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

[Micha Berger]

On Fri, Aug 01, 2008 at 01:47:48PM -0400, David Riceman wrote:
: >I disagree. I am not so much denigrating the masses as disagreeing with
: >your definition of pesaq and chiddush. In particular, that they serve
: >in the roles RYBS describes. (In general as well, but that's
: >irrelevent.)

: psak: "Halakhic man, well furnished with rules, judgments, and 
: fundamental principles, draws near the world with an a priori 
: relationship. (p. 19)" See the entire paragraph.  Someone seeing a 
: physical action, and cognizing its relationship with the a priori world 
: of halacha by looking up an appropriate precedent in SSK, is doing 
: precisely this.

Only once he applies what he was given to new encounters with (for want
of a better word) I'll call Mada.. It's not just a matter of HM, it's
how HM is expected to navigate the ramatayim tzofim. The 2 peaks are
to provide conflict, which then forces choice and creativity. One of
those peaks is the calling to be the HM.

: I think the main definition of creation in HM has to be understood as 
: reconstruction, since (as far as I can tell from a cursory rereading) 
: every example of hiddush in HM is a reconstruction of a previously 
: existing position.

A generalization, byu showing that the existing positions are examples
of a larger rule. Which then gives him the ability to aply that newly
identified general rule to cases that weren't yet discusses.

: >RYBS is relying on the individual's tension between cognitive man and
: >homo religiousis to fuel creativity. This creativity finds its expression
: >in halakhic man.

: WADR to Socrates in the Republic, archetypes do not derive from each 
: other through dialectic...

That's not RYBS's neoKantianism. Rather, a man's conflicts in trying to
implement archetypes are the dialectic. The causality is in the other
direction, from types to dialectic.

: ><snip> Conflict requires choice, bechirah motivates
: >creativity.

: >It's how man deals with his own encounters; not reading how others
: >resolved theirs. SSK's words aren't /his/ choices. He can choose whether
: >or not to follow them, but that's one side of the dialectic, the
: >submission of homo religious, not its resolution.

: I don't see a large emphasis on choice in HM; it is you, not the author, 
: who links creativity and free will.

This is why my intro spent as much time on RT as on HM. It's also the
Lonely Man of Faith's Adam I. Adam II seeks redemption through covenent,
by having a partner (or in this case, Partner), and Adam I is addressed
by making it a partnership of kibbush. (See pp 13-16 in the Tradition
edition).

R' Besdin reads RYBS similarly, in "Man of Faith in the Modern World",
pp 50-52.

Or R' Werzberger, Tradition 1996 (30:4) "The Centrality of Creativity in
the thought of Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik", pg 220, the bit starting
with "R' Chaim of Volozhin, a forebear of the Rav, already utilized
these Kabbalistic ideas to define the human task as the realization of
the potential for spiritual creativity. In his view, that human beings
bear the image of God implies that they are charged with imitating His
creativity. It is through novel insights into the meaning of the Torah..."

Remember, this creativity is his way out of being torn by the dialectic.
It's not just comprehension, it's comprehension of the conflict as he
confronts it as each moement in time.

(It is probably of a piece with telling his students who are LORs to
make up their own minds, as they see the community and its issues,
rather than necessarily always following his own pesaq.)

: >If my kids were capable of becoming halachic men and women, both in
: >ability and in inclination, I would encourage it. But I am currently
: >of the opinion that doing so to a group of hundreds or thousands will
: >lead more people to compromising their observance and values than
: >to sanctity. That the gap between MO's theory and practice is more
: >fundamental than simply the limitations of real human beings. It's that
: >people below a certain point of personal development are actually worse
: >off trying to live by RYBS's words.

: Here I think is where push comes to shove.  You are identifying MO with 
: HM (the book), and I think that is incorrect.  I agree with you that it 
: would be hard to create a community of followers of HM, but that's 
: because I buy the mussar critique of the ideal of HM (as I suspect you 
: do).  HM rejects that critique (pp. 74-76).  If you accept the premises 
: of the book, I think you need to accept that it can be actualized by 
: anyone.  "Morasha Kehillas Ya'akov ksiv".  "Moshe, n'div lev ..."

My blog entry as a whole was about following HM and RYBS's plan in
general. Yes, at times I worked with the sloppy assumption that MO (in
the US) was a group of people who are trying to live by RYBS's hashkafos.

But this critique of HM as it plays together with his other works --
particularly in how he handles the confrontation with olam hazeh -- is
not the "Mussar objection". It's simply that you can't teach the masses
to be creative until after you teach them how to tell when they're
creating, and when they're destroying. Creatively finding a way for
conflicting goals to coexitist, whether you use the word "synthesis"
in some non-Hegelian sense (as RNLamm does) or harmonious coesistence
(RARR's term), looks too much like an invitation to compromise. It's
not something to encourage in amateurs.

And yes, in your typical neighborhood (as opposed to, say, a college
town), the vast majority of your audience will be amateurs.

:-)BBii!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             For a mitzvah is a lamp,
micha at aishdas.org        And the Torah, its light.
http://www.aishdas.org                   - based on Mishlei 6:2
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