DEEP_6 OF COMMENTS FROM THE PEANUT GALLERY -- APPENED, AND ALSO FILED OFF TO =scsa_b18 (as_it_is_said, (USA 1940's), "No Comments from the Peanut Gallery") THAT IS, FOOTNOTES (sa) TO SC_B13 -- FOLLOW ----------------------------------------------------------------- On erev Pesach, after ten o'clock [ in the morning ] you are not permitted to have a feastele anymore. (b18-1a) (b18-1a) [ But I had heard only, you are not permitted to eat hametz after approximately 10 AM, or about 9:30 AM, on the day before the night of the Seder. ] You really have to eat matza when you are hungry. (b18-1b) (b18-1b) [ The phrasing is misleading. It means -- you must have a darned good appetite to eat that flat unsalted bread. It does not mean, as I first mistook it: If you get the munchies after 10 AM the day before Seder evening, rip open a box of matza and crucnch. understood the minhag to be -- at least on the day before the night of the Seder do not eat matza until the Seder.] Doesn't mean you have to be starved, during the day you can eat some cake or something (b18-1c) (b18-1c) [ Yeah, you and Marie Antoinette -- I mean, matza is the bread of affliction, the poor man's bread, so save the cake for kiddish. ] According to the Gmora, real easting is only when you are hungry. (b18-1d) (b18-1d) [ How hideously old_fashioned. Didn't those rubes in Babylon hear of Power Eating. Me, I put on a yellow shirt and take the Clients out to Dago's in Greenwich Village, and order spaghetti with pomadoro con Dago. He puts the red pepper pot in it for everyone else. For me he pre_cuts it. Talk of Power Eating. And I make sure the Gents is Out of Order, except I have a key to the Execs. They'll sign anything before the Friday Night Ladies Mud Wrestling is on. Have to live on brown rice for the next week, but it pays my bill at the Sushi Bar. But perhaps you did not want to read my Commentary on the Gemora.ù [ That is, matza with anything added -- egg, or wine -- may be eaten during Pesach, since it is not leavened, but may not be used at the Seder table to fulfill the mitzva of eating matza. (b18-1e) (b18-1e) Ok, if you can eat matza with anything added, how can you eat it with anything subtracted. I mean white flour matza, which is made from ground flour with all the husks and bram -- whatever bran is, maybe its the husks hground up -- taken away. I mean, those pyramids did not hold flour mills. White flour matza should be used only when you are out of bubblepack and styrofoam (styrofoam, incidentally, is made from pigs' knuckles, which is why pigs can't sew worth a darn. Ok ok, I lied about the pigs knuckles, its really kosher, just also really weird. The USA used it as a base for napalming Vietnamese children. Kosher like a pig. On Rosh HaShana I go to the Glatt Kosher Dan Hotel by the lake in Lugano, and steal a glass cup or two rather than drink from styrofoam. They make tea from tea concentrate rather than risk squeezing a teabag on Shabat. ] If a person has a custom to eat late this is not good for seder night, becaused the children have to be up for the Seder. (b18-1f) That works ok in eretz Israel, where the spring equinox sun sets at a sensible time, but things got a bit more difficult when you head north. One summer Friday afternoon in Lugano I wandered over to the Dan Hotel as the sun was getting closee to the mountan ridge, and said, what time is mincha. They said, we've davened it. I said, ok, what time is Ma'ariv. They said, we've davened it. Last year I think it was abouot 22:15 when they davened Ma'ariv for Pesach. OK, these are glattniks, so they added a half-hour or more, but still -- ] Matza you have to eat leaning back. [ Sorry, but my understanding has been, the wine you drink leaning, but it says nothing in my Maxwell House Hagadah about leaning to eat matza -- I mean Sassafrass, matza is the bread of affliction, eaten in great haste I mean seriously folks, the Hagadah is tohu_v_bohu -- it makes no sense, and whenever it starts to make sense, it quickly runs off into nonsense -- like that how many plagues bit -- I mean, I go to the Seder looking for that Episcipal High Mass taht T.S. Eliot