Mending Fences

Dear ****,

In response to your claim that teaching people about how the ashkenazic practice, as documented in Shorshei Minhagei Ashkenaz, to not have to wait until nightfall to accept the holiday of Pentecost (Shavuot) or to recite kiddush might lead those people to violate rabbinic fences, “lifrotz gedarim,” I would like to point out an essential truth with regard to this and other practices: Starting Pentecost early is not “breaching a fence” simply because one is not encroaching on any prohibition, whether rabbinic or biblical, by taking in the holiday earlier. Once someone counts the Omer the day before Pentecost, the commandment has been fulfilled, and there is nothing left for him to do and nothing that he can do to detract from it. Read Rabbi Hamburger’s explanation there; Rabbi Bar Hayim has pointed out like wise.

A poreitz geder would accurately describe someone who violates an explicit rabbinic prohibition, like handling muktzeh on Yom Tov, or who violates a later communal enactment, like Rabbeiu Gershom’s ban. But, as we argued earlier, if someone were walking around bareheaded, what possible prohibition could he theoretically come to break? This is the distinction between a true prohibition, and folk perception of what is forbidden.

Thus, one who sits for the long tahanun is also not breaching a fence. In some siddurim, it says that one who sits for the additional section for Monday and Thursday is “breaching a fence and deserves to be bitten by a snake.” But consider: The essence of tahanun, supplications, is the falling on one’s face, and nowadays that is reduced to sitting, possibly with putting ones face into his arm or the table. If it is so important to stand for tahanun, then why sit for any part of it? Consider: Upon what prohibition is one encroaching if he were to not stand for that section? He is allowed to sit for other sections without a problem!

If you look in the Mishna B’rura (to Orah Hayim 134:3) it will become clear: There are those who say that the fence-breacher is only the one who omits the section, but if he said it just not while standing, he is totally not a fence-breacher. Rabbeinu writes the truth. Also see the exact quote of the source in the Beth Yosef and read it very carefully.

Therefore, I would like to suggest why there was this idea that one should stand for that section: It was once a new, important addition to the regular prayers, one the rabbis at the time positively felt should be a critical section, but they were not the sages of old, and lacked the authority to create orders of prayers. It could very well have been that in some communities, its newness meant that some congregants and congregations were not willing to make it part of their liturgy and/or standard practice. In order to highlight the gravity associated with the prayer, the rabbis ordered that worshipers remain  standing for it, as a sign of the respect due to the prayer. To what may this be compared? Standing for the prayer for the state. From a strictly legal/talmudic perspective, there is no reason to have to stand for it, because, as I wrote earlier, standing is for respect of the Torah and its scholars, or for the amida, but because there was opposition to the prayer or lackadaisical non-acceptance, its endorsers stood for it in order to emphasize its importance. According to the source in the Beth Yosef, the fence is showing reverence for the prayer’s legitimate addition to liturgy, not literally that one stand for the prayer lest he come to violate some other prohibition.