[Avodah] Brisk

[Micha Berger]

On Sun, Feb 08, 2009 at 2:44pm IST, R Marty Bluke wrote:
: The Seridei Aish in both a teshuva and a published letter says that R'
: Chaim's analyses are not historically true. He writes that it is clear
: that the Rambam's derech was not R' Chaim's. All you have to do is
: look at the Teshuvos Harambam where he deals with some of the
: issues/contradictions. The Rambam never gives any lomdus to explain
: his psak, rather he gives what we would call Baal Habatish answers. He
: had a different girsa in the Gemara, their copy of the Mishne Torah
: was wrong, he made a mistake, etc. Not once does he employ anything
: close to Brisker lomdus.

I wasn't suggesting that the Rambam thought like a Brisker.

To rephrase my point in a way that I hope is clearer:
The Rambam relied on building a halachic geshtalt, not something that
can be articulated. That's where his "nir'eh li" comes from.

We today lack his ability to do that. So we instead try a more
scientific description rather than building a feel. But that doesn't
mean that the Brisker description is false; rather it's an attempt
to find an articulation for a real pattern.

(To use R' Moshe Koppel's metaphor for halahah:)
The Rambam is the native speaker, who has a feel for how the language
flows, and uses it to write poetry. R' Chaim is the one who studies
those poems and deduces the implies rules of grammar.

Yes, there will be a few times the rules so derived are illusory. The
poet himself admitted he was capable of erring, and it's his data we're
using. But that doesn't invalidate the process and system as a whole.

The things the Rambam had to explain was only the list of those odd
cases. They are a tiny minority of the things /we/ seek an explanation for.

On Sun, Feb 08, 2009 at 6:08pm IST, R Eli Turkel wrote:
:> I was told that R chaim brisker was saving bachurim from college by
:> making gmara intellectually competitve

:> Was this hora'as sha'ah? I dunno.

:> I have always enjoyed brisker learning but I doubted its halachic veracity
:> early on.

: I dont believe the story. If anything the problem in Voloshin was
: haskala and not university per se. As I pointed out RCS himself always
: insisted there was nothing new in his drech.

: OTOH RYBS has stated that he could not compete for the minds of his
: students especially in Boston who attended Harvard and MIT without
: Brisker Torah to give them the intellectual challenge.

I think here too we have to distinguish between motivations we post-facto
see in things done and having a conscious program.

I also do not think that RCB set out to compete with the universities.
But it was an era where the zeitgeist pushed our youth out to secular
education and other Isms. Such a mileau is going to also generate interest
in a more systemitized and anlytic approach to study and thereby de
facto interest talmidim who otherwise would have left.

Since I don't think it was a hora'ah, I don't htink it was a hora'as
sha'ah.

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             When a king dies, his power ends,
micha at aishdas.org        but when a prophet dies, his influence is just
http://www.aishdas.org   beginning.
Fax: (270) 514-1507                    - Soren Kierkegaard