said was the only thing that turned him on -- no wonder there were no little Eliots -- and what do I get -- burlesque. We lean back like Romans at an orgy, and they feed us dried bread and bitter herbs. And it ain't kings who lean back, just Romans. A free man doesn't lean back, he has better things to do. I mean, from a literary standpoint, the Hagadah is the pposite of Megilat Esther, or of Megilat Ruth. Those two Megilot are nbeautifully written, cohesive stories. The Hagadah is a hodge_podge. I mean, it gives us this elaborate ritual of 14 steps, and your're supposed to complete every one of them in the correctd way -- and there's details that can drive you crazy -- and in the correct order -- all the while getting as drunk as a Roman nobleman -- I mean, a glass of wine with supper is very nice, but four glasses -- and all this ritual to a text that has no coherence, it's just a hodge-podge. Maxwell House was the coffee you got in supermarkets in the USA 1940's, for even the poorest customer they sold it to you in beans and ground it for you at the checkout, and ground it to fit your coffee_maker -- drip, or percolator, which is the way they make espresso nowadays But I digress.] If I drank the four cups without leaning Ø have to drink four more cups of wine. (b18-2b) [ I think this frumie bit has possibilities. Sorry Fred, this all comes under, 'thou shalt not make yourself loathsome.' You can't eat nor drink past satiety. Unless of course this is a USA Pie_Eating Contest. And if that ain't strictly for goyim, what is. I say, never eat it until you know where you're going to poop it.ù I once heard a dude say, maybe outside Diaspora Yeshiva, when you travel, travel light. Ie, don't eat much before you hit the road.] If I finish the whole seder, and then I realize I at matza or I drank wine without leaning back, I have to go back, wash my hands again, drink four cups of wine, and eat matza. (b18-2c) (b18-2c) [ Well, if this is what R. Shlomo was teaching the kids at the dawn of the ba'al tchuva momvement, its amazing that we can still make a minyan. ] The RAMO [ REFERENCE: The RAMO . Don't have the foggiest.] says if in an emergency you forgot to lean bak you don't have to eat matza again. (b18-2d) [ Yeah sure man, if the Cossaks were at the door and I got flustered. I mean gvalt, who needs Reform. ] What about the feastele. The soup. The truth is, if you can, you eat everything leaning back. It has to be the featele of a king. (b18-2e) [ Or better yet, snort the soup through your nose. I mean, let us be reasonable. First of all, I don't think the feast even belongs in the Seder. Like the whole point is, we are remembering the Exodus, so we are eating the bread of affliction, with bitter herbs. OK, so you say, we must also remember the Redemption, that's the feast. Nu, wait 49 days to Shavuot, then you can eat. Blintzes even. So ok, like I say, this leaning back bit is strictly burlesque. I mean, who wants to eat leaning back. Leave it to the Romans. Leaning back to eat is something you should only do when you have a slave girl to peel you a grape. I mean, if leaning back was such a luxury, they would have divans at every restaurant with a white tablecloth. I mean, this is what's good for the digesteion? And if it ain't, you done said the brachot over food in vain. Like, pour me my bitters. ] Do you know beween the first and second [ cups of wine ] (b18-2f) (b18-2f) -- the first to make kiddish, the second too salute the conclusion of reading the Hagadah -- the Hagadah is recited over the 2nd cup of wine ] If a person never drinks wine, for one reason or another, nevertheless, seder night you have to drink wine. (b18-3a) (b18-3a) [ So some say, but this is now considered a recommendation, not an obligation; and prevailing custom, as I saw it at the Witts, is that one is free to drink either wine or grape juice.] And you should drink red wine. (b18-3b) (b18-3b) [ I have heard this as a recommendation for Shabat, but never as an obligation, and I have not heard it mentioned as a particular obligation nor even recommendation for the Seder.] !When someone makes kiddush you