[Avodah] Sephardi-ism: some food for thought

[Micha Berger]

On Sat, Dec 06, 2008 at 11:42:00PM EST, R Richard Wolpoe wrote:
: On Thu, Dec 4, 2008 at 7:49 PM, Yitzhak Grossman <celejar at gmail.com> wrote:
:> On Thu, 4 Dec 2008 17:56:55 -0500 Micha Berger <micha at aishdas.org> wrote:
:> ...
:>> RRW seems to be descriing a world in which someday a good peice of
:>> software running atop the Bar Ilan CD might be a better poseiq than
:>> any human.

:> This could be true independent of any model of Halachah and Pesak, if
:> one assumes the possibility of the development of serious AI.
...
: I don't understsand how a criticms of X can create an entire pgeonhole
: characterizaiotn or extrapolation of a person's OWN methodology. It is
: indeed quie silly. I am merely pointeing out that many ashkenazic 20th
: cnetury posqim will tangentially throw in a shita as a given...

I was commenting on the quoted text, not the shitah. Of course, that
text is now an ellision "..." so let me repeat what you wrote that I was
disagreeing with:
> Micha and I have endless debatges on Halchicc metholody. Regardles of what
> system one uses, it is nice to have a more obejctive system than a
> subjective system...

To which I replied:
> I even disagree with that. It's nice to think that humans have a more
> creative role than that. I would agree that the better defined the
> limits of the system are, the more useful it is. But I would hate to think
> that the ideal halachic system is one with less autonomy. Subjective within
> an objectively defined range of possibilities would to my mind better
> balance the notion that both Hashem and the chakham participate in the
> creation of pesaq.

Then I wrote the line RYG commented upon. (IIUC, he was confused by my use
of the general term "AI", saying good AI would be subjective anyway.)
I wasn't commenting on your criticism, but your desire for objectivity
"regardless of what system" which I thought meant you assumed agreement.

To repeat what I was trying to say in a manner that avoids what I believe
was RYG's confusion:

Is the ideal poseiq a database plus some natural language software (to
convert the sefarim into some data structure) and an algorithm? That would
be the ultimate in objectivity -- but it would minimize the humanity of
our contribution to the halachic process.

About my objection, RAF wrote on Wed, Dec 10, 2008 at 7:20pm CET:
: Not necessarily. If I understand correctly, RRW still leaves room for 
: developments in halakhah, but wouldn't want these developments to creep in 
: into lema'asseh until the innovation has been digested and criticized and 
: quoted. Thus, humans would still be those who suggest developments and come up
: with hidushim, but an impersonal algorithm would prevent any chiduush from 
: seeping into practice too soon.

An algorithm means that the results are either fully determined by the
inputs, or random. Assuming we don't value dice rolling for its own
sake...

Given the same known pesaqim (textual and mimetic) and the same new
situtation, an impersonal algorithm would guarantee a particular answer.
If halakhah were algorithmic, one might as well listen to the bas qol. It
and the process must always reach the same answer anyway.

RAF continued:
: Still, I side more with RMB, while aknowledging that it is open to abuse, 
: which RRW's system prevents.

This is why I would want a creative process with as well defined
boundries as possible. Thus, "abuse" would have a definition, even if
creativity is invited.

It's like RNLCardozo's comparison between halakhah and Bach. Before
Beethoven, music composition was a creative process within rules. If you
bent them too far, at some point it wasn't a tocatta (or fugue, or minuet
or symphany or...) and people considered it anarchic and unpleasant.
Keys had to be well defined, etc... But within those boundries, they
managed to produce a wide variety of music, with a lot of both emotional
and intellectual content.


Back to RRW's motza'ei Shabbos post:
: But ascribing this to me is silly. Beis Yosef, kaf hachahim, ROY and
: others use a simlar technique. But pershaps the greatest example in
: Ashknenaz is the monumentl encyclopedic Darchei Teshuva on YD. But even
: Pischei Teshuva and Sha'arei Teshuva do this, too.

