[Avodah] R' Angel & Geirus Redux

[Micha Berger]

As I tried to say earlier, I think you both veered from the original
topic without ever resolving it. C and O have drastically wrong
notions of what ol mitzvos means. There is no extrapolation from
allowing geirus of someone who may not know much of what he needs to
do, but knows what "needs to do" means to someone who can't be
meqabeil ol mitzvos because he has a wrong understanding of ol
mitzvos.

That's the problem with R' Uziel's proposal, and why RMAngel is wrong
in thinking it's simple chumraization that has gotten it ignored.

Given the inability leqabeil ol mitzvos, the question of whether
"nebich an apiqoreis" C/R Jew has the din of an apiqoreis really had
nothing to do with the original question.

Second, to accept a geir, the question isn't whether he is a
kofeir/min/apiqoreis but whether his beliefs are appropriate. A well
meaning believer in kefirah/meenus/apiqursus isn't a geirus candidate.
So, even beyond ol mitzvos, a nachri who was mislead by reason or
well-meaning TsN Jews isn't a geirus candicate anyway.

As for this tangent, now that we're here... I am loathe to argue with
RDE, the Yad Moshe, as to RMF's shitah. However, I /thought/ that from
his pesaq on minyan, RMFeinstein was clear that the hamon am are TsN.
(Whereas the SR was machmir, and would not count them toward a
minyan.) RMF held the rabbis accountable, though. But I'm not sure
RMF's view of C and R rabbis is still true a generation later. It's
one more generation of drift apart, and in addition there are no
longer that many O raised and ordained rabbis throughout their ranks.
But r"l RMF isn't here to ask -- I can only guess his opinion given
the changing realia. Or in this case, only note that it's impossible
for me to guess.

As for the viability of the idea as a whole. As is well known (as
least to the Avodah chevrah), the CI is famously meiqil. He holds that
on some level, once non-O Judaisms became so ubiquitous, none of us
are being fully rebellious. Even among those raised O as well, to some
extent we are all TsN. When someone living in the ghetto left shemiras
hamitzvos, he left everything he was raised with, the only notion of
Jewish identity and culture extant. Ba'avoseinu harabim, that's no
longer true. At least, to some extent (as I wrote above "on some
level") -- the CI applies this qulah to maalim umoridim, not
necessarily across the board.


On Tue, 18 Mar '08 7:53pm IST, RMM explains his difficulty accepting
the Abarbanel's position:
: The Abarbanel could be challenged that receiving Olam haBa is not some
: mechanistic thing that a cold machine does based on hard-wired
: criteria. Rather, G-d evaluates each person one-by-one I assume. So
: what would stop G-d from saying, "You didn't believe any of the 13,
: but since you were 100% shogeg tinok she'nishba, I'll let you in".

I think that since HQBH is lemaalah min hazeman, the difference
between a predefined rule and one-by-one assessment is meaningless, a
limitation of human thought. After all, judgment, din, implies rules.
(For that matter rachamim is itself a rule, but that's even less
intuitive.) Besides you just spelled out a more complicated rule that
can equally be followed mechanistically. You just replaced yedi'ah
with your assumed definition of tov. Which includes the honestly
mistaken non-believer.

It's not just the Abarbanel. The Rambam also makes OhB dependent on
yedi'as haBorei, and all of mitzvos are about creating opportunities
to reach that yedi'ah. Recall, his 13 middos are given in peirush to
"kol Yisrael yeish lahem cheileq le'olam haba" and thus (as he writes
in a similar list in the Yad) delimit who doesn't have a cheileq.

The Rambam's sevara in the Moreh: The tzurah of HQBH is no less
eternal than He is. And it is through yedi'ah one gains some of that
tzurah (more accurately, yedi'ah IS holding a tzurah in your mind) and
thus nitzchiyus. Without yedi'as haBorei, there is no eternal tzurah
-- and thus, kareis.

By the time the Ramchal comes on seen, moral tov (sheleimus in middos)
took over discussion rather than an intellectual yedi'as haBorei.

Someone who internalized Tzuras haBorei is morally good, vehalakhta
bidrakhav. Is that knowledge of how to act the yedi'ah in question, or
does intellectual knowledge of G-d the only route to getting to that
emotional / middos resonance. Isn't someone who by luck following the
derekh Hashem also harboring elements of the tzuras haBorei?

