[Avodah] The MB, Minhagei Lita, and Temimos

[Micha Berger]

Still catching up on old posts...

On Mon, May 25, 2009 at 9:30pm GMT, rabbirichwolpoe at gmail.com wrote:
: Years ago I posted that the Litvisher rabbanim I knew said that the AhS
: was the prevailing poseiq in Lita no the MB. FWIW One of these rabbanim
: lived in Hartford and his father-in-law was a rav in Baltimore.

: The last 3 doros of Gdolei Psaq in Lita went more or less like this
: R Yitzchok Elchanan Spektor
: AhS
: Rav Chaim Ozer. Grodzinsky
: However the yeshivisher world has since lionized other G'dolim instead.

Because the yeshiva thrives on lomdus, without which learning would be a
lot less structured and less interesting. Therefore, they lean toward
textualists.

Fill in the usual about textualists vs mimeticists vs idealists.

This plays itself out in which Litvisher RY supported the MB vs which
supported the AhS. It's not coincidence that R' Hutner (the Pachad
Yitzchaq), R' SY Weinberg and my own rebbe, RDL were among those who
recommended their talmidim lean on the AhS. Whereas, in those yeshivos
where Brisker derekh took over (including the current version of NIRC),
it's the MB.

The AhS, while giving weight to mimeticism, halakhah as it was actually
practiced in Litta, shouldn't be confused with mimetics. The fact that
it itself is a code, a text, means that following the AhS

On Tue, May 26, 2009 at 03:13:45PM +0000, kennethgmiller at juno.com wrote:
: Ein hachi nami. So what? This is not the first time that the
: less-popular in one generation, has become the more-popular just a few
: generations later. If I'm not mistaken, it happened with Beis Shammai
: and Beis Hillel too.

I don't think so. I think Beis Shammai was always smaller. The point
of the story about Hillel freezing on the roof is that Hillel broke the
trend and allowed the masses into his school. Beis Shammai was brighter
because it was more elitist -- and therefore it was also smaller.

The bas qol that said halakhah kebeis Hillel was followed because halachic
process favored following the majority anyway. It confirmed process,
not overridden it.

:-)BBii!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger                 Time flies...
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