Q&A: A Minor Who Comes of Age
A Minor Who Comes of Age
Question
I once heard in one of the Rabbi's lectures that he explained differently from the way the later authorities (Acharonim) understood the topic of a minor who comes of age in the counting of the Omer and on Yom Kippur.
I don’t remember the line of reasoning, but I do remember being impressed.
Could the Rabbi remind me?
Thanks.
Answer
The claim was that the law of this minor does not depend on the character of the commandment, but on the character of the concept. For example, it is commonly said that a minor who comes of age in the middle of the counting of the Omer cannot continue counting if the counting is one continuous, inclusive commandment, because until he came of age he had not fulfilled the commandment of counting. My claim is that this does not depend on the character of the commandment but on the character of the concept of counting. Counting means going through all the days, not making a statement about one individual day, and therefore one must count from the beginning and not start from the middle. But in my view there is no need for the counting from the beginning to be considered a commandment. Therefore, when the minor counted while still a minor under the law of education, that helps, so that once he comes of age he may continue counting with a blessing, because at the end of the day his counting is complete.
The same applies to a minor who comes of age in the middle of Yom Kippur. There too, it does not depend on the essence of the commandment of fasting, but on the meaning of the concept "fast" or "affliction." Therefore, if he fasted under the law of education, he can and should continue fasting from the moment he comes of age.
Discussion on Answer
Thanks.
Hello,
In which lectures can this idea be found? On which tractate?
I don’t remember whether I wrote this up.
Regarding what you wrote about the counting of the Omer, this was also written by the Chief Rabbi, Rabbi Avraham Shapira (it appears in the Passover Haggadah published by the Harzvi Institute, and I am attaching a partial quote): “For the reasoning of the Ba'al Halakhot Gedolot is that the very act of counting requires an ordered sequence in the tally, and if one skipped a day and did not count it, then afterward it is no longer possible to count once the skipped number is missing — but not because each day holds back the others. Therefore, even though the Ba'al Halakhot Gedolot holds that the commandment is fulfilled at night and not by day, nevertheless, since the fulfillment of one commandment does not affect the next, and the issue is only that the act of counting is lacking, counting during the day is indeed effective even though it is not a commandment in that case, since fulfillment of the commandment is not indispensable. And this is what they and the Beit Yosef wrote: if one counted during the day, then although he did not fulfill the commandment, it is still considered a counting, and therefore he may continue counting afterward. But on the day itself he does not recite a blessing, since he is not fulfilling a commandment. Tosafot similarly wrote in Menachot that if one put the blue thread before the white, even though the white was lacking, the white thread that is there is effective to validate the blue. According to this, it would seem that the same law applies to a minor who counted during his minority: even if we say he did not then fulfill a commandment, in any case there is still an act of counting here, and therefore”