I feel this dispute has to do with Aristotelian psychology. Aristo
thought that thought shapes emotion. We today tend to believe the
other way around -- that emotion colors which thoughts we accept. This
shift is seen in the language; the shift from the talk of "dei'os",
using a word based on "da'as", to speaking of "middos". To many
rishonim, other than the Raavad, dei'os come from da'as. The
possibility that someone could successfully act in accord with
Hashem's middos without knowing Him didn't cross their minds. And
therefore they never discuss knowledge apart from goodness -- they
come together.

It's not that these rishonim deny the other position, they ignored it.
Or, in terms of my post of a few weeks back about the relationship
between philosophy and hashkafah, it's not a question people of their
era would have asked.

In any case, acharonim from at least the Ramchal onward have a pretty
*mechanistic* system between acting like HQBH and getting into olam
haba, which is a very different kind of "yedi'as haBorei". That, after
all, is Din.

RMM continues:
: To a tinok she'nishba, we don't penalize him at all (obviously,
: he can't be an eid, etc., but still, we don't villify him or punish
: him by the beit din), and yet the beit din shel maala will be
: *stricter* than shel mata? Since when is the shel maala stricter -
: isn't it always that our courts have to go by what we see (he stole,
: period) but shel maala will judge the conditions (he was poor, he was
: hungry, he didn't know better...)? So why is here the opposite?

One possible explanation: Because BD can't judge thought, but BD shel
maalah can.




Now that I'm far down in this post, I can touch the REB dispute,
burying my remarks from all but the very interested. I find this
discussion distasteful, but one has to have red lines defining eilu
va'eilu from something else. So, despite my own desire not to start
labeling people and narrowing my circle of "us", I feel compelled
(RRW, take note at that phrase!) to give my 7 agarot. (3.39 NIS/USD --
who woulda thunk it!)

On Mon, 17 Mar 2008 8:05pm IST, RMM wrote:
: What Rav Berkovits says has to be understood along with what he says
: about Chazal in Not in Heaven: he says that Chazal could never
: abrogate a deoraita in theory, but they could okimta it so as to
: effectively get rid of it (the rebellious son) or to modify its
: operation (for example, with mamzerim, you can just simply not
: investigate the evidence, for an aguna you can rely on one witness,
: etc.).
...
: 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. ... On Azure.co.il, there's an article by David Hazony,
: with a title something about revival of Jewish moral thought, on this
: entire subject.

To which RDE replied on 9:54pm IST that evening:
: 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?

And RMM responded on the next day (Tue) at 2:25 IST:
: B'vadai, one can argue with Rav Berkovits on whether we can do away
: with the law of kabbalat mitzvot in favor of the law of preservation
: of the unity of Am Yisrael, as an eit la'asot lashem; b'vadai one can
: argue with this. But the questions he raises (viz. that to be machmir
: on kabbalat mitzvot is to be meikil on lo titgodedu, etc.), and the
: approach that leads us to his conclusion (approach R/C with candor,
: etc., and firmly state our approach but still give them the respect of
: having their opinion listened to, don't declare them apikorsim
: b'meizid, recognize their lishma intentions even if they are dead
: wrong), is much less open to criticism IMHO...

Here's the problem as I see it.

Saying that chazal okmita something so that they effectively get rid
of it is beyond the O-C divide. Doubly so in a case like the ben
soreir umoreh, where the quote in question says they were stating the
practice as it existed midorei doros. You're taking their statement of
preserving a complex pesaq and using it to prove change.

One might okimta away something in the face of a greater chiyuv (which
you're arguing in our case) but not to simply erase an undesirable din
from the books.

I am saying something stronger than RDE's "He basically says that
whatever we think Chazal did - we can do also. However even if we ...
think we fully understand what Chazal did...." I'm pointing to
contradicting their own presentation of their actions to purport a
different understanding of what they did -- and thereby justifying
what we do.

The solution for Batei Hillel veShammai was to keep sifrei yuchsin,
not for either side to drop their pesaq.

Lo sisgodedu didn't rule out the concept of a machloqes lesheim Shamayim.

REB even realized his argument was specious, which is why he had to
mention the metahalachic concept of "eis la'asos" -- this must be done
despite it violating the normal rules. I fail to see how this is an
eis la'asos, as no one's relationship to Hashem is saved through it,
"just" unity would.

