7 Comments
Feb 4Liked by Boruch Clinton

Sure. Well, though it should satisfy the progressive urge to push the envelope to new frontiers this is going to be horribly unPC :The Issur of two males in yichud & a single female owning a dog.

These were shunted aside as we justified that observant jews wouldn't have such proclivities.

However since as per our liberal pseudo orthodox pontificators such proclivities have to be recognized in our present milieu these " orphaned" ordinances ought to have been already reactivated

Expand full comment

Tons of halachos. Many if not most agricultural halachos in EY only apply to a tiny and shrinking proportion of the population.

Any halachos that are based on animals for labor, like lo tachsom shor b'disho, or the laws that apply to one's animal doing work on Shabbos. Peter chamor.

Shiluach Hakein- you basically need to manufacture a situation to make this applicable.

Mitzri Rishon, Moavi. Will probably not be applicable ever, unless Eliyahu reveals to us their yichus.

Many halachos in the first perek of Avodah Zarah, the Rishonim dispense with.

All the halachos in Kesubos about ta'anas besulim are basically inapplicable nowadays as far as I know.

All the halachos of being mekadesh a woman with various objects, who in the world ever does that.

All the halachos of a man marrying off his daughter or selling her, nobody does that anymore, it's not economical.

Expand full comment
author

The Avodah Zarah example is actually very similar to ona'ah, being largely dependent on the prevalent business environment.

Besides ta'anas besulim, I've never heard of a modern incident of מוחזקת בדם that, from the Gemara would, after three tries, force a get at the start of a marriage.

I would say that doing kiddushin with strange objects and services is just as relevant these days as ever: there is actually a robust teshuva literature addressing pizza slice kiddushin (including a fascinating related teshuva from R' Sholom Yehuda Tabak, who was the dayan in Satmar in the ~1880s.)

Expand full comment
Dec 3, 2023Liked by Boruch Clinton

A daughter marrying her rapist comes to mind...

Expand full comment
author

Right. I've definitely never heard of it being done. Although I wonder if that's not because modern victims will invariably decline - as is their right. Of course, that may be largely because the cultural drivers for marriage are so different now than in the time of Tanach/Chazal.

Expand full comment

Exactly. Yibbum would be the same.

It's also interesting how modern law such as copyright is glaringly absent from the Torah.

Expand full comment
author

Yibbum is perhaps a bit more complicated: it seems that it's been discouraged for many centuries based on an assumption that we aren't מכווין לשמה. So it's not *just* about marriage culture.

Copyright is probably a child of the printing press, since copying was so much harder before that. But 19th Century rabbonim would often issue a cherem to protect the investments behind expensive printing projects - like the Slavuta Shas.

Expand full comment