[Avodah] R Tzadok-TSBP

[Michael Makovi]

>  3.  The Mishna Berura is another example of a prominent halachic book
> which displays reluctance to pasken.  I probably shouldn't even mention
> theoretical works like the Minhath Hinuch.  R. Haim's position is hardly
> unique.  Your's is.
> R' David Riceman

I've had "Rupture and Reconstruction" and the many works of Professor
Menachem Friedman on my mind recently.

> 4.  This Shabbos we'll read about Korah and last week we read about the
> meraglim (you'll have read them one week earlier); these are hardly
> explicit examples of unsullied practical halacha.  Ben Sorer Umoreh and
> Ir Hanidachas are more extreme examples.  I hope you can restrain your
> nausea when you attend shul.
> R' David Riceman

A few exceptions to halakhah l'maaseh I can handle, and even in these,
the cases are theoretically possible, and they have clearly obvious
lessons. Even if technically, the city will never be destroyed, the
idea of a city being destroyed for its idolatry is a clear-cut mussar
lesson. This is very different from involved and complex pilpul that
has no practical ramifications. Perhaps if we see a new book from
Artscroll, "The Practical Laws of Ben Sorer Umoreh" (500 pp.) I'll
agree with you here. :P

> 5.  Your own stated interest in Jewish philosophy is hardly consonant
> with your stomach's biases.
> R' David Riceman

Perhaps this is why I'm so interested in the effects of hashkafa on
pesika - saving einam yehudim on Shabbat, Rabbis Uziel and Haim David
Halevi, etc. To wit, take the following incident - a real story that
personally happened to me - which involved halakhah, but which clearly
had hashkafic underpinnings:

Someone asked: Given lo techanem, can we cheer for einam yehudi
baseball players?
Talmid hacham: That's a very good question; let me ask Rabbi Kanievsky.
Me: I just yesterday read Rabbi Dr. J. H. Hertz's eulogy for a
Catholic Cardinal, and you're asking whether lo techanem applies to a
baseball player? Ask whether that law even applies today at all! We
must live in different worlds indeed.

Rabbi Marc Angel, in an article in Tradition ("A Study Of the Halakhic
Approach of Two Modern Posekim ", 23:3) compares Rabbi Moshe
Feinstein's and Rabbi Haim Halevy's pesika. In one case, Rabbi
Feinstein said that one cannot teach science books with heresy, unless
he tears out those offending pages, and unless he mocks any heresy
found therein, etc. Thus, a teacher cannot teach books about foreign
religious if the book is written by an adherent of that foreign
religion, unless the book is read mockingly. By contrast, Rabbi Halevy
permitted one to study for an exam on Shabbat, for the secular
knowledge gained is intrinsically beneficial, irrespective of any
parnassah or exams. (Rabbi Feinstein apparently views secular studies
as a concession to the county's mandatory school curriculum, but Rabbi
Halevy disagrees.) Somehow, I don't think the machloket between Rabbis
Feinstein and Halevy was on formal halakhic sources. Rabbi Halevy was
once asked a question about Far Eastern meditation, and his response
makes it clear that he seriously studied the literature on that
subject, and only afterwards did he decide that it was idolatrous. Had
he been Rabbi Feinstein, one suspects he wouldn't have seriously
studied the book in the first place.

Compare the following three quotations:
- RMF: "My entire world view stems only from knowledge of Torah without
any mixture of outside ideas (yediot hitsoniyyot), whose judgment is
truth whether it is strict or lenient. Arguments derived from foreign
outlooks or false opinions of the heart are nothing. . ." (Even he-
Ezer, 2:11, quoted in Rabbi Angel's "A Study of the Halakhic Approaches
of Two Modern Posekim").
- Rav Hirsch, "Religion Allied to Progress": "The more the Jew is a Jew,
the more universalist will his views and aspirations be, the less
aloof... will he be from anything that is noble and good, true and
upright, in art or science, in culture or education..."
- R' Uziel: "Our holiness will not be complete if we separate ourselves
from human life, from human phenomena, pleasures and charms, but (only
if we are) nourished by all the new developments in the world, by all
the wondrous discoveries, by all the philosophical and scientific ideas
which flourish and multiply in our world. We are enriched and nourished
by sharing in the knowledge of the world; at the same time, though, this
knowledge does not change our essence, which is composed of holiness
and appreciation of God's exaltedness." (Quoted in Rabbi Angel's "The
Grand Religious View of Rabbi Benzion Uziel", Tradition 30:1) ... Each
country and each nation which respects itself does not and cannot be
satisfied with its narrow boundaries and limited domains; rather, they
desire to bring in all that is good and beautiful, that is helpful and
glorious, to their national [cultural] treasure. And they wish to give
the maximum flow of their own blessings to the [cultural] treasury of
humanity as a whole, and to establish a link of love and friendship among
all nations, for the enrichment of the human storehouse of intellectual
and ethical ideas and for the uncovering of the secrets of nature.
Happy is the country and happy is the nation that can give itself an
accounting of what it has taken in from others; and more importantly,
of what it has given of its own to the repository of all humanity. Woe
unto that country and that nation that encloses itself in its own four
cubits and limits itself to its own narrow boundaries, lacking
anything of its own to contribute [to humanity] and lacking the tools
to receive [cultural contributions] from others.(Quoted in Rabbi
Angel's book Loving Truth and Peace: The Grand Religious Worldview of
Rabbi Benzion Uziel).