dom't have to drink wine, you just have to listen to it.! (b18-3c) (b18-3c) [ And, I think, answer 'Amen'.] But if some reads the Hagada, and I say 'Amen' (b18-3d) (b18-3d) [ I don't recall an 'Amen' to the Hagada, neither before or after reading it. ] I really have to sell everything in order to have the four cups of wine. A person even has to sell himself as a worker. (b18-3e) (b18-3e) [ Bullshit. To celebrate our freedom from slavery you should turn yourself into a temporary slave. And also it is said, a man should make his Shabat like any other day rather than spend more than he can afford. ] Women also have to drink four cups of wine. [b18-3f] (b18-3f) [ Oh well. And to which marketplace do THEY go if they can't afford a jug of it. No. Preganant women are surely excempt, for preganant women should not drink alcohol. And of course anyone witha damaged liver is exempt. And maybe nursing women too. And all this I can derive from 'ki hen chai_eynu, for they are your life, and from , 'the torah (or is it 'the Shabat'= was made for man, not man for for the torah' ] Children when they can already understand what is going on also have to drink four cups of wine. (b18-3g) (b18-3g) [ That's nonsense. Children don't have to do anything. They're not bar mitzva. When they're bar mitzva, they have to do anything. And also, derekh eretz says: you don't force alcohol on children. There is nothing inherently sacred about wine, which would somehow take it out of the category of mere alcohol. We make kiddish etc. over wine because it is a treat for us, and we wish thereby to show additional honor to the Sabath, or to the Hagadah, or to the Hallel, or to birkat haMozon, or to the wedding couple. So there is no point passing around the cup after you have made kiddish, what is santified is the Shabat, not the wine. And also -- children are smaller than adults, even if they were to drink a cup of wine, it could not be an adult cup. And anyhow, most kiddish wine ain't worth drinking in the first place. Gal_or stopped by, I gave him some, he said, that's cough syrup. Next time he stopped by I gave him some real wine. He said, is that regular wine. I said yeah, but I added sugar to it. That was almost the first time Gal_or refused a glass of wine. ] If a person makes a vow that he won't drink wine all year then he has trouble seder night. But if a person makes a vow I will not drink wine seder night, the vow is not even valid. (b18-3b1) (b18-3b1) [ More precisely, a vow to never drink wine is not valid, because on seder night one is obligated to drink wine, and an halachic obligation (if this is one) takes precedence over a vow. ] The four exiles are Egypt, Baby.lon, Persia, and Edom (Rome). (b18-4a) (b18-4a) [ I'm not clear how you get Persia. When Assyria conqureed Babylonia, Xerex permitted the exiled Jews to return to the land of Israel. ] (b18-4b) [ The custom, whcich I have seen everywhere, is to use the leaves of Romaine lettuce. I suppose because Romaine lettuce is slightly albeit minimally bitter. ] (b18-4a1) [ Must a kezayis "be pretty big". There's a lot jive about a kezayis. It means, k_zayit, like an olive. That ain't big. But someohow a kezayis of wine comes out a huge amount. ] (b18-4b1) [ Similarly, the Christians say, G_d give you no test too difficult to pass through. And I suppose this is the parting of the Reed Sea.] (b16b-5a) [ That ain't a machlochet, there's nothing to do a dialektic on, it don't go up in helicycle (as Sartre said of his play, Les Sequestrs d'Altoona) -- it's just a dithering of perspectdives. ] (b18-5b) [But I have heard some say, a kazayis of matza is darned near the whole matza. I guess they are going by weight, and found some darned big olives somewhere. ] Moror you don't eat learning back, because when you eat bitterness you don't do it lying back. (b18-5c) (b18-5c) [ Not to mention the heartburn. I mean gvalt, somewhere near t he North Pole there are frumies who eat horseradish standing on their head, and on horesback to boot. ] First we eat matza alone and moror alone, and after t hat we eat both together. (b18-5d) (b18-5d) [ Sounds so ruddy Aristotelian