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Rabbi Yosef Gavriel Bechhofer הרב יוסף גבריאל בקהופר
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I saw in the comments there someone quoting the Ben Ish Hai in רב פעלים regarding bicycles. It's well-known that the Ben Ish Hai retracted his heter later in life.
ReplyDeleteWell known by whom? I am skeptical of all such assertions, especially once I saw it asserted that the Chazon Ish retracted his psak on the International Dateline on his deathbed...
Deletehttps://hebrewbooks.org/pdfpager.aspx?req=961&st=&pgnum=52 The last 3 lines of the first paragraph on the page.
DeleteI like the Yaskil Avdi, but I am unimpressed with his argument here about the tires deflating. And I am also unimpressed with the very vague assertion that he changed his mind. However, I am not convinced that the Rav Pe'alim was talking about a bicycle with a chain mechanism in any event. We don't know the nature of the contraption called a gharry that he is discussing, especially since a gharry normally connotes a horse-drawn carriage and here it clearly does not). It could be that what he permitted was something more like a penny-farthing or an adult scooter. Unlike the Yaskil Avdi, he does not use the word bicycle.
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