[Avodah] Halivni's theology

[Harry Maryles]

--- On Sat, 6/14/08, Moshe Feldman <moshe.feldman at gmail.com> wrote:

>From http://www.forward.com/articles/13553/  (article about Halivni's
theology):
<<The ontological absence of God during the Holocaust was, in other
words, preceded by a long history of eclipses of God's will from what
Orthodox Jews fervently believe to be Judaism's immaculate, revealed
sacred texts, both divine and rabbinic. Halivni's most scholarly and
original contributions to talmudical studies point to the many "bumps
and fissures" in Jewish sacred literature and as such have served,
quite deliberately, to undermine the religious authoritarianism and
maximal claims to access to divine wisdom on the part of the experts
in these very texts, namely, the rabbis.
>>

Rabbi Dr. Yaakov Elman (who teaches Talmudic Criticism at Bernard
Revel) accepts the notion that many of our texts have been corrupted
or misinterpreted, but reconciles that with his fealty to Halacha by
drawing the exact opposite conclusion of that of Halvni.  Based on R.
Tzadok HaCohen (can anyone provide a cite?), Dr. Elman says that
Hashem deliberately caused these textual problems in order to allow
for Halacha to develop differently over time than the way originally
envisioned by the Tannaim.

----------------------------
 
Much of R. Halivni's theolgy is in line with Dr. Berkovits's Shitos as expressed in Lo BaShamyim He. AIUI, he claims that TSBP was intended by God to remain Oral. That it was written down as an Eis Laasos should not detract from the essential nature of Oral law which was intended to be flexible. He cites numerous examples in Chazal (which I do not recall ar he moment) to demonstrate this point. He complains that the codification of TSBP in the SA is rigidly and wrongly treated like TSBK.
 
Dr. Berkovits’s point is slightly different than R. Halivni’s point which is to dispute the audacity of those who attempt theodicy in explaining events like the holocaust. 
 
But I believe that they are both trying to say that there is a non Torah based and therefore unreasonable rigidity that has evolved in the Torah world that produces both of these attitudes.
 
HM
 
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Try this: http://haemtza.blogspot.com/




      
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