[Avodah] Tzinius and the ILG

[Micha Berger]

On Thu, March 1, 2007 10:31 pm, kennethgmiller at juno.com wrote:
: When the Torah permits something in all cases, this indicates that it
: is not inherently immoral....

Then chazal would have no issurim other than siyagim and cheshashos --
corrections to adjust for accident and habit. But that's not true.

Beqitzur:
I am throwing out the possibility that Issurim deRabbanan are made when
society evolves to the point that a rule can be defined legally, rather than a
set of values given for people to decide situationally.

Reasoning:
Again I would assert the question isn't moral vs immoral, but rather whether
it's the more moral alternative. Sometimes this as-yet imperfect world forces
you to choose the least of evils.

The TYQ (ve'asisem haTov vehaYashar / Qedoshim tiyhu) chiyuvim aren't written
like legal texts because they are very situational. Perhaps there is a time
where society evolves until the situation can be articulated as a legal
imperative rather than the vaguer moral / value judgment.

IOW, the choice of chalitzah over yibum only shifted from being a case-by-case
call of which is TYQ to being able to ban yibum because of how society
evolved. Chalitzah is still being chosen as a least evil. It's possible that
we could have built a society in which the opposite would have almost always
been the lesser evil. Or one which still required a case-by-case assessment
based on a person being honest with himself about his motives.

Tir'u baTov!
-mi

-- 
Micha Berger             Spirituality is like a bird: if you tighten
micha at aishdas.org        your grip on it, it chokes; slacken your grip,
http://www.aishdas.org   and it flies away.
Fax: (270) 514-1507                            - Rav Yisrael Salanter