[Avodah] unity

[Micha Berger]

On Sun, May 6, 2007 7:28 am, kennethgmiller at juno.com wrote:
: I can come up with at least one or two mechanisms for a community to
: change its minhagim.

To restore context on a thread that has been dormant "forever" in
email list terms (ie a week)... We were discussing ways of minhagim
changing in order to bring unity to the minhag.

: The first is so simple that I'm suprprised no one has mentioned it
: yet, and that is when the rav (rosh yeshiva, rebbe, whatever)
: determines that the current minhag is plain, flat-out, *wrong*.

Which would bring unity amongst his talmidim, and thus possibly to a
kehillah. But I can't believe that Ashkenazim have a unified minhag
rather than minhagim based on which Ashkenazim came from EY and which
from Bavel (or Egypt or Teiman, or...) entirely off this effect.

: The second is from Igros Moshe, Orach Chaim 2:21 ...
:             He gives three examples of what consitutes *adding* a
: minhag: Mimaamakim after Yishtabach in Aseres Ymei Teshuva, L'David
: Mizmor after Shmoneh Esreh in Maariv on Rosh Hashana and YK, and
: Hallel at Maariv on Pesach. In all three of these cases, RMF writes,
: there are very good reasons not to say the thing in question, but
: that does NOT mean that they actually have a minhag not to say it.
: They simply don't have a minhag *to* say it....

This criterion is also insufficiently broad to explain how minhag
Ashkenaz arose, and why Machon Shilo are unique today (R' Goren and R'
Unterman are precedent, though) in voicing an active desire to do the
same again to create a Minhag EY today. ROY's notion of minhag EY does
not involve a "time to unify minhag" argument as much as "there
already /is/ a minhag hamaqom".

And yet the objection is not absolute. We don't find major opposition
to saying shir shel yom in Shacharis instead of Mussaf, etc...

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