[Avodah] R' Angel & Geirus Redux

[Micha Berger]

This thread went all over the place.

I- Geirus

On Fri, April 11, 2008 12:42 pm, R Sholom Simon wrote:
:>You have set up a straw man because no posek demands perfection (or a
:>promise of perfection) from a ger.  The usual requirement is that
:>the ger  agrees to keep Shabbos, kashrus and taharas hamishpacha.

: Around these parts there seems to be a fourth requirement, also: that
: the kids go to a day school that's frum enough to be acceptable to
: the rav overseeing the process.

That demand, though, may be part of making sure you're doing them a
favor by making them Jewish rather than incuring on them the problem of
being avaryanim. Or perhaps a measure of sincerity. IOW, do you think
the rabbis in question would consider the conversion invalid bedi'eved,
lechat-chilah, or just wish to make sure things are done "right" (as
they define the term) while they still have control -- and this isn't
really about the validity of the geirus?

II - Austritt, TIDE, and Israel

On Fri, April 11, 2008 10:35 am, T613K at aol.com wrote:
: I am certain that RSRH would NOT permit Orthodox participation in a 
: common body with R and C organizations, although he would permit
: Orthodox representatives to run for election to governmental bodies
: like the Knesset....

I am far from certain. Austritt included anti-Zionism. I could picture
RSRH deciding that the Keneset represents an Ism to which Austritt
should apply.

This isn't RYBS, with his distinction between kelapei chutz/fate and
kelapei penim/destiny. Austritt would include banning participation in
the SCA, even if it were only addressing survival and communal issues.

And via R' Breuer et al, RSRH's position colored Agudah's founding
principles. Which brings me to another post...

On Sun, April 13, 2008 3:44 am, T613K at aol.com wrote:
:> (Tangent: Obviously, Agudists can. Anti-Zionists will agree
:> something changed, but they will say it's the introduction of a
:> nisayon.  But the neutral non-Zionist can say that it's not a
:> fundamental  change.)

: I don't agree that this is a fair statement of what Agudists believe. 
: I consider myself an Agudist and, like most Agudists, I believe that
: something  HAS changed in Eretz Yisrael....

WADR, I believe you're projecting onto the leadership of the movement
what you want your movement to be teaching.

...
: Rather, we do live in a time when we can hear the footsteps of
: Moshiach approaching...

This has little to do with the question of Zionism. R' Reines founded
Mizrachi without believing that the State had anything to do with
bi'as hamashiach. RYBS refrained from what he called making prophetic
assumptions about current events and ge'ulah as well.

RAYK and RSZK taught a philosophy that now dominates that community. But
it wasn't the only possible form of RZ.

:    When you see Yerushalayim built up and  full of Yidden,
: when you see the desert turning green and the farms producing 
: bountiful harvests, it would be very difficult for a Torah Jew not to
: see that  miracles are happening before our eyes.

Which is why I can't accept the Agudah non-Zionist position. At least
the anti-Zionist position explains why something nonpareil in the last
2 millennia is happening now.

But arguing for your perception doesn't make it the position of the
movement to which you wish to align. They forced RAYK out over the
Zionism issue. RYBS chose to leave (according to 5 Derashos) because he
felt that HQBH spoke through history and told us Mizrachi was correct.

Unless you wish to claim that Nov 29, 2007 marks a change in the Agudah's
platform. (As in <http://www.forward.com/articles/12143/>. But that
takes us to Areivim territory.)

: What happened was that there was "something in the air" and the Zionists
: picked up a whiff of it and ran with it -- in the wrong direction. Away from
: Torah, rather than back to Torah.

And RSRH and later the Moetzes took this as proof that Zionism was
just another Ism of the post-Haskalah world, an alternative proposed
to Judaism.

III - TsN

RnTK continued:
: Furthermore, many or most of them consciously and openly oppose
: Orthodoxy in their teaching and preaching -- they are not neutral.
: They may not go to Gehenom for what they do -- because of their
: tinok shenishba status -- but their actions are nevertheless:
: objectively evil and anti-Torah, even if their intentions are
: not evil and they are sincere in their beliefs.

Yes, one needs to separate judging the deed from judging the person.

To take a controversially extreme case: One can oppose the formation of
Meretz. However, how can one stand in judgment of the Holocaust survivor
who thinks he is aiding Jewish survival by starting it?

And I think this is the essence of the gap between TsN and the underlying
concept of shogeig or oneis. (This is a new proposal, I'm not claiming
I had this idea at the beginning of the discussion.)

TsN isn't a judgment about the person -- we can't read their minds and
know how they decided to act as they do. Rather, it's a rule of thumb,
a form of birur, for dealing with other people when we need to know
whether we can presume they are meizidim (letei'avon, lehach'is) or not
for the sake of determining our own actions.

Given this proposal, I hope to explain R Michael Makovi's post of Thu,
Apr 03, 2008 at 01:37:54AM +0300:
: I didn't say they had to be gedolei yisrael to be meizid. What I said,
: however, is that it seems to me (IMHO) that in order to for him to
: cease to be a TsN, he has to cease to be shogeg in the fact of Sinai
: etc. If he learns a random halacha or happens to meet a few religious
: Jews (Reb Moshe), he won't have learned enough to be convinced that
: Torah is min ha-shamayim.

: That is why I do not understand the notion of Reb Moshe that the
: moment he meets a religious Jew he is no longer TsN...

