Isaac Alfasi

mention that there's a big Machogos Rishon HaNadaret.

I think the Rambam, the Rosh, even the Riff, they point out that any time you go into the Sukkah, that's a new entrance, you should make a bracha.

However, yet that being said, the Machaber, who usually takes the three major poskim, the Rambam, Riff, and the Rosh, and usually go the majority, here he mentions the Sheedah of Ben Otam.

The Sheedah

of Ben Otam is that you only make a bracha when you're eating the Sukkah.

So why does a kinion have any effect at all on how we interpret his statement of din u'dvarim einli b'nichsayich when he makes it before nisuin? The Raivid indeed rejects the suggestion of the Rambam, with a terse line, The Rambam's statement is nonsense and emptiness.

Their debate goes back to different understandings of a cryptic exchange in the ninth parakh of Masechet Ketubot, and the Rambam accepts the understanding of that Gemara advanced by the Rif and Riv Haigon.

The Shulchan Aruch accepts the Rambam's opinion, but quotes that of the Raivid as a yesh omrim.

Another question debated by Rishonim is whether the husband's siluk, if done before nisuin, applies even to property which she acquires after nisuin.

It would seem that the wife who commits to her own nidunya and then can't come up with the money should be able to force her husband to divorce her, as she should be no worse than the wife who says, I hate my husband and cannot continue to live with him.

This is one type of moredet, and we saw in Perikyu Dalid, in the opinion of the Rambam, against most other Rishonim, that Betin forces the husband to divorce her in this case.

The Rif believes that this woman, too, should have the same prerogative.

But the Rambam explains here why he disagrees.

In Spain and North Africa, a different but equally powerful style of scholarship developed.

Rabbi Isaac Alfasi, known as the Riff, distilled Talmudic discussions into concise legal rulings focusing on practical application.

Building on that foundation, Rabbi Moses Maimonides, known as the Rambam, created one of the most ambitious works in Jewish history, the Mishneh Torah.

This monumental code organizes all of Jewish law into a clear, systematic structure, written in elegant Hebrew without constant citation of Talmudic debate.

Even today, the voices of the Rishonim are everywhere in traditional Jewish learning.

A typical page of Talmud includes Rashi and Tosafot right alongside the main text.

Legal discussions constantly refer back to Rambam, Riff, and others.

When a modern rabbi answers a question, the chain of reasoning often runs directly through these medieval scholars.

So we mentioned at the end of last week we'd come back to this.

He writes that the three pillars upon which Klal Yisrael stands in Halakha are the Rif, the Rambam, and the Rosh, and therefore he decided in any place where two of them agree, that's how he's going to decide Halakha, except in a few places, or where most of Hakham Yisrael disagree with that opinion.

And therefore, Sephardim follow the Beit Yosef because it is following Sephardi Rishonim, the Rif, the Rosh, and the Rambam.

And Ashkenazim, when they argue, it's because they're following Ashkenazi Rishonim, like Tosfos or, I don't know, Rashi, the Maharam of Rottenburg.

Although this is not a hard and fast rule.

So that's the, that's the source, that's the discussion in Gemara.

The Tur brings down in source 30 over here, um, how literally do we take these things? Do we poskin like Mar Zutha? Do we poskin that it needs to be two rabbis? Do we poskin it needs to be 10 or 12? What, what's going on here? So source number 30, Kasiv Rav Alfis, which is the Rif.

The Rif, the Tur here, again, one of the Rishonim, is quoting the Rif, one of the earlier Rishonim.

Uh, tzorekh le'otduyei be'anpei asara, that you have to do, uh, birkas hagomel in front of 10 men.

D'chayn kasiva Ramabam za, and that's what the Ramam says.

Aval haTosfos kasu kein de'lo ivshita, av dinim l'chumra ubinon tar bayu.

So Tosfos says, so it sounds like the, uh, the Sephardic authority seemingly in the Tur over here, uh, the Sephardic Rishonim, that being the Rif and the Rambam, hold that a person should, um, should do, just needs to have 10 people.

And Tosfos says, "No, you need to have 12 people." Right? Okay.

It almost looks exactly, it's laid out, looks exactly like a page of Talmud.

But this is actually the commentary of Rav Yitzhak Alfasi, or as he's known as the Rif, the acronym, the Rif.

And in the back of every traditional Talmud is the commentary of the Rif.

Now, the Rif basically is a running distillation of the Talmud.

So you have to go through the entire tractate, and the Rif essentially gives you the entire tractate, but cuts out the parts that are not relevant for practical daily life.

Now, this was fantastic 'cause we know, you know, who do we decide like, who does the Jewish community operate like in terms of their daily life, whether it's making a blessing or the laws of Sabbath or whatever it is.

It gives you the bottom line.

So he has a bunch of mekorot that I'm, uh, not gonna go through in the name of space, but then it's go back and forth discussion.

But he says, when it comes to the Rif, people aren't sure what the Rif meant.

The Rif seems very clearly to have said it's okay to write a whole section of the Torah for a tinok, for a schoolchild to learn from.

I have a kid, wants to learn Bereishit, he can carry around-- he can-- we can write out a Bereishit for him.

He can carry around Bereishit.

But the question is, did the Rif hold that way because of ein la'asot lashevet perat Torah.

There are times when we allow the abrogation of the Torah, and we say, because otherwise we have a problem here, where such a significant problem that Torah cares about that, that in some way we allow ourselves to violate the Torah, to break the Torah.

That's one of the reasons, for example, why the oral law was eventually written down, because people were losing track of the oral law.

So we're in the middle of discussing a machloket between the Rif and Rabbeinu Tam.

We're discussing the eight of the double machloket.

We're gonna try to focus this on the fact that the Rif seemed to-- The Rif held and he said, "Kach ol ha-minhag bechol ha-olam, bechol ha-yeshivot," that they blew al sidah brochos, tashrat l'malchuyot, tashrat l'zichronot, and terah l'shofrot.

That was the minhag that was for many, many years, b'shtei ha-yeshivot u'bechol ha-olam.

Until Rabbeinu Tam came along, and Rabbeinu Tam was not happy with that mahalak, and he had a bomb bekasha on the mahalak.

And he still went and he changed it to tashrat, tashrat, tashrat.

He's had-- dealing with the fact that there's a hefsek between the shvarim and the tekiah, or between the teruah and the tekiah, nisgaf.

Ba-kapunim to understand a little bit mevar this machloket and how to explain the question that was asked al ibe de-shitet hu kol ha-olam keloi, and where the discrepancy was between what Rabbeinu Tam held and what the Rif.