Reply To: Babies Looking Into Mirrors

“Oomis…forgive me, are you disagreeing with the array of sources above? Care to explain why?

The entire premise of the Rashbah is that our mesorah – even things without sources, as per the Heshiv Moshe – is ultimately something to be wary of rejecting. Hence, the Minchas Yitzchak, The Ben Ish Chai, are wary of eating the first piece of challah. Dayan Fisher disagreeed with them on a Halachic basis (based on a Gemara in Horayos. But I don’t believe that’s where you are coming from).

And perhaps you can source the custom of giving “the spitz” to a pregnant woman? And if you can’t…well, I suppose you should consider it silly as well.

Do you disagree? Why? You seem to respect “valid halachic sources”; does the Rashbah make the par?

The concept is that often old wives tales are often based on something. That is precisely what the Rashbah is saying. While the Remah limits it, the Heshiv Moshe does not. There is certainly room for debate here; but you don’t seem to be basing your point on anything. You seem to be rather flippant with Halachic sources. “

WHOA! Slow down. Most old wives’s tales are excactly THAT, bubba meisas, not based on anything at all of a halachic nature, just passed down from one to another. My friend informed me that her daughter had to change the mikveh night she was going to as a kallah, because when she got to the mikveh, she found out another woman had been in it before her (and her mother told her her grandmother said it is assur for a kallah to go into a mikvah unless she was the first one in). If that were true, 90% of the kallahs I know, went to their chuppahs as niddos!

I do not disagree with halachic sources (that would be rather chutzpahdig, don’t you think?), but I do disagree with the notion that all of these things have VALID sources that are accepted as halacha l’maiseh. After all as pertains to the challah, SOMEONE has to eat the first piece, you can’t throw it away! And if I am lucky, it will be me…