And yet they all have exceptions. As you yourself noted, these are general
kelalim that have exceptions, not algorithmic rules. I'm arguing that
this is desired, since knowing when one kelal is outweighed by another
is where creativity comes in.

The SA had a few rules that well outweighed the other. But he still broke
with his triumverate when something was just that much more mistabeir.

On Mon, Dec 08, 2008 at 11:51am UTC, Rn Chana Luntz wrote:
: RMB writes:
:> IOW, the Sepharadim are complaining that the typical Ashk
:> methodology is different than theirs. More development of one 
:> idea and its justifications than of the list of shitos.

: Well it is more than that, because, stepping back from the
: Askenazi/Sephardi divide, the question really becomes - to what extent
: is it appropriate to ignore what has previously been said. The argument
: for those who list shitos is that we stand on the shoulders of giants,
: so how can we not take what they say into account - and so even if
: you want to disagree based on lomdus, it is important to grapple with
: those of your forebears and contemporaries who appear to say differently
: (or to find comfort from those that disagree).

We only got into the Ashk / Seph divide because RMM said the divide
was an issue of defining koach deheteirah adif, so I throught out more
likely possibilities. One of those then spawned the current thread. My
point wasn't so much to argue that the SA and ROY's shitah counting
actually is Seph norm, just that it's not a tendency toward heteirah
as other patterns that aren't particularly heter oriented fit better.
I agree that none fit well.

That said, I don't think we're talking about simply ignoring precedent.
An acharon would make an argument as to why his example is a new case,
or why one should hold like Rabbeinu Tam instead of the Rambam. I don't
think anyone would outright "ignore what has previously been said."

The question between the SA/ROY/TE and (let's say) the Achiezer or RMF
is one of how significant of a general rule is the notion of following
rov (outside the context of a real nimnu vegamru). The less weight one
gives it when looking at pros and cons, the more times the person will
violate it.

Alternatively, the more weight one gives the Rambam's authority compared
to the significance majority of sefarim or perhaps the current practice of
one's community, the more often one will violate the majority conclusion
in favor of the Rambam. (Producing neo-Briskers.)

And then, when that weighing fails, the poseiq resorts to the rules of
birur safeiq.

: Hence as you can see the two do not need to be mutually exclusive -
: you could easily do both, a survey of what has previously been said
: and the lomdus....

This is how I views halakhah, there are many different things to do,
each giving significance to their conclusion, and then the poseiq has to
weigh those considerations. But then, I believe RnCL basically agreed
with my model when I first proposed it.

: And of course the theme that seems to run throughout [ROY's] discussions
: - is the principle that a safek d'orita l'chumra a principle that is
: itself d'rabbanan or is d'orita? (of course if it is d'rabbanan, the
: mechanism vis a vis the safek sfeka is pretty straightforward, because
: the first safek turns the situation from a d'orisa to a d'rabbanan, and
: hence the second safek you follow the principle safek d'rabbanan l'kula -
: whereas if safek d'orisa l'chumra is a principle from the Torah, then this
: straightforward mechanism does not work). As you can see from the flavour
: of this, however, a safek sfeka is generally about getting to a kula.

That explanation of sefeiq sefeiqa is in Shaarei Yosher, BTW. It is also
how RSShkop explains why safeiq deOraisa lechumrah doesn't apply to lo
sasur mikol asher yagidu lekha. They made the rule only for the other 612.
(Alternate explanation: Lo sasur requires stirah. If you're not listening
to them because you're unsure, it's not contradicting their taqanah.)

...
:> One thing about the MB, he tends to jump to laws of safeiq
:> rather than trying to be mevareir the din far faster than 
:> most other sefarim.

: Well this is the odd thing of course. The MB seems to be being
: accused of what is here being described as being "typically Sephardi"
: - first just listing shitos, and then going to the laws of safek. And
: yet it is hard to think of somebody more Ashkenazi than the MB....

