[Avodah] TuM vs TIDE

[Jonathan Baker]

>From areivim, per RMi's request:

On Mon, Jun 30, 2008 at 11:32 PM, Harry Maryles <hmaryles at yahoo.com> wrote:
> --- On Mon, 6/30/08, Micha Berger <micha at aishdas.org> wrote:

>>>>>>>>>>>1- Halachic Man tells me that I am to relate to halakhah as a
>>>>>>>>>>> creative
> partnership between G-d and man. I'm not a poseiq. And my LOR isn't
> R' Chaim Brisker, creatively inventing sevaros with a frequency that it
> typifies his relationship with halakhah. It's a relationship to halakhah
> that RYBS had, but not part of the experience of the community.<<<<<<<<<<<

> In my view Halakhic Man is the quitessential Jew. He lives the ideal that
> God desires of him. Man who is human may at times fall short of that goal
> but in theroy he should have the intellectual capacity to synthesize the
> corporeal with with spiritual.  But that does not free him from his task of
> trying to see all of nature and existence via the medium of Halacha.

Is the ideal purely defined for you in terms of intellect?  Clearly it
was for the hypothetical Halachic Man, who may or may not have been R'
Moshe Soloveitchik zt"l, but was it the idea for RYBS?  Should it be
the ideal for anyone else beyond an uber-intellectual?

Remember, Rachmana liba ba'i.  Yes, that is framed in mitzvah
observance, and for men, Torah study, but those become a tool for
shaping the emotions and beliefs.  Even Rambam, promoter of intellect,
didn't ignore the presence of, and influence of, emotions and desires.
 The emotions and desires should be channeled towards God, not simply
denied.  The flaw in the homo religiosus is that his yearning is
unformed.  Halachic Man channels that yearning in a productive
direction.

-- 
jon baker | blog: http://thanbook.blogspot.com
thanbo at gmail.com | web: http://www.panix.com/~jjbaker