Interesting Posts and Articles #385

1. At Life In Israel, the IPhone singled out for teshuva success. Cute way of putting it. The rabbi in question has condemned IPhone use in the past, but says he got special dispensation for his own use of it.

2. Meanwhile, someone emailed me that a few websites (Kikar, Ynet, Rotter) are reporting that there is a website that strongly hints that Rav Amnon Yitzhak is Mashiach. I don't see why this is news. Unless there is evidence that this fan of Rabbi Amnon Yitzchak is in any way affiliated with him, who gives a care? There are plenty of lunatics on the Internet, who post random stupid things. So here we have another lunatic.

Just the other day, there was a lunatic, who rambles about conspiracy theories and the New World Order on his blog, who claims he knows who mashiach is, and even set a date for mashiach's arrival, based on purported evidence, in the form of 100 pages of proof, and the purported backing of Gedolim.

But fine, here is this fellow's proof about Rabbi Amnon Yitzchak:

למה אני מציין כל זאת?

אני רוצה להעלות לפני הציבור שאלה, ואני לא אשיב עליה.

כל אחד מוזמן לחשוב עליה ברצינות בזמנו החופשי:

האם הרב אמנון יצחק הוא האיש שלו עם ישראל ייחל אלפי שנים?

להלן סקירה קצרה מדברי רבותינו זכרונם לברכה וכל אחד יעיין בשכלו

בסוף הדברים, אביא את מסקנותיי בעניין:

1. הרמב"ם פוסק להלכה, המשיח יקבץ נדחי עמו ישראל אל ישראל. עד כאן לשון הרמבם

הערה: הרב אמנון יצחק בהרצאות ברחבי העולם קורא ליהודים לעלות לארץ ישראל, ורבבות עם ישראל עשו זאת ממדינות ניכר ועלו לישראל

2. "המלך המשיח עתיד לעמוד ולהחזיר מלכות בית דויד ליושנה." עד כאן לשון הרמב"ם

הערה: מפלגת ש"ס מורכבת רובה ככולה מבעלי התשובה שעשה הרב אמנון יצחק במשך 35 שנות פעילות.

ש"ס מתפארת בסלוגן: להחזיר עטרה ליושנה...

3. הרמב"ם בהלכה ד: ואם יעמוד מלך מבית דויד הוגה בתורה ועוסק במצוות כדויד אביו, כפי תורה שבכתב ושבעל פה,

ויכוף כל ישראל לילך בה ולחזק בדקה, ויילחם מלחמות ה' - הרי זה בחזקת שהוא משיח. עד כאן לשון הרמב"ם

הערה: הרב אמנון יצחק עוסק בלימוד תורה יומם וליל. מארבע וחצי לפנות בוקר ועד 12 בלילה כבר שנים רבות.

בוודאי שדורש ומזכה את כל ישראל לילך אחר התורה ונלחם את מלחמות ה' כפי שפרוס כאן באתר בהרחבה

4. אני רוצה להפנות את תשומת לבכם לשלוש נקודות

Item #1 is that Rabbi Amnon Yitzchak has used scare tactics to trick people to move to Israel, and the Rambam says that mashiach will cause ingathering of the exiles. But there are other scaremongers out there. Nir Ben Artzi also tries to get people to move to Israel. The Tzaddik Nistar tricked Nava, of Dreaming of Mashiach, into moving to Israel, because mashiach was coming. Is the Tzaddik Nistar mashiach? Is Rabbi Lazer Brody?

Item #2 is that Rabbi Amnon Yitzchak has made many baalei teshuva who are associated with Shas, whose slogan is להחזיר עטרה ליושנה, restoring the crown to its former glory, and this is (by kvetch) equal to restoring the (actual) kingdom of  David to its former glory.

Item #3 is that he learns and teaches Torah a lot, and this is therefore the same as the Rambam's statement that a king, of the house of David, who is learned, will compel all of Israel to go in the ways of Torah, and will fight the wars of Hashem.

I am certain one can allegorize all of these, of course. But once one is kvetching, one can kvetch for many a public figure.

3. At Rationalist Judaism, what Rav Elyashiv really meant. And he has evidence:

My second set of reasons for explaining Rav Elyashiv's position in this way is that I have quite a bit of evidence for it - some of which I have not released before this post. 

4. At the Talmud blog, updates to the Leiberman databases.

In the realm of academic Talmud, the bar is also constantly being raised. If only a few decades ago it was completely legitimate to cite in an academic article the Munich manuscript of the Bavli by quoting from Rabinowitz‘s Dikdukei Sofrim, nowadays that would never fly. Rabinowitz’s Dikdukei Sofrim was one of the most influential projects on Talmud study ever (its ambition, however, cost Rabinowitz his life, as he passed away while travelling in Russia to find more Talmudic manuscripts). The situation today is decidely different. From the comfort of an iPad, one can access many more manuscripts than Rabinowitz could ever have dreamed of seeing, and the Dikdukei Sofrim is now mainly used to see what girsa was before each rishon. One who wishes to employ philological methods in studying a sugya now how has a couple of tools for consultation:

and so on. Check it out.

5. At Chopping Wood, on learning gemara and daf yomi.

During a recent Gemara shiur that I give here in Yad Binyamin, I mentioned a thought that Rav Tzuriel (the former mashgiach in Sha'alvim) once said that stuck with me. He said that he felt that instead of putting the commentary of the Ba'alei Tosfot on the side of the page of the Gemara and the commentary of Rosh in the back of the book, they should have switched the two and put the Rosh on the side and the Tosfot in the back. I'll explain.

However,

And yet, I think that the most appealing aspect of the Daf isn't the goal of finishing Shas, and it's certainly not that most people who learn the Daf hope to remember most of what they've learned. Rather, it's the kvi'ut (regularity) - the security of knowing that the system forces us to learn a set amount, each and every day. You have to keep up, because everyone else is, and even if it's not in depth; even if you don't fully understand every issue, it's time invested in Talmud Torah, which is time well spent.

and

For years I've avoided learning Daf Yomi for reasons I consider legitimate. If you're reading this blog you probably know what they are without my needing to hash them out again. And yet, I've always done so from the outside, while people who "do the Daf" seem to like it quite a lot. So the time has come to "bite the bullet" and give the learning a shot. 

6. Menachem Mendel on the pitfalls of Daf Yomi.

7. Circus Tent with a Chasam Sofer on the importance of the tzaddik hador.

8. A letter Rav Shach wrote when Neil Armstrong stepped on the moon.