[Avodah] R Tzadok-TSBP

[Samuel Svarc]

On Sun, Jun 28, 2009 at 5:46 AM, Michael Makovi<mikewinddale at gmail.com> wrote:
<SNIP>
> 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.

One lives in a world where halacha decides how he lives (and where he
might accept a 'rayah' from RDJHH) and one lives in a world where
emotions rule which halachas are "still" valid?

<SNIP>
> 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..."

The perversion of truth, of taking a single quote out of context are
awe inspiring. Contrast to another RSRH quote and tell me if he argues
with RMF: "But the Torah and all its teachings must always... be the
yardstick by which we measure all the results obtained by other
spheres of learning. Only that which is in accordance with the truths
of the Torah can remain true for us..." Vayikrah 18:4-5

So, yes, RSRH (and RMF - remember Shira al Hayam, Shiras Devorah,
etc.) holds that there exists nobility in music (to use but one
example). But what is the yardstick to measure it with?

<SNIP>>
> 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.

Don't lump RSRH with the others. They don't hold his views.

> 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.

I find it difficult to believe that you have read much of RSRH inside
(for example, the above quote, or the one where he says that if
knowledge will lead you away from G-d, it is better to remain a fool,
where he applies that 'mamar Chazal' to secular knowledge). I suspect
much of what you know about RSRH comes from quotes and interpretations
in other books, not in the original.

<SNIP>>
> 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?

To rephrase what you have just said, but bluntly. "I can't win a
debate with TC on halachic ground, bringing proofs against them, so I
will reframe it to one of hashkafah, where I can win".

<SNIP>
>
> 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.

You're joshing us, right? In all of O there are no rabbis that respect
the President? Either you are ill-informed, or you choose not see
things, but the fact remains that even in the Yated there were
columnists that wrote admiringly of Brack Obama before he won the
election.

> 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.

Cue "And every man did what was good in his eyes..."

KT,
MSS