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

[David Riceman]

Three preliminary comments:

1. I think you denigrate "the masses".  Looking up a halacha in Shemirat 
Shabbat K'Hilchatah is indeed paskening, and consulting an English 
translation to clarify what Rashi means is indeed hiddush.  That it is 
de rigeur nowadays to send kids to yeshiva both during the years of 
obligatory schooling and afterwards is sufficient evidence that most of 
the next generation will be capable of psak and hiddush.

2.  I don't think the author of Halachic man thought of himself as a 
halachic man.  "Halacha has a fixed a priori relationship to the whole 
of reality"(Kaplan's translation p.23)  Yet halacha has no concept 
corresponding to the Kantian "a priori".  That Rabbi Soloveitchik had to 
use a concept external to halacha to delineate it is adequate evidence, 
not only that he did not construe himself as a halachic man, but also 
that halachic man is not interested in a Torah UMadda type of 
synthesis.  He just doesn't care about Madda, since its categories are 
not those of halacha.

3.  I don't know what you mean by a community.  You can certainly set up 
an intentional community where you and your friends can study Rambam and 
Kierkegaard and play Rachmaninoff.  But I think Rabbi Soloveitchik is 
describing a personality, not an ideology.  What will you do if your 
kids decide to study Rabbeinu Tam and Lucretius and play Bach?  The 
problem with using a description of a personality as a guide to behavior 
is that personality may not be easy to transmit, either by genetics or 
by training.

David Riceman