[Avodah] Can you build a community around Halakhic Man?

[Micha Berger]

On Wed, Jul 30, 2008 at 05:39:48PM -0400, Rich, Joel wrote:
:> Instead, halakhah as experienced is more about submission.

: that's how we choose to experience it. I may not be that good at math
: so for me creativity may be understanding SAS in geometry, for you it
: may be advanced calc - it's still creativity at our own levels

Now, that's how we /can/ experience it. Okay, if you pick a less
Brisker derekh, you can choose connecting to/through halakhah rather
than submission. My point was more to rule out creativity.

The problem is that I disagree with your next statement:
:> You don't want half-baked lomdus and people pasqening for themselves
:> from ignorance.

: no, you want them seeking a little more understanding each time (the
: guide by their side rather than the sage on the stage) and that's their
: creativity

I disagree that that's "creativity". Posqim create; sho'alim
follow. Understanding someone else's pesaq isn't partnering with G-d
in creation, it's submitting to his superior knowledge/gestalt. Emunas
Chakhamim in a non-contraversial sense of the words -- trusting their
halakhic statements.

When the typical balebas thinks he can create his own pesaq in response
to his own encounter with the modern, what follows isn't quite shemiras
hamitzvos.

And this is why I'm asserting that there is no path from here to there
for the masses who will never develop that skill. There is a disadvantage
to being partway there until you reach that threshold. And what results
is compartmentalization and compromise.

I am also assering that of the derakhim that are currently popular,
RYBS's may be unique in having that trench in which being partway there
is worse than not trying.


Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             It is a glorious thing to be indifferent to
micha at aishdas.org        suffering, but only to one's own suffering.
http://www.aishdas.org                 -Robert Lynd, writer (1879-1949)
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