[Avodah] Torah Only - Hora'as Sha'a

[Micha Berger]

On Tue, Sep 02, 2008 at 01:56:33PM +0000, kennethgmiller at juno.com wrote:
: R' Yitzchok Levine wrote:
:> From page 209 of Rav Breuer - His Life and Legacy
:> A perusal of his writings makes it abundantly clear that
:> R. Hirsch held that Torah im Derech Eretz was never
:> intended as a temporary measure introduced because of a
:> specific problem during a specific historical period and
:> in a specific geographic area.

: It seems to me that the point of this thread is to determine and show
: what Rav Hirsch's true intentions were.

Content, not just intent.

It's not trying to 2nd guess what he was trying to accomplish, but to
simply read what he said. In RSRH's value system, the ghetto was something
we nebich had to endure and temporarily stunted out opportunity to live
according to the Torah.

That may have implications for today that RSRH didn't draw. And
ascribing those implications / extrapolations to RSRH is mindreading.
But the rav of today has to build atop the previous edifice, the
giants' shoulders, and thus has to know what he actually said.

: a) The principle "halacha v'ayn morin keyn" is directed specifically
: at the leaders, and tells them that in certain situations it is proper to
: pasken differently than the actual halacha..

Halakhah ve'ein morin kayn means that even if you think it's okay to
invite people who would drive to your seider, you can't announce that
it's permissable for them to do so. The halakhah is "mutar" (according to
this pesaq, and many are choleqim) but if you teach that in the street
the whole halakhah will fall apart. Which is how C, taking pretty much
the same technical position as this pesaq, ended up opening the
floodgates on driving on Shabbos -- they did teach it.

: Maybe deep down Rav Hirsch meant TIDE to be a temporary measure, and
: maybe he truly meant it to be for all times and places. Does it really
: matter? All that really matters is whether you, or I, or someone else,
: should use it as a guiding principle in his life. And that depends on
: a lot more than what Rav Hirsch really meant in his heart of hearts.

Again, we're not talking about his heart of hearts, we're talking about
what he (very poetically) wrote, despite the number of people in today's
Breuer's kehillah who interpret it otherwise.

Once we know what the giants said, then we of the lesser generation can
start constructing our own responses.

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             Our greatest fear is not that we're inadequate,
micha at aishdas.org        Our greatest fear is that we're powerful
http://www.aishdas.org   beyond measure
Fax: (270) 514-1507                        - Anonymous