[Avodah] WTG

[Micha Berger]

On Tue, April 1, 2008 2:38 pm, Joseph C. Kaplan wrote to Areivim:
: RMB asked, I assume rhetorically:  "Could you picture [RYBS's]
: response to an entire WTG movement?"  To picture his response, I
: direct your attention to the seminal article on WTGs by Rs. Dov and
: Aryeh Frimer, the first part of which appeared in Tradition (32:2;
: Winter 1998). I don't have it in front of me, but there is a footnote
: that details RYBS's comments on WTGs to numerous rabbanim and others
: who asked him about it. I believe it is impossible to discuss WTGs
: intelligently without having read this article.  (I do not, of course,
: mean to imply that R' Micha did not read it or that his comment was
: not intelligent.)

See RGS's comparison of this article to R' Meiselman's presentation of
RYBS's position in <http://tinyurl.com/2k4dcc> (Hirhurim Apr '04). He
also has a pointwise comparison to RHS's position (posted in an
earlier Hirhurim article), and a link to the R's Frimer's paper.

I think the whole thing has an interesting meta-issue. RYBS's position
appears to be "okay technically, but the cons outweigh the pros in
most contexts". The WTG supporters see the former, and assume personal
autonomy in overruling the latter. RYBS held quite firmly that only
the LOR knows the facts on the ground well enough to know what's
appropriate for his qehillah. Those who are anti (from among RYBS's
students) are looking at the full answer, and declare it assur by the
"5th tur of the SA -- common sense", another one of RYBS's recurring
themes.

And so the issue becomes the bindingness of RYBS's not-quite-pesaq
assessment of hashkafic advisability.

Not quite the same thing as da'as Torah, with its connotation of
obeying a panel of greats on issues even beyond ones clearly
hashkafic, but it is heading in that direction.

I would say it's arguably "slide to the right" except that whomever
assumed the MO debate is to be cast in terms of "what did RYBS hold?"
already did such sliding.

(I am also not intending to pass a value judgment on the slide; but it
has served me well in my own life.)

SheTir'u baTov!
-micha

-- 
Micha Berger             "Man wants to achieve greatness overnight,
micha at aishdas.org        and he wants to sleep well that night too."
http://www.aishdas.org     - Rav Yosef Yozel Horwitz, Alter of Novarodok
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