Q&A: Several Questions
Originally published:
This is an English translation (via GPT-5.4). Read the original Hebrew version.
Several Questions
Question
Hello, honored Rabbi,
1. According to Maimonides, who holds that the entire commandment of sacrifices stems from the flawed custom that was practiced in their time, will this commandment be abolished in the future?
2. Nowadays, when people go to sleep and wake up at different hours than they did before the invention of electricity, has the time for the morning and evening recitation of the Shema changed?
3. Are there other medieval authorities who hold that not the entire Torah was given from Heaven, aside from Ibn Ezra?
Answer
- I don’t know. We do not derive Jewish law from the reasons for the verses, but the Messiah and the future Sanhedrin may perhaps think differently about this as well.
- I don’t know. It is commonly assumed that it has not, but I don’t know why.
- Yes. The Tzioni, Sefer Hasidim, and others. But search for it online (I remember an article by Miriam Witman in Megadim).
Discussion on Answer
https://mikyab.net/%D7%A9%D7%95%D7%AA/%D7%A1%D7%95%D7%A3-%D7%96%D7%9E%D7%9F-%D7%A7%D7%A9-%D7%91%D7%99%D7%9E%D7%99%D7%A0%D7%95
Regarding question 2, it’s a shame you didn’t search first among the questions that were already asked on the site.
See here, and what I commented there:
https://mikyab.net/%D7%A9%D7%95%D7%AA/%D7%A7%D7%A8%D7%99%D7%90%D7%AA-%D7%A9%D7%9E%D7%A2
In the book Responsa of Rabbi Yosef Chaim Sonnenfeld, Keren Re’em Institute, Jerusalem 2005, end of section 23:
“And I will not refrain from calling attention to the essence of the matter: since the Torah made the matter of the Shema dependent on lying down and rising, and did not explicitly write the time, if people’s way, due to the weakness that has come into the world, changes, and now everyone sleeps more or wakes later, there is room to say that there is here a Torah-level obligation; and although I have not found this stated explicitly, in my humble opinion the reasoning is correct. All the more so in a place where the nature of the climate causes this—for all of these cases one may say: leave Israel alone.”