[Avodah] R' Berkovits = Conservative halacha??

[Michael Makovi]

> From [Avodah] R' Angel & Geirus Redux

The topic moved to discussing Rabbi Berkovits's halachic approach,
compared to Conservative.

> He basically says that whatever we think Chazal did - we can do also.
> However even if we have the arrogance to think we fully understand what
> Chazal did and even if we chas v'shalom viewed ourselves as their equals
> - but much of what they did was obviously before the closing of the
> Talmud. How can you assert that that freedom of action still exists
> after the closing of the Talmud?
> R' Daniel Eidensohn

I would agree with you, that we have to be very careful when trying to
determine what Chazal were doing, exactly. The textual evidence (in the
Gemara) is, after all, relatively scarce and indirect.

In any case Rabbi Berkovits didn't try to emulate Chazal all the way;
he said the Talmud and Shulchan Aruch are sealed and authoritative.
But he said that if we understand what Chazal did, we can emulate them
within certain bounds, rather than being restrained by our own (faulty,
according to REB) notions of what Chazal did. Chazal's actions can inspire
us to similar but lesser acts for which we still have authority if only
we realize it.

>> What he says is that the Torah was meant to be a living evolutionary
>> code (therefore it was davka Oral and not Written), and therefore it
>> could freely evolve according to the legitimate needs of human living.
>> His Not in Heaven is full of examples he brings from the Gemara to
>> illustrate what he intends.

>> But he is of course committed to the halachic system (unlike
>> Conservative, who use disengenous pseudo-halachic solutions), and he
>> did not (or at least, he did not knowingly) import foreign values into
>> Judaism (unlike Conservative); he relied on Tanachic values, as did
>> Chazal.

>> Mikha'el Makovi

>  Having read through Not in Heaven - in particular Chapter 4 -Halacha in
>  our Time - I am having difficulty understanding how R' Berkovitz differs
>  from Reform and Conservative Judaism.
> R' Daniel Eidensohn

With Rabbi Berkovits, I said that he was committed to halacha unlike
Conservative - David Glasner in his article on Rabbi Moshe Shmuel Glasner
(www.dorrevii.org) says that same about Rabbi Glasner (whose Oral Torah
approach had many similarities to Rabbi Berkovits's).

Anyway...

I found an interesting article from Rabbi Jakobovits in Tradition
explaining Rabbi Unterman's teshuva on saving a gentile on Shabbat (Kol
Torah, Nisan 5726). This article of Rabbi Jakobovits's was printed in
"The Sabbath in modern times", Sabbath Observance League, Manchester,
1968, and I do not know which issue of Tradition it was originally in.

We all know that we save a gentile's life on Shabbat mishum eiva,
presumably meaning that we avoid evoking the animosity and hostility
of the gentiles, and so we pragmatically save their ill. Rabbi Unterman
makes two chiddushim as explained by Rabbi Jakobovits:

1) Violating Shabbat is a denial of G-d's having created the world,
etc. and so its violation is akin to avoda zara. Therefore we understand
why the Gemara could not simply answer that Shabbat is one of the
cardinal 3 for which martrydom is mandated. The Gemara needed a drash
to permit its violation to save a life, and it was permitted so that
the one saved could keep Shabbat in the future. Therefore, violation of
Shabbat is not permitted so much for the life itself, but rather for the
Shabbat itself. Therefore, there can be no question of racism against
gentiles; even a nonobservant Jew (whether a rasha, a tinok she'nishba,
or a deaf-mute, etc.) would be subject to the prohibition of violating
Shabbat to save a gentile's life.

2) Rabbi Unterman equated mishum eiva with darkei shalom, saying that
mishum eiva does not mean animosity, but rather, a positive striving for
peace and good relations. But what does this truly mean? Herein comes
Rabbi Berkovits's approach - Rabbi Jakobovits describes Rabbi Unterman's
intent (of darkei shalom) in terms startling similar to Rabbi Berkovits's
approach. I showed the article to my Gemara rav at Machon Meir (who has
studied, among things, Not in Heaven), but did not tell him its author,
and neither did I mention Rabbi Berkovits; I gave him the article and
asked him to tell me who he thought wrote it; he said it sounded exactly
like Rabbi Berkovits, and only then did I tell him who wrote it.

Now, I am being intentionally anachronistic; Rabbis Unterman and
Jakobovits came long before Rabbi Berkovits's approach AFAIK, but
nevertheless, since Rabbi Berkovits developed the approach further,
I am calling the approach his, even though he came after. In any case,
one side is following the either side, however we arrange it.

Now, even if we don't agree with Rabbi Jakobovits that Rabbi Unterman held
like Rabbi Berkovits, we have to be able to drink a l'chayim to the hava
amina, to say that Rabbi Jakobovits himself found nothing objectionable
in Rabbi Berkovits's approach, if he used Rabbi Berkovits's approach
to explain Rabbi Unterman's approach in an article that was completely
favorable of Rabbi Unterman and had not criticisms whatsoever.

Rabbi Jakobovits writes, to suggest mishum eiva/darkei shalom is a
moral/ethical overriding factor would be "a bold and and ingenious device
of the rabbis to operate an ethical corrective in their legislation
even to the extent of overriding Biblical laws conflicting with the
principle. By averring that the Torah itself stipulates that, to be
valid, its laws must accord with "the laws of pleasantness and peace"
they would affirm that any law leading to "enmity" is automatically
suspended or modified in much the same way as a law (other than the [3]
cardinal laws) conflicting with life is set aside because it was given
"that man shall live by it" (Lev 18:5) "and not die by it" (Yoma 85b). We
have here, then, a classic example of rabbinical endeavours to adjust the
Halakha, within the framework of its own rules, to the exigencies of the
times or indeed to the demands of ethical probity. The stringent rules
of the Talmud and Shulchan Arukh, however logically sound in themselves,
did not deter the rabbis from introducing modifications by using their
Halakhic ingenuity, reinforced by their lofty concept of Torah ethics,
to explain, if not justify, the practice of Jewish physicians in violating
Shabbat for non-Jewish as well as Jewish patients. Here surely is a case
where rigidity was deliberately sacrificed in favour of flexibility in
a remarkable effort to align the letter to the spirit of Jewish law."

B'kitzur: Logically-sound Talmudic rules are overriden by ethical
imperatives themselves intrinsic to the Torah (and not borrowed from
Western society and Enlightenment values- "darkei shalom" is a Torah
value). This is EXACTLY what Rabbi Berkovits said, not more and not
less. Rabbi Jakobovits says that "This argument may be capable of further
development", and I think that perhaps Rabbi Berkovits did davka this.

If we wish to argue on the merits of Rabbi Unterman's suggestion that
mishum eiva = darkei shalom vis. a vis. violating Shabbat for a gentile,
ignoring any Rabbi Berkovits-ianism, please see my separate thread,
[Avodah] Rabbi Unterman's Teshuva to Violate Shabbat to Save a Gentile

Mikha'el Makovi