But bekhol zos, stepping back from the arguments of this particular
example to speak of REB's mehalekh as a whole...

RMM referred to R David Hazony's article in Azure (no 11, Summer 2001)
article "Eliezer Berkovits and the Revival of Jewish Moral Thought"
<http://www.azure.org.il/magazine/popUp_print.asp?ID=215&member_Id=>.

AishDas is founded on the notion of a synthesis. Aish is supposed to
represent passion, Das, rite. Das without aish is "frumkeit", a
shallow culture of mitzvos anashim meilumada. Aish without das is
something other than Yahadus, it's unanchored, capable of being pulled
in any direction the people riding it think is "moral".

(And then, beyond that, that this requires work on developing
hislahavus for those values within oneself beyond the current norm.)

A revival of Jewish Moral Thought to create a passionate observance of
halakhah is one thing, or to at most select between otherwise equally
valid halachic options. A revival that supplants parts of halachic
process is something else entirely.

IOW, what I see as dangerous in REB's thought is (to quote RDH's
quotation of an essay by REB on the very conversion issue before us):
> In Crisis and Faith, Berkovits reviews this history with no small
> measure of discomfort. In his view, this gradual transformation of
> the oral tradition into a written one was a "calamity," representing
> a "violation of the essence of halacha." While he admits that owing
> to the Jews' historical predicament, there may not have been any
> alternative (as some of the codifiers maintained in their own
> defense), Berkovits nonetheless views the codification of the oral
> law as a blow to the traditional goals of Jewish law itself. ...
> [A]s violating the purpose of an oral tradition by reducing what is
> supposed to be a system of values, the application of which
> necessarily eludes precise and permanent delineation, to a set of
> rules.

I agree with the sentiment that it was a reduction, but in response to
a loss of the culture that internalized the system of values. Nisqatnu
hadoros means that we will have to increasingly rely on formal law.

And thus, it's not calamitous. It's the preplanned way of dealing with
our increasing distance from maamud Har Sinai.

Moshe gave us formal law in addition to values. "Miymino AishDas
lamo." We lost many of those values when Moshe died, and Asniel had to
reestablish those scenarios on more formal grounds. Similarly, all of
the cases of "shakhechum vechazar veyasdum", where AKhG had to use
formal rules to reconstruct the values lost during Bavel. Similarly
churban bayis leading to the mishnah, and when we spread out beyond
Bavel and EY, for the gemara. Loss of culture was ALWAYS, since
Yehoshua's day, supplanted with use of formal rule.

This is not catastophe. It's why Hashem gave us an AishDas, a halachic
process unified with those values.

To continue:
> Berkovits does not argue for the abolition of the Shulhan Aruch. He
> accepts the premise that the halacha is a binding system of law, and
> that, as with any legal system, one must for the sake of the integrity
> and stability of the law be willing to preserve time-worn precedents.

More than that... It's part of the system of values, the root of the
codified law itself.

> In this regard, Berkovits is no revolutionary. But by reviving the
> debate over the effect of the legal codes, he is nonetheless raising
> the banner for a reconsideration of the way halacha is understood. If
> the codification of the halacha was a necessary response to the
> trials of destruction and exile, then the lawbooks which have come
> to be identified so fully with Orthodoxy are in some important sense
> alien to the law.

REB makes law with all the rigor of law a necessary evil. Halakhah is
no longer the product of a process given by G-d, it's a man-made
approximation of Divine Values. He thereby opens the door to C-style
malleability.

Which is why we find eis la'asos being treated as a value, not a
rigorous halachic category with well defined limits. Eis la'asos,
rather than being only where a person will lose all contact with
G-dliness, becomes a codeword for "Jewish values" trumping halakhah.
Unanchored. C.

BTW, the similarity to early R's talk about a return to "Prophetic
Judaism" is haunting. The difference between them is more that REB is
described as realizing the pragmatic need, in "necessary response to
the trials of destruction and exile". But the ideal would be the same.

SheTir'u baTov!
-micha

-- 
Micha Berger             "Man wants to achieve greatness overnight,
micha at aishdas.org        and he wants to sleep well that night too."
http://www.aishdas.org     - Rav Yosef Yozel Horwitz, Alter of Novarodok
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