logical they must have learned it from the Thomists. ] If anyone becomes crazy for half an hour and he eats matza and then he becomss normal again he has to eat matza again. (b18-6a) (b18-6a) [ OK, at first glance this is abstract pilpul -- it does not teach us any halacha we would ever need to know -- except for ouer seder gueset George, who turns into a werewolf when but only when he sees the full moon, so we hope for some clouds in the sky - it merely illustrates the logic behind the halachot. At second glance, it implies that matza must be eaten with full attention, and kavanah. But then that contradicts RSC's remark that one can chug the ruddy stuff down without tasting it -- though I can't imagine how. I suppose this is those compressed matza pills -- a whole sheet in the size of a large vitamin pill -- but I believe there was some question about the kashrut of the gelatin caps. ] the matza afikomen, the broken matza, and you eat from that a kezayis. If you want to make it really strong you have to eat two kezaysim to make it a really big piece. (b18-6b) (b18-6b) [ But again, the custom I have seen is that for the afikomen each person eats nearly a whole matza, since a prevailing opinion is that it takes nearly a whole matza to make a kezyis of matza. ] You now the holy SANZER was sitting after the seder and putting his hands on his stomach and he was saying Oy, tongight my stomach did so many mitzvas. (b18-6c) (b18-6c) [ I don't really like that. R. Solevetchik presents that position clearly in Halakic Man -- a mitzva is done for its own sake. But it seems to me, a mitzva is not done for its own sake -- although there are some chukat, where we do mitzvas on faith, without knowing what good they do (and also this is Pirke Avot, 'Be as careful with a [ supposedly ] 'light' mitzva as with a [ supposedly ] 'heavy' one, for you know not the reward reserved for each. So why do we do mitzvot, if they are not for their own sake -- and also this is, 'the Shabat was made for man, not man for the Shabat' -- here I want to bring in PVK's phrase, 'to build a beautiful world of beautiful people' (and in later years he would add, 'amidst an ugly world of ugly people' -- only my brother could say that phrase with the proper touch of enduring humoour -- like someting out of a TV show, The Simpsons maybe -- This is more than 'derekh eretz', it comes closer to what folks must mean by civilization. I really must buy a new pair of pants, one without a rip in it. (b18-7a) [ Everyone knows, RSC used to teach: the kavanah is not 'pour out YOUR wrath upon the the nations that have not known YOU', but rather, 'pour out YOUR warmth'. The Hebrew text will support that alternate reading. ] According to some you have to eat the afikomen before midnight also, but only the first night. (b18-7b) (b18-7b) [ But this -- that on the 2nd night you do not have to eat the afikomen before midnight -- contradicts a story, with RSC told, of the hosid who falls alseep on Pesach afternoon, and wakes up so late he has to rush though the second Seder, and is crestfallen, but then his Rebbe says, it was his second Seder that was the great one. ] He would ask him the craziest things in the world, and he would answer him in the craziest way in the world because he was crazy. (b18--8a) (b18--8a) [ sounds like a dervish -- he looks crazy, and he acts crazy, be he ain't the one who's crazy, you are . But maybe it ain't a dervish, just a meshugana. The difference is between Heaven and hell, from here they both look about the same. But not when you get there. ] Leyl shmura means the night when G_d is watching. (b18-9a) (b18-9a) [ But the the usual translation is, 'a night of watching'. Meaning, a night when one watches, as the children of Israel were on the watch for the moment when they should leave. So it seems to me, this, no less than Shavuot, is a night when it is appropriate to say awake all night -- and the Hagada passage about the 3 rabbi's seems to be strong hinting that. ] The Seder is s combination of everything I was high on all year long. (b18-9b) (b18-9b) [ I thought that matza tasted rather like peyote.]