Q&A: Recom(m)endation / Jewish Law?
Recom(m)endation / Jewish Law?
Question
Hello Rabbi, and sorry for the large number of separate questions—a pile of questions that come up at odd times.
Is the prohibition against meat and fish, or according to Sephardim milk and fish, still meaningful to observe when the reason, according to science, is not correct?
Especially since they emphasized that it was for health reasons.
So is this a recommendation or Jewish law?
Thank you very much!
Answer
There is no prohibition whatsoever against milk and fish. It is a baseless invention. In my opinion, prohibitions due to danger are void in a situation where it is clear that there is no danger.
Discussion on Answer
Of course, I meant milk and fish—my mistake.
Indeed, it has a source whose source is a mistake. If you wait a bit, I’ll try to have my computer print random text, and maybe it too will write that it’s forbidden to stand on one leg when the sun is shining. Then that too will have a source whose source is a mistake.
I liked the jab.
How can one know with certainty (or high probability) that it originated in a mistake?
Because it has no source at all.
Isn’t the Beit Yosef itself the source? Did he not “invent” this Jewish law himself? (Though one can of course say that he doesn’t have the authority to establish laws the way the Sages did.)
Are we back again to a source whose source is a mistake?
That’s exactly my question: how does everyone know that it originated in a mistake? Because if I’m not mistaken, it’s written in the Beit Yosef, only that “everyone” claims it’s a scribal error in the Beit Yosef—and my question is, how do people know that it’s a scribal error? (Sorry for going on about this.)
Because it has no source. And it really doesn’t matter whether it’s a scribal error or not.
The Beit Yosef has no authority to invent Jewish laws. He himself is aware of that (like any halakhic decisor). By this rule, he also challenges medieval authorities about where they invented various laws from, and sometimes because of that he prefers the views of medieval authorities who do not hold by that same ruling. If you want, I wrote a summary of the topic of fish with milk (the summary deals more with meta-halakhah, and fish with milk is just a convenient platform for the discussion I developed around it); I can send it to you by email.
I’m not familiar with the discussion about meat and fish, but in principle, isn’t the source for this in the Beit Yosef? (Although from what I understand, it’s probably a scribal error, but still, it does have a source whose source is a mistake.)