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

[Micha Berger]

On Sun, Aug 03, 2008 at 11:26:45AM -0400, David Riceman wrote:
: >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'm handicapped here, since I haven't found a copy of RT...

I don't think it's been turned into print. Ask R' Milton Nordlicht, for
a copy. (Tell him I sent you; I grew up two doors down from his home /
the world RYBS tape library.) RARR translates a sizable chunk of it in
vol II of his "The Rav".

:>(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.)

: This isn't behirah.  See MDM, in the section I cited, #1 (pp. 230-231).  
: Clarity leads to inevitability, not to choice.  How would you react if 
: Gauss had told you, "It's true that I proved that a degree n polynomial 
: has n roots, but had I chosen differently I could equally well have 
: proven that it has 3n roots", or if Newton had told you "It's true that 
: I proved that a cannonball travels in a parabola, but had I chosen I 
: could equally well have proven that it travels in an ellipse."  The 
: creativity of HM is precisely in understanding a sugya so clearly that 
: he has no choice about how to explain it or pasken from it.

Then RCBrisker was not a halachic man. There was an agunah in Brisk,
and neither he nor the dayan knew how to pasqen. He asked the dayan to
write RYESpektor for a pesaq, and that he should telegram back a one word
answer. RCB was afraid that if he knew the sevara, he could argue both
sides and reopen the question! For that matter, that was RCB's explanation
for why he insisted R' Reguer be hired as dayan before he would take the
shtella. Lomdus in general, and all the more so one based on chaqiros,
doesn't provide clarity in pesaq.

I don't think I agree with your assumption; I think the role of religion
is more in terms of helping you constructively frame the questions than
in providing answers. But that's just me.

More to the point, I think RYBS's comment about creativity is about
using it to resolve the choice, rather than remain in doubt and being
arbitrary. As I tried to say, but failed to: dialectic leads to choice
which drives creativity which leads to resolution. Not that I know how
he addresses the times when pesaq runs out of sevara and is forced to
rely on rules of birur: rov, safeiq derabbanan, etc... Being chosheish
leshitas R' whomever, the textbook Brisker chumrah, isn't the product of
"understanding a sugya so clearly that he has no choice about how to
explain it or pasken from it."

What you say about clarity and choice is the Or Samei'ach's explanation
of why mal'akhim don't have bechirah. Given enough Torah, would man
enter the same state?

...
: In spite of being a graduate of Maimonides, I had practically no contact 
: with Rabbi Soloveitchik, so I have no idea what his plan was.  The 
: institutions he influenced, however, were not designed to produce HMs.  
: They were aimed at producing more rounded people.

I see HM as an archetype. A real person would be a composite, part
philosopher, part HM, part homo religiosus chassid, etc... and it's a
question of how much of what belongs in the blend. (Reread my observation
above as shorthand for: "Then RCB didn't well embody the HM archetype".)
HM is lauded as something RYBS believed should figure prominantly. And yet
he still lauded learning how to daven from the Chabadnikim in Chaslovitch.

BTW, I believe Bereishis was written to be more of a typology than a
history. Which is what it means when it's called Seifer haEisanim.

: >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"...

: I wan't clear.  The mussar critique is directed against the assertion 
: that "in Volozhin we're healthy".  Following the Rambam, ikkar halacha 
: induces the golden mean in an already harmonious person living in  
: already harmonious society.  Every person has to adjust it to his own 
: personality via humroth and kuloth, and every society has to adjust 
: based on the tendencies that society instills in its inhabitants.  HM 
: rejects that.

I understood what you meant, by the time I wrote that reply at least. But
that's a totally unrelated point. Saying that I personally disagree with
the ideal because of a difference in postulate sets doesn't mean as much.

Here I'm not discussing right or wrong, but functionality. If someone
believes that RYBS's is the only true derekh (which would be paradoxical,
since he didn't) then he would have to pursue it despite any dangers I
might feel one would have a hard time avoiding.

: Your critique in these posts is that HM can function only with a very 
: high level of expertise, and I think that's false...

More that someone trying to be living dialectically based creativity in
which one of the archetypes is HM -- and thus that creativity includes
halakhah -- needs a certain level of expertise. Not that high, but beyond
what most balebatim will bother gaining and if gained, will often apply.

It is far to easy to say "navigating a dialectic" and mean "compromising".
(Something not to discuss on list, but you can decide for yourself if
my presumed frequency of that error is born out by observation.) It
means that trying to follow the path, imbibing the bit about navigatin

: slavishly follows the MB or SSK is capable of doing with them what HM 
: does with Hazal and rishonim.  That's enough to enable a person or a 
: community to implement HM as a master plan for how to live.  They may 
: not all be poskim, but they can all try to devote their lives to 
: understanding the world via the a priori categories of Torah.

Yes, that HM in terms of rebuilding oneself to conform with halakhah's
a priori categories. But that's not becoming a creative partner with
G-d in how one deals with life's conflicts, including making halakhah
into a partnership excercise.

: Another critique of HM, irrelevant to this thread, is that the 
: categories of Torah are not really a priori, v'od hazon lamoded.

But I invite you to start another thread about it. I didn't think that
the a priori nature halakhah's categories was open to question (within
a Torah-dik worldview). Perhaps I'm just being naive, perhaps I'm
missing what you're getting at.

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             Man is equipped with such far-reaching vision,
micha at aishdas.org        yet the smallest coin can obstruct his view.
http://www.aishdas.org                         - Rav Yisrael Salanter
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