[Avodah] Just what ARE the rules of p'sak anyway?

[Arie Folger]

RRW wrote:
>    2. The Bahag and Tosafos use the Tosefta to override the the Bavli in
>    ARachin 3-4 that permits women to read megillah for men. [af hein hayu
> b'oso haneis ipmlies that like ner Hanukkah, they can do Negillah]
>    3. Ergo  Behag and Tsoafos themselves are NOT playing by the rules of
>    Halacha themselves
>    4. And therefore they really are not doing Halachah, but playing
>    games  C"V
>    5. And [to add insult to insult] they are pursuing a consistently
>    misogynist agenda

> How can  I answer Rabbi ABC? As a jew in need I request YOUR help!

I believe that the statements of RABC fail on the grounds of a lack of respect 
and lack of consideration for individuals who were unquestionably among those 
who transmitted the Torah to us.

Let's face it, Judaism is alive, it isn't dug out and suddenly discovered in a 
museum. To study halakhah without the highest regard for some of its greatest 
transmittors displays a lack of yirat shamayim and is not very sensible, 
either. After all, just like in the aggadeta Hillel showed the candidate 
convert that TSBP is inherently part of Torah, otherwise we wouldn't be able 
to definitely identify the meaning of the letters and the language, so, too, 
we cannot truly approach TSBP and thus halakhah without the continuous 
tradition PASSING THROUGH Tosafot, as well. What they and BaHaG and the 
Tosefta posited is relevant to our understanding of TSBP.

This does not mean that one could never choose to disagree with one shittah 
and choose another shittah. It might even be possible, in some exceptional 
circumstances, to come up with something altogether novel. But our positions 
grow out of the common beit midrash of the ba'alei hamessorah.

We should also care to add that if one claims that particular ba'alei 
messorah, especially fairly important ones, were biased, where should he 
stop? Why not posit that the Tannaim and Amoraim were biased, too? How about 
some major biblical figures? No, for there to exist any messorah, whatsoever, 
we must accept that at least the major players were acting out of concern for 
Torah, and not out of mysogynism or whatever other biases they may have had. 
This is one of the great differences between us, maaminim benei maaminim, and 
Zacharias Fraenkel's historical positivist school of thought, which gave 
birth to C.

KT,
-- 
Arie Folger
http://www.ariefolger.googlepages.com