I know of no concept that we don’t use chazal to define. That’s a problem with looking at Torah as just laws and stories…the Torah defines for us any value…this is touching on a great divide between the yeshivos and the MO world. MO believes in “other things” outside of yiddishkeit, values that are general and not dependent on Torah. We don’t. For us, kudsha brich hu istakal beoraysoh ubara alma – everything that exists only does so because it’s in the Torah.
Rev Eliezer; what does the halacha of tevilah have to do with my statement that abstract hanaah may not be considered such? Actually i do need to be chozer from it for a different reason. It says you can’t feed animals bosor vechalav, even if the animal is not yours, because you have hanaah from the animal eating it.
Re, chesed leumim chatas – I’ll admit that my knowledge of the inyan was from my tanya learning days, as quoted in the end of the 1st perek, which he quotes from the arizal in aitz chaim shaar 49 when discussing the intrinsic spiritual differences between the beshomos of goyim and jews. He says that there is no true Tov, goodliness in the former, and that all the chesed that they do is to glorify themselves. It would seem that the arizal is paskening not like the maskana of the gemara in bava basra (happens to be that immediately after RYBZ, the gemara says that while it may be good for them, it is bad for us because it holds back the geulah when goyim have zchusim). I have a mahalach that the arizal can fit perfectly fine with the maskana, since if you look at the maharsha he says that the way Rebbe nechunya ben hakana(and RYBZ) read the pasuk, it’s saying that tzedaka and chesed are for yisroel, and the kaparah is for the goyim – meaning that even when yidden do lower levels of chesed not lishma, says the maharal, they count. With this we can understand the arizal – they indeed do chesed for themselves, due to their spiritual nature, but it is still a cleansing for them.
Chatas vs chait – we find many times that chatas means sin as well….al na sashem aleinu chatas…a korban chatas itself is a sin offering..