[Avodah] priorities in halacha

[kennethgmiller at juno.com]

The OP quoted the KSA as saying that a silver menora is beautiful, and questioned making such a universalistic presumption.

R' Moshe Gluck commented:
> I think we've discussed before that the KSA was written for
> a specific community. I don't think it's outrageous to
> suggest that R' Shlomo Ganzfried knew that in his community
> the norm was that silver Menorahs were considered beautiful.

If the topic was about something was paskened verbally, I'd surely agree with you that he intended it only for the community within earshot.

But when writing such things, and then publishing them, I think we should ask: When a work is published, what were the author's reasonable expectations? He probably did not expect it to be available worldwide, but what about Europe? Could have foreseen that it would become popular outside of Hungary? For that matter, did the MB - or any other acharon - know how widespread his words would become?

In our generation, I have seen seforim where the author stresses that he is not intending to pasken for anyone, but that he is simply offering his view for those who have nowhere else to turn. (Rav Dovid Feinstein's Hagada Kol Dodi comes to mind.) Even more, some authors are making an effort to be more inclusive, and to point out how these communities hold this way, but those communities hold that way. (The SSK has an entire chapter which is relevant only in Chutz Laaretz.)

I think these trends to be a good thing, but I could be wrong. My subjective opinions are undoubtedly colored by the universalistic society in which I live. The whole point of this thread is that Chazal SEEM to have NOT shared that universalistic view, when they made various presumptions. So the question is: Were they justified (or even more correct than us) in holding such self-centered views? Or were they simply calling shots as they saw it, and would not object to our variations?

(For homework, please consider: Was Tefilas Zakkah (Erev Yom Kippur) written for ALL the Jews of the author's community, or perhaps only for a particular subset of them?)

Akiva Miller

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