[Avodah] Minhag Avos and Sephardim

[Micha Berger]

On Tue, Mar 03, 2009 at 04:46:08PM +0000, rabbirichwolpoe at gmail.com wrote:
: Follow up question. Some of the same Sephardim assert that
: When ashkenazim came in numbers they should have followed minhag hamakom
: in. Both EY and NYC. And to surrender their minhag avos.
: Why?

: If Michael's model is accurate it might make
: Sense if they had voted and established it already.

: Otherwise if Sephardim were following minhag avos from Spain then
: Ashkenazim should follow their minhag avos too.

I think both should, and will, follow minhag hamaqom, once one congeals
in our new meqomos. And assuming mobility hasn't rendered the entire
concept of stable maqom moot.

I think the establishment of minhag takes consensus, not (as RMM
suggests) majority. It's not a matter of formal vote, but eventually
norms emerge. Because of that lag of time, we living in a reconstruction
period are still clinging on to our minhag avos. For people who actually
lived through it, the formation of minhag Ashkenaz took forever.

But someday, Bet Shemesh may have its own minhag, and someone moving
there would abandon one minhag to conform to the society (shelo yaasu
agudos agudos).

:-)BBii!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             It is a glorious thing to be indifferent to
micha at aishdas.org        suffering, but only to one's own suffering.
http://www.aishdas.org                 -Robert Lynd, writer (1879-1949)
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