The notion that would need to be defended would only be that once he
meets a religious Jew, we can't simply use the working assumption that
he is oneis or shogeig. He might very well still be, and not guilty, but
stam yeinam

(All this said, I did no understand RDE's quotes the way he explained them,
and thus would disagree that RMF actually says the R Jew how lives among
O Jews isn't a TsN. And he even pasqens lequlah based on this. As
discussed already.)

: And I agree with R' Akiva Miller that "Where are the defining limits?
: I don't know. But do I *need* to know? Let Hashem decide  these
: things." With nonreligious Jews today, how can we really know whether
: they are meizid or not? ...

Yes. It effects pesaqim in minyan, stam yeinam and other dinim. My
proposal is that we are arguing whether we can rule out their being
meizidim when making these decisions, not whether they actually are
meizidim.

Similarly, it simplifies RnCL's point, posted on Tue, Apr 08, 2008 at
12:47:31PM +0100:
: The Lechem Mishna there on the Rambam questions this Rambam on the grounds
: that the Rambam at the end hilchos teshuva perek 3 says that everyone can do
: teshuva .  He suggests a resolution to the stira.  He says that it is
: possible to do teshuva for aveiros of this nature, but they are of such a
: great magnitude and it is so difficult that anybody who truly did teshuva
: for them would die in the process ...
:                 Hence the point is that *we do not accept* any person as
: having done teshuva for such aveiros, because any person who had really done
: teshuva for such aveiros would no longer be alive, and if they are alive
: they can't have done teshuva.

We don't need to accept or reject the teshuvah -- we need to know whether
we may assume it occured WRT pesaqim about how to relate to the person.

On Wed, Apr 09, 2008 at 01:59:44PM +0100, Rn Chana Luntz wrote:
: And the Shach says there on [siman 268] si'if 12: When he comes to
: convert: And it is written in tosphos that this is from perek kama
: of shabbas that he came before Hillel and said to him convert me on
: condition that I will be cohen gadol and in the end he did it l'shem
: shamayim .. and from here one can learn that it is all according to what
the eyes of the beis din see and so writes the drisha.

I have to admit I learned the sugya with the Maharsha (who RDE already
noted holds the actual geirus was /after/ the qabbalas ol), and therefore
didn't see it coming.

Do they disagree with the need for qabalas ol mitzvos, or do they give
the authority to the beis din to assess whether the current obstacles
to such qabalah are real and permanent? After all, in all of three cases
there eventually was qabalah. And if the beis din uses their discretion
and full qabalah is not forthcoming, would even the Shach say that the
geirus was chal? He could be seen as saying they are allow to go through
the steps, which is a much smaller claim.


IV - REB and Halakhah

On the subject of REB's version of halakhah RnCL writes:
: The example I was always given of a R' Berkowitz "solution"
: was - we have a need in a Jewish state for policemen.  We can't and
: shouldn't delegate that to the goyim on Shabbas.  But that means we
: need to have policemen out there "on the beat" policing - even in
: circumstances where there is no clear cut pikuach nefesh scenario to
: justify being mechalel shabbas.  So we need to be creative - we should
: put policemen on bicycles!

: Now bicycles are another example of a somewhat modern day machlokus,
: where the consensus is that we don't use them...

You're right that in this case, REB wouldn't be rolling black the clock
so far that we're sure the current consensus "canonized" the pesaq yet.
Nispasheit has to imply some kind of time window, and I don't know what
it would be.

(Similarly, can we still roll back the clock on mei qitniyos? What about
peanuts?)

I find myself with an awkard position to support. After all, RRW and I
have debate the role of aggadic values in pesaq, and I have been promoting
a model of pesaq that gives them a relatively greater position.

However, even in my model, it's a way of weighing the value of textually
justifiable pesaqim, one with a weaker supporting argument or less
precedent as minhag avos, but more value in the person's derekh in
avodas Hashem.

I'm saying that REB wants to have his cake and eat it too. He claims his
theory about the evils of codification has no pragmatic impact since
social realities force us to have codes, in an argument to eliminate
shemitah bizman hazeh. And yet lemaaseh he did invoke sevaros based on
first principles in an attempt to rule differently than that supported
by formal process.

RHM put it well in v8n59, and RHM studied under REB at HTC:
> In this he uses the concept that Svara can and does have the ability to
> change the pervailing law. He uses the Gemmara in Kesuvos 3A where the
> Gemmara tries to find a source for Rava's ruling of Ain Onaise B'Get.
> Rava ruled that the husband cannot claim that the situation was beyond
> his control (Onaise) and that a Get, that stipulated that he would be
> "back in town" by a certain time and was prevented by Onaise from doing
> so, the Get is never-the-less, still valid.

> The Gemmara goes throgh several Tannaitic proofs and rejects them all
> concluding that Rava based himself on Svara for the sake of the modest
> and immodest women.

> IOW, practical considerations are the basis for Rava's ruling, not
> precedent. This gives us TODAY, precedent to do the same when practical
> considerations warrent.

> Thus does Dr. Berkowitz open up an entire pandora's box enabling us
> to dispense with hundreds of years of Teshuvos by merely utilizing his
> afforementioned principles as in Rava's case where Rava himself utilized
> savra for the sake of the rectifying a difficult situation for woman.

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             It is harder to eat the day before Yom Kippur
micha at aishdas.org        with the proper intent than to fast on Yom
http://www.aishdas.org   Kippur with that intent.
Fax: (270) 514-1507                       - Rabbi Israel Salanter