Не всё же чужие истории post...
Jun. 10th, 2003 02:51 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ymarkovOn the second day of Shavuot there were no kohanim in the shul, and thus no one to dukhan. I remarked to a fellow davener: "I guess we'll have to rely on the kohanim in other shuls!"
Later, I started thinking about it. The Shulhan Arukh does say that if there are no non-kohanim present in a shul, they must dukhan anyway, and their brakha is for the women and children at home. This implies that the brakha is not confined to the shul, but rather radiates outward. However, it also says that those who stand behind the kohanim are not covered. Thus, there's a sort of a "dead zone" behind the kohanim; so what about the Jewish homes located in that zone? Clearly we can't say that they're excluded, thus we're forced to conclude that the dead zone ends at the shul wall.
This would seem to indicate that the spread of the brakha is governed by wave physics - an obstacle in the path of a wave sufficiently close to the wave source distorts the wave pattern, but doesn't entirely occlude it, IIRC. What happens, however, if there are two shuls in town and the kohanim dukhan simultaneously? Where the brakha wave fronts meet, there can be regions where the waves overlap, but also regions where they cancel out, again creating brakha-free zones.
Maybe you want to say that brakhas obey particle physics? Then you still have the kasha of the area behind the backs of the kohanim. However, this implies the existence of a brakha particle. What properties might this particle, or brakhon, have? What is its mass, spin, charm, etc.?
Later, I started thinking about it. The Shulhan Arukh does say that if there are no non-kohanim present in a shul, they must dukhan anyway, and their brakha is for the women and children at home. This implies that the brakha is not confined to the shul, but rather radiates outward. However, it also says that those who stand behind the kohanim are not covered. Thus, there's a sort of a "dead zone" behind the kohanim; so what about the Jewish homes located in that zone? Clearly we can't say that they're excluded, thus we're forced to conclude that the dead zone ends at the shul wall.
This would seem to indicate that the spread of the brakha is governed by wave physics - an obstacle in the path of a wave sufficiently close to the wave source distorts the wave pattern, but doesn't entirely occlude it, IIRC. What happens, however, if there are two shuls in town and the kohanim dukhan simultaneously? Where the brakha wave fronts meet, there can be regions where the waves overlap, but also regions where they cancel out, again creating brakha-free zones.
Maybe you want to say that brakhas obey particle physics? Then you still have the kasha of the area behind the backs of the kohanim. However, this implies the existence of a brakha particle. What properties might this particle, or brakhon, have? What is its mass, spin, charm, etc.?
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Date: 2003-06-10 11:20 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-06-11 10:05 am (UTC)А вот что ответил один корешок на Usenet:
LOL. You got me thinking,though, on how the halacha would work if informed by these kinds of notions. Miscellaneous musings follow:
-- Brakhons couple in a highly non-linear fashion, hence the need for both individual and communal prayers. Highly significant configurations include those for 1, 10 and 600,000 brakhons. Oh, and interference between proper brakhot is always constructive.
-- What is the speed of a bracha? In the case of a blessing, is it that of light, that of sound, that of thought? Perhaps here lies the authentic problem. When is a communal bracha properly performed? When the person making the blessing finishes spelling it out? When his listeners receive the sound? When the listeners notice the sound? IMHO, it would be when the listeners realize that they have been blessed. It would seem that speed of prayer is the speed of thought.
--- and yet, once a brakha is uttered it (symbolically) affects all worlds, immediately! Thus a brakha travels faster than thought, sound or light. It has an immediate effect, similar to those spooky quantum experiments whence a measurement at A affects a result at B. If the brakhon travels faster than light, it might be considered then as a
kind of tachyon (a tachyon is a particle that travels faster than light, or else has imaginary mass -- yep, that's the technical term).
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AS for my own opinion, brakhot mainly affect the person who says the brakha, and those who listen to it. Kavanah is an act of thought, and a necessary companion to a proper brakha. It sets an upper bound to the speed of brakhot, that of thought.