[Avodah] Prophet - mashgiach or godol hador?

[Rich, Joel]

 :                                                  While there are
times
: when the prophet has a specific message or action that is required -
but
: he is not a leader.  In contrast we today view our gedollim as being
: endowed with ruach hakodesh.

Some of us. Others don't even acknowledge a difference in kind between
people who are greater than us (gedolim, translated literally)
quantitatively and those they lead.

I am unhappy with your casting this into terms of mashgiach vs gadol for
this reason. There is no concept in contemporary derakhim of a mashgiach
hador, but it's about as native to Yahadus as "gadol hador". In any
case, the poseiq has a shadow of the Sanhedrin's authority, not the
melekh's. If we can take the gadol hador and make him a stand-in nasi,
why not take a mashgiach and make him a stand-in navi? Don't out
political actions have to be informed by values even in areas where
there is no clear pesaq? May our body politic be a menuval birshus
haTorah?


-mi
==================================================================

R' YBS spoke of exactly this point and said iirc that  HKB"H purposely
split the powers because he did not trust man, even the most pious. My
understanding is that when we give leaders (I don't want to use an
emotionally charged word) the power of navi, melech, kohain,shofet all
wrapped into one, we are going against human nature and the system that
HKB"H set up for us as an archtype ( actually these 2 points are really
1).

KT
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