the Blessed One did with Israel when they made their own to him and gave them “grain, wine, and yitzhar.”
And all this is not in the doctrine of mistresses, of course.
With thanks and blessings,
Ofir
1.
Indeed, this is explained in Tosefta Sotah 11:8. And see also the commentaries of the Tosefta and Rambam, “Tefila Pi” 5:14.
As for the explicit name, there is a prohibition on pronouncing the name in its letters, which applies to the name of God. The prohibition is not stated in the Rambam or in the main jurists, so I will elaborate a bit on this. For its source, see Gemara Sanhedrin 20:1 and Pesachim 5:1, and in the Tosafot in Sukkah 5:1, D”H Kadesh (and Haram there), as well as in Shavuot 3:1, D”H in the explained Alef, which also prohibits pronouncing the letters in the order in which they are written.
I haven’t checked now, but it seems to me that this prohibition is different from the prohibition of pronouncing the name of God in vain, and perhaps that is why in prayer the regular name of God is pronounced but not the name of the Lord (because it is not in vain, but pronouncing the name of God in its letters is also forbidden, not in vain). Although the above sources (and in particular the Rambam) imply that there is no fundamental difference, but only that they are more cautious here, but if it is not in vain, there is no prohibition in pronouncing the name of God in its letters either.
Beyond that, the custom is certainly not to say the name of God, but other names. It is perhaps possible to explain this as follows: The difference between the name of God (for the record, it is better to write it this way and not as you did, although deleting the name on the network should be discussed) and the other names is that the name of God is the noun (referring to the object itself, like the name of a person) and the other names are actually pronouns (not halachically but linguistically), like descriptions of people. Therefore, the first is meaningless beyond being the name of God, and the others have a more general meaning. It is possible that in prayer one should address Him through His pronouns, as they refer to various aspects of Him. Even without examining it more deeply, I would not recommend changing this.
2.
I didn’t really understand the question. Do you mean having sex without marriage? In principle, you shouldn’t express love to a woman who isn’t your wife. And if you want to establish a physical relationship, marry her. The last problem I see here is the baptism of singleness. The comparisons to “Baabidah Trid” etc. are completely absurd. What does this have to do with the situation of having sex for your or her pleasure? The whole thing here seems completely absurd to me.
1. Thank you for the sources for your review and your opinion regarding the mention of the name.
2. What do you mean by “in principle, you are not supposed to express love to a woman who is not your wife”?
In terms of what is appropriate to love – there is the commandment “love your neighbor as yourself”, and the commandment of kindness, and in my opinion this is one of the roots of the morality of loving every creature.
And why not express the appropriate love? “From their condemnation we learned that they were not one in the mouth and one in the heart”. What is the harm? Does the rabbi mean a halachic problem in expressing love to a woman who is not your wife? And it is clear that a married woman should be careful, but what about a single woman?
A person's love for their neighbor is not love for a man or a woman. The same word expresses different meanings in different contexts. In order to have a marital relationship, a couple must be built. Otherwise, you should express your love in other ways, and certainly not in the realm of sex or even romance. You can open an institution to provide sexual services to anyone who wants them as part of your love for your person. Does that sound reasonable to you?
Excuse me, but there is something distorted in this thinking. I find it difficult to accept that it needs to be explained.
Regarding the question of single women's baptism, you already wrote here:
https://mikyab.net/%D7%A9%D7%95%D7%AA/%D7%98%D7%91%D7%99%D7%9C%D7%AA-%D7%A8%D7%95%D7%95%D7%A7%D7%94-%D7%95%D7%94%D7%99%D7%AA%D7%A8-%D7%A4%D7%99%D7%9C%D7%92%D7%A9/
And to that:
“I never understood the strange question of whether single women should be allowed to baptize. What is the question here? And is there a prohibition on baptizing someone who wants to do so? Even a cat can baptize if it wants to, and so can a woman who has not been clean for seven days (except that she will not become pure by doing so). And would it occur to you that if a single woman were to immerse, would she not be purified? So what does it mean to not allow her to immerse? To arrest her violently? At most, one could ask whether it is permissible to have marital relations with her after she has immersed, but that is simply a matter of free will, and even that is beyond my control. The violence of the rabbinate that takes over the mikvahs and decides who is allowed to immerse and how it has no halakhic basis.
I found these things very strange to read. After all, the matter of not immersing is known from the Rivah (1555) and was brought up in Beit Yosef (1533). Of course, the fine line between when to prevent and when to allow (so that our reward does not come out at our loss) depends on the dispute, and there are sides to this here and there.
