December 2009 Archives

Preface

As part of a New Year's intellectual cleaning, I came across this post which I had intended to post on my birthday. This was actually the first year I didn't post anything since I started YUTOPIA nearly 6 years ago. As for many people, past year has not been the easiest for me on multiple personal levels. While I will not elaborate on most here, the year is ending with me coming out of a long relationship and reentering the tumultuous waters of Jewish dating. This recent emotional adjustment, though unpleasant, has been a motivating factor for reevaluating and revising the thrust of the overdue post below.

Being far removed from my alma mater, it is difficult for me to truly have a sense of what happens on campus anymore and second-hand reports fail to adequately capture the full zeitgeist of the community. The most recent controversy around Yeshiva University involves a forum on "Being Gay in the Orthodox World" and the expected. The topic of homosexuality in Orthodox Judaism has long been a controversial issue, one which we discussed years ago in "Lonely Men of Faith, but it is still considered taboo in certain Orthodox circles. Case in point, following said forum R. Meir Twersky responded with a public diatribe lambasting the entire event and its participants. This forum and the aftermath are helpfully recounted in great detail on Curious Jew's blog. Since I did not attend the event nor did I hear R. Twersky's statements firsthand I will not address either specifically. However, that such a controversy exists demonstrates that even after 123 YU is still struggling with its own identity as a "Yeshiva", "University", and a representative if not champion for "Modern Orthodoxy."

Halakhic Logic for Waiting One Hour Between Meat and Dairy

I'll skip the usual apologies for neglecting the blog; I'm a "part time" Rabbi and I've always believed that real life takes precedence over virtual life. Actually I think I've fulfilled my "virtual" requirements quite nicely on my Twitter feed.¹ Case in point, one Twitter conversation discussed the halakhic topic of waiting to eat dairy foods after consuming meat. There are varying cultural traditions regarding the length one must wait ranging from one to six hours but the minimum time of waiting only one hour is the least commonly observed practice. The reason for this phenomenon is likely the result of social factors - a cultural affinity towards selective stringencies being one of many- than legal hermeneutic. (The support for longer waiting periods certainly has halakhic support with Rambam (Ma'achalot Assurot 9:28) and Shulhan Aruch (O.C. 89:1) stipulating a 5-6 hour waiting period but Ashkenazi Jews follow these authorities inconsistently). In this post I will argue that the minimum position of waiting one hour, typically not considered normative, maintains halakhic validity.