[Avodah] R' Aviner on gadol hador status

[Zev Sero]

David Riceman wrote:
> Rich, Joel wrote:
>> Here yes - see for example S"A Y"D 244:10
>>   
> It's true that the language is ambiguous, but I don't think that either 
> the Rama or the Trumath HaDeshen needs to be understood as saying that 
> "gadol hador" is a position which can be occupied by only one person at 
> a time.

Indeed it's surely impossible for the Rema to have meant that literally.
How, in his day, was a Jew in Poland to know whether there might not be
someone in Morocco or Iraq or Yemen who was greater than the "godol hador"
of whom he knew?  The possibility must surely have occurred to him, and
yet he writes this as a practical halacha.  The most obvious answer is
that it's not meant literally, and that it applies to someone universally
acknowledged as the greatest T"Ch in Poland, or at most Eastern Europe,
even if there is someone greater than him elsewhere.


-- 
Zev Sero               Something has gone seriously awry with this Court's
zev at sero.name          interpretation of the Constitution.
                       	                          - Clarence Thomas