In any case, the poskim understood that there is a place to prohibit immersion for single women according to the words of the Rivah, and to physically prevent women from immersing. And I will quote for example from Teshuvot and HaNagatot (17:4):
Question: A man sometimes lives in adultery with a woman and she wants to baptize, whether to prevent her.
The man cannot divorce his wife who refuses to accept a divorce and lives with another woman in adultery who has created his power and is not willing to violate the prohibition of niddah, and she is going to baptize, and they asked whether to prevent her from baptizing.
And here is a story that Rabbi Shnaider, the late Rabbi, told me that in one city in Lithuania, the rabbis began to engage in prostitution, and the rabbi nevertheless demanded that they not violate the prohibition of divorce and go to be baptized, and it was again proven that this caused the rabbis to cause even more prostitution because of the kosher law of demkuwa, and in the meantime, an epidemic of divorce broke out in the city of Rebbe. And so in the replies of the rabbi, it is mentioned in the name of the rabbi that they canceled the baptism of free women so that they would not come to be lenient with them.
And this is true if the rabbi advises going to a mikvah, in which case we said that he should not interfere and advise, but here that she herself is going to immerse, in my opinion there is no obligation on the rabbi to command in the mikvah that they not let her enter and feed her with their hands, which is a prohibition of niddah, and only in the case that there is a need for this to be a rite of passage, should it be prevented from immersing her in a mikvah that is a rite of passage that I am.
And who is it that warned to be very careful of desecrating the name of God, and we might think that God has permitted fornication itself, and that only its place and time should be sanctified, and that he will rule as necessary even to remove it, if it helps to be a rite of passage, or to save us from desecrating the name of God. (And the answer to the question and the request 7:68).
“You can open an institute to provide sexual services to anyone who wants them as part of your love for your person. Does that sound reasonable to you?” It sounds like an exaggeration and an outburst of my opinions to me. The rabbi will answer - are all secular women who are in relationships without sanctification prostitutes? And can't a husband force his wife and exploit her? If the rabbi seriously intends to compare a relationship between a boyfriend and girlfriend to an institute for the satisfaction of sexual pleasures, let him be a little more specific, and define the institute, because this thing does not exist in reality, and there are clearly very good reasons why. As long as the rabbi has not done so, it sounds so hypothetical that it can only be used as a joke at the expense of what I wrote.
Is it permissible to say ‘Lord’ or ”God” without intention? I am accustomed to saying every morning before prayer the sentence that appears in the Siddurim: And I will direct you from now until tomorrow at this time every time I remember the name of the Holy One, which is written as יהוה הוה ויעה ויעה ויעה את האדני, which is אדנ האדני האקדוש. And when I mention the name of God, my intention will be that He is the All-Encompassing, the Possessor of Power, the Possessor of All Power, the Sustainer of All Powers, the Cause of All Causes, and the Ruler of All Worlds:
Can we skip this and simply not refer to the names of God?
Ofir, in my understanding this is not an exaggeration, this is a demonstration that there is no connection between “Love your neighbor as yourself” and acts of kindness, sex, and romance.
These are different areas, and only the common word confuses you.
Aharon, I know all this, and still the matter remains unresolved. The Riv”sh and the B”i, with their respectful forgiveness, cannot determine for us what can be done and whether to prevent women from doing something. At most, they can instruct (or recommend and ask) women not to immerse. There is no halakhic prohibition in this as long as an authorized B”i has not determined it. And even if there were a halakhic prohibition in this, the mikveh does not belong to me, nor to my father, nor to the Riv”sh, any more than it does to a woman who wants to immerse. Therefore, my words stand.
I, I didn't understand. Where in my words did you see that it is possible to say it without intention? At most, the poskim wrote to say it even if you estimate that you will not intend it (and in this they were careful that in the name of God it should not be done). But to begin with, there must certainly be intention in every utterance of the name of God; and according to the main law, it is absolutely forbidden to say it without intention (except that we do not adhere to this, and therefore they made it easy).
The mikveh usually belongs to the community, and its leaders (the city's best men) can usually set rules of conduct there.
Can people who want to sit without separation enter any synagogue and do as they please? Of course not. So why is a mikveh any different?
If you divide between the different types of ownership, fine. But wouldn't you also agree about a mikveh in the place and period of the Riv”sh and the B”i? They have to let everyone in?
You answered it yourself. I am not talking about a private mikveh, but about a public mikveh of the state that was built with its budget and is therefore controlled by its institutions. In a private mikveh, you can do whatever you want.
The same applies to preventing a prayer of a different nature at the Western Wall. The Western Wall is not a private place.
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