[Avodah] Minhag Yisroel and Gra on 2 Matzos vs.3 Matzos

[Chana Luntz]

RAF writes:

> No. It is my contention that it is inappropriate to go 
> shopping, particularly after having asked R' X. By going around from
posseq to 
> posseq, the shoel might be failing to fulfill his duty. When he
approached the 
> first posseq, he  was in effect in the process G"d wants him to go
through 
> (assuming the posseq isn't obviously wrong). Furthermore, assuming the
likely 
> situation whereby  one posseq knows the shoel better than the other
one, for 
> example, the shoel will, by shopping around, possibly fail to get the
pessaq 
> appropriate for him.

OK how about a real case.  This happened to a friend of mine, although
before I knew her.

This friend of mine went for a number of years in her marriage without
having kids.  She and he went to doctors who checked them out and told
her basically, that she was ovulating during her shiva nekiim.  She went
to her Rav who told her there was nothing that could be done and just to
keep trying.  Some time later she got in touch with (not via her Rav) a
certain Dayan, who looked at the case, realised that she could get a
clean bedika on day four, allowed her to do a hefsek tahara on day four,
and hey presto, today, two beautiful kids.

When she told me this story, she thought that this Dayan was some
amazing gadol who gave her this incredible heter.  I'm afraid I
disillusioned her a little bit, telling her that this is a pretty
standard heter in precisely these circumstances, it is written up
explicitly in various teshuvas (including IIRC Igeros Moshe) and while
it was good that the Dayan was there to walk her through the heter (he
apparently asked to check her hefsek tahara the first couple of times),
I was appalled that her Rav did not either know about the heter himself,
or have the humility to pass her on to somebody who knew a smigeon more
about taharas mispacha than he did.

But if this woman had not done some shopping, there are two Jewish
neshamas who would not exist in the world today.  Now she did some
shopping before meeting me and telling me this story and getting an
appalled reaction as to the level of knowledge of this Rav.  She did it
because the answer from the Rav was not something that could be borne
without every stone being turned.  And I suspect that this is not an
uncommon case - even (or perhaps especially) in cases which are actually
halachically more difficult than that of my friend.  Somehow I suspect
that gedolim are not that infrequently approached by people who appeal
to them directly because they have had no joy from those of lesser
stature (as a different route to the more obvious case of a gadol being
approached by a more junior Rav to take on a case that the Rav
understands as being too difficult for him).  In an ideal world, rabbaim
would never behave like this Rav, and pasken about matters they know
nothing about with such devastating consequences.  But given the non
ideality of this world, I am not prepared to say that it is always
inappropriate to go shopping.

Of course, once one becomes sensitised to the existance of such
problems, one might get very chary about asking anybody about anything
really really important (into which category I would put something like
whether one ever has kids or not) without first having a pretty good
idea about where they are on a spectrum of sensitivity to such matters.
But what that means is that people with a bit of knowledge are in a
position to go shopping before they go shopping, but people without that
knowledge are not.  If one or one's wife is pregnant with Tay Sachs
child, knowing the machlokus regarding the permissibility (or
advisability) of abortion in the theoretical can allow one to avoid R'X
or his followers without actually asking R'X and seek out a talmid of R'
Y.  But without a bit of knowledge, you may find that your local Rav
(who has always answered your kashrus shialas fine) belongs to a certain
line of psak which can devastate your life, whereas if he had been a
talmid of Rav Y, he might have answered your kashrus shialas pretty much
the same (or at least not in a way that really would have matter to you)
and yet answered the one really meaningful shiala in your life in the
way that was best for you.

Regards

Chana