[Avodah] Hypocrisy in halakhah

[Micha Berger]

On Wed, Oct 29, 2008 at 11:17:48PM +0200, Michael Makovi wrote:
: Similarly, Rabbi Dr. David Berger in an essay on the Egalitarian
: Ethos, suggests that at the Christian Disputations, we realized that
: even though the Christians were certainly racist, we were not entirely
: innocent of that charge ourselves. We realized we had to look at our
: own texts in their eyes, and ask ourselves how we'd feel had their
: laws said the equivalent of what ours say...

:                We cannot simply overturn the halakhah, but we can
: creatively tweak it to suite our interests according to our own
: understanding of the Torah's ethos....

The phrase "our understanding of the Torah's ethos" isn't the same thing
as claims that it was in response to not liking the racism we saw in the
mirror of that expressed against us. You're again teetering very close
to Historical School.

I have a very strong feeling you misunderstood RDB, as he is quite
conservative WRT halakhah. I shall be"H ask him.

You do what halakhah tells you to do. If it seems unfair, such as the
patient who hopes and tries to receive an organ from a pool to which
one is not permitted to donate (assuming that is halakhah, CYLOR), then
it's a matter of learning how one's instincts are wrong. Not simply ch"v
rewriting din in response to prevailing moral zeitgeist.

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             When faced, with a decision, ask yourself,
micha at aishdas.org        "How would I decide if it were Ne'ilah now,
http://www.aishdas.org   at the closing moments of Yom Kippur?"
Fax: (270) 514-1507                            - Rav Yisrael Salanter