[Avodah] submission to an authority

[Rich, Joel via Avodah]

: is it or is it not a tenet of  Orthodoxy  that to be defined as O  one must
: submit to some defined human authority? ...

In the realm of halakhah, I think so -- asei lekha rav. And this holds
for your rav as well. Even if you're one of the great posqim and can
only consult rabbeim-chaveirim, because there is no one else to find.
You have to be able to accept someone with more skill and/or more
objectivity WRT this particular question may have the better answer,
even if in ways that elude you.
====================================
This may be how we act, but I think if you look at the mfarshim on the 2 times aseih lcha rav appears in avot you might conclude that the "requirement" (eitzah tova maybe) is to have someone else, even not greater than you, to speak to, in particular when you have some doubt about your conclusion.  Interesting to me is how do you define doubt.  When looks at halacha, one is almost always "in doubt" at some level since even halacha that we accept usually has some minority opinion we ignore, often without a clear algorithm of how we got there.  Recently I was discussing a particular application in an uncommon situation of hilchot shabbat in an area where I am pretty familiar with the basic concepts.  I said that it seemed fine but to consult a poseik because you never know if you'll be told something like "yes, it seems fine, but in this area we are choshesh for the opinion of X even though by the standard halachic algorithms  we wouldn't be.  We seem to view a poseik as someone who can lift that doubt from our shoulders and put it on his, assumedly through his shimush or whatever makes him a "poseik"

KT
Joel Rich
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