Monday, January 02, 2006

Kesubis 17a: 2 interesting points

I am learning Kesubos now so I would like to relate 2 interesting points from Daf 17a.

1. The gemara states that a King is not allowed to be Mochel on his kavod and brings an incident with Agrippas the King. The Rishonim point out that even though Agrippas was not a legitimate King as both his parents were not Jewish and he was not allowed to be King, he still had to be honored as King (draw your own conclusions).
2. The gemara states for the funeral of someone who is קרי ותני everyone needs to go to the funeral (and even מבטלים תלמוד תורה)until there are 600,000 people. This is quoted l'halacha in Shulchan Aruch Siman 361. The Rama points out that in his day everyone is assumed to have the din of קרי ותני. The question is why don't we observe this din today? The acharonim come up various answers, the question is better then the answer. If we did everyone who lived in a big city would be busy going to funerals all day.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

"as both his parents were not Jewish"

I take it you mean one of his parents was jewish?

"and he was not allowed to be King"

isn't this a machlokes? rashi sotah41b says that it was only zila milsa but permissible.