July 2, 2004

by Reb Yudel
Bug-eyed Monsters of Orthodoxy

If the OU is indeed about to recommend that New Yorkers filter their water, there are still a bunch of followup questions that need to be answered:
  • Is NYC water uniquely buggy? Will the OU put out a city-by-city guide to municipal water systems, or is it pashut assur to leave NYC? How about rural systems -- should we be taking filters wherever we travel?
  • Is it true that this was not a problem in previous generations because, like the birds flying over whats-his-name's head in the gemara, the little cructaceons (note: I can't bring myself to look up the spelling for such a vile, tamehdik word) crumbled before approaching the water pipes of gedolim such as the Rav, the Rebbe and Reb Moshe? And that it is only with the passing of their zechut, and their Mystic Torah Bug Smashing Aura (think be'er Miriam, only the converse), that this has become a problem?
  • If a non-crushed all-but-microsopic bug is considered a davar chashuv, are we not defining chashivus down? Could this be related to our defining "gadol" and "posek" down?
  • Is it fair to say that this psak, rather than the Mishna Brura's codification, is what has definitively closed the era of the aharonim, and launched that of the tachtonim? TrackBack