I think it absurd to say that the machloket between Rabbi Feinstein on
the one hand, and Rabbis Hirsch, Uziel, and Halevy on the other, has
no practical implications in halakhah l'maaseh; adarabbah.

If nothing else, learning hashkafa and about the authentic Orthodox
lifestyle is a very important innoculate against being influenced by
Haredi anti-mimetic textualism. If someone truly knows Rav Hirsch's
hashkafa and Rabbi Marc Angel's books on Sephardim, etc., it is rather
difficult to be won over by Haredi propaganda. So learning this
hashkafa has manifold ramifications in halakhah, one way or another.
Presumably, it will help me raise my children as well, and this
implication has been high indeed in my mind.

> Presumably, it will help me raise my children as well, and this
> implication has been high indeed in my mind.
> Yours truly

I'd be lying if I said I'm not constantly fearful of how I'll raise
and educate my children in the present Orthodox environment; in almost
everything I do, this fear is a constant specter in the back of my
mind.

Almost daily without fail, I am assaulted by the intense feeling of
loneliness in my Orthodoxy, that I am alone in this world as far as my
beliefs go. Almost my entire weltanschauung consists of the books of
authors who are no longer living. I can survive like this, but
assuming my children follow me in my own weltanschauung, can my
children survive so alone and bereft? Can I even bring them into a
world in which they will be as lonely as I am? And if my children
reject my own hashkafa in favor of the regnant Orthodox one, they will
surely survive, but will I myself be able to live one more day
thereafter; will I be able to face another day?


> Perhaps this is why I'm so interested in the effects of hashkafa on pesika
> Yours truly

Just this moment, as I read "Orthodox Judaism Moves with the Times:
The Creativity of Tradition", by Rabbi Emanuel Rackman, Commentary,
June 1952, I saw the following: "Nevertheless, in the deepest strata
of Halachic thinking, logical judgment is preceded by value judgment,
and intuitive insight gives impetus to the logic of argument."

What I see often is that the surest way to detect a questionable
halakhic ruling, is on hashkafic grounds. The reason is that
1) Just about any humra does in fact have a halakhic basis, and
2) No matter how much halakha I learn, I have little hope in becoming
as proficient as the "gedolim".
According to these two points, I cannot rely on halakhic knowledge
alone - as vital as this knowledge surely is - to detect questionable
pesak. The "gedolim" surely do have halakhic basis, and they surely do
know more in their pinkies than I'll probably ever know in a thousand
years. So what will keep me from blindly following their path?

Rabbi Nathan Lopes Cardozo notes that the Talmud is interspersed with
aggadah because the aggadah gives the spirit of the law, and shows how
the law is to be implemented in daily life. The halakhah gives maximal
rulings regarding the ideal, but only the practical traditional life -
or the mimetic tradition - can moderate the maximal textual tradition.

As I said, I have "Rupture and Reconstruction" and Professor Menachem
Friedman on my mind.

I have no mimetic tradition; I have no Orthodox family, I have no
rabbis to guide me - unless we mean rabbis who like to joke that
President Obama is like Sadam Hussein, in which case I have no
shortage of rabbis to follow - so learning hashkafa is my personal
bedieved substitute for a mimetic halakhic tradition. It isn't ideal,
but it's all I have.

The halakha is the Oral Law, but the way to live an Orthodox life, and
the meaning of an Orthodox life - these also constitute Oral Law, but
in the latter - unlike in practical halakhah - I have no one save
myself to guide me.

Michael Makovi