I have no problem with this, since RSM convinced me (on Avodah) that
the MB was not an attempt to write a code, but an attempt to make more
shitos accessible to the talmid, and comment upon them. See the thread at
<http://www.aishdas.org/avodah/getindex.cgi?section=M#MB%20AND%20PSAQ>.
(In the first post, RSM quotes long stretches of the haqdamah to prove
his point.) After that discussion and looking at the haqdamah and the
title page, I am convinced that the MB's goal was to publish the acharonim
that post-dated the standardixation of the SA page, for learning --
and his comments were intended for limud not lemaaseh. Which is also
why he is so willing to contradict Litvish norm -- that doesn't enter
this kind of limud.

Remember, the CC was considered the tzadiq hador, but he wasn't the one
turned to for pesaq. It is also telling that he didn't seek semichah
before publishing the MB, which would be odd if he wanted to pasqen.

RMP and I discussed this a couple of weeks back. I argued that one pretty
clear proof is how often the CC didn't practice like the MB.

Wouldn't this indicate that the MB wasn't meant to be lemaaseh?
RMP counter-argued that since the CC didn't write all of the MB, how do
we know he was acting differently than he himself wrote?

My argument was that following the MB is actually following RYKamencki
and RAKotler, the ones who established the notion of the MB as a
final pesaq. At the time, there was a counter-campeign by R' Hutner,
RSYWeinberg, my own rebbe was against, because it meant relying on
a seifer that did not try to preserve minhag yisrael saba / mimetic
tradition / whatever you want to call it.

But RYK, RAK et all isn't a terrible choice of al mi lismokh. I"m not
arguing that because it's not the CC's pesaq, it's an error.

: seems to me that one can take the approach (ie ROY's approach) that the
: correct way to be mevareir the din is to use the laws of safek. Is this
: specifically Sephardi? I confess that if you read all of the sources
: that ROY cites, one does not get the impression that it is, as he cites
: many many others who use these principles, many many of them Ashkenazi.
: The question is more when and how, and what are the sfekos identified.

On Mon, Dec 08, 2008 at 11:40:01AM -0500, David Riceman wrote:
: I wonder whether the importance of precedent has anything to do with it, 
: in which case I'd expect to find towns (or whatever the unit of custom 
: is) which generate their own Rabbanim more interested in precedent than 
: towns where Rabbis are imports.

Frankfurt-am-Main imported its rabbanim and is stuanchly married to
precedent. One example is an anecdote, not data, but...

On Mon, Dec 08, 2008 at 11:35pm EST, R Richard Wolpoe wrote:
: No secular scholar would be able to state a matter of dispute as a matter of
: fact! If a Talmid of mine stated a disputed fact as a matter of Halacha I
: would ream him out. MANY times a Talmid has told me that Being Hshmashos
: Bgein at Shki'a. I immeidately challnge him waht is his source and what does
: he mean by shekia. To say what WE call sh'kia is the beginning of bei
: hashmashos is a BIG ahalchic dispute. I would NEVER accept anyone trying to
: slip in one shita as a fact when communities TODAY still differ! It might be
: a different case if the matter had been setllted 400 years ago!

Maybe in Luban it was. Just throwing out a possibility, don't hold me to
it.

: I hate to think that academics are more machmir on things like "davar
: behseim omro" but it sure looks that way...
: If these kinds of things were not important the be'er Hagolah on SA and the
: Shaar hatziyun on the MB would never have been written.

Except if the whole point of the MB is for learning halakhah as a theory,
which better parallels the academic's role than someone who is pasqening
does.

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             Spirituality is like a bird: if you tighten
micha at aishdas.org        your grip on it, it chokes; slacken your grip,
http://www.aishdas.org   and it flies away.
Fax: (270) 514-1507                            - Rav Yisrael Salanter