[Avodah] R Tzadok-TSBP

[Micha Berger]

On Sun, Jul 05, 2009 at 06:45:17PM +0300, Michael Makovi wrote:
: One thing that has troubled me: In theory, Rav Hirsch's proposal to
: derive hashkafah from halakhah - note his criticism of Rambam, that he
: had ta'amei mitzvot that ignored the halakhah - sounds perfectly
: logical and reasonable. But we know that certain laws are concessions
: to human nature - yafet toar, milhemet reshut, go'el ha'dam, etc.

I don't see the connection. Halakhah defines the hashkafah, and the
hashkafah includes tafasta meruba lo tafasta. Making a concession
that is known to be a concession means identifying the ideal and why
HQBH couldn't assume that the typical Jew could accomplish it. And
that too is an existential statement.

Second, the Rambam doesn't simply ignore the details, he said beshitah
that one must ignore the details. That to the question "why an esrog and
not a pepper?" one must realize that otherwise we would be asking "why a
pepper and not an esrog?" It had to be /something/.

This is consistent in the Rambam with his notion of hashgachah. Nature
runs on hashgachah minis, not HP. The overall plan and rules take care
of the overall picture, details are left to miqreh. The pepper vs the
esrog is like saying HQBH set up teva so that lion population would vary
thus and thus. But teva didn't mandate it be this lion and not that lion
who would die in the population decline.

: Also, I remember a rav... the following very real question: how do we know
: "thou shalt not murder" / "ze sefer toldot adam" (etc.) is the rule
: and "kill the Amalekites" is the exception? In other words, the Torah
: is not always easy to fit into one seemless whole, so how do we know
: which halakhot and hashkafot to reinterpret to fit with the others, or
: to put in a box on the side marked "exceptions"? ...

Wouldn't it be self evident that the rarer things are the exceptions?

We also have a mesorah, agadita, etc... Saying that hashkafah derives
form halakhah doesn't mean we have a clean slate. Or else what are the
narratives in chumah, all of Nach, and much of shas about? (And for
that matter, then halakhah follows derashah, even the peshat of the
halachic parts of chumash is aggadita.)

On Mon, Jul 06, 2009 at 04:59:46PM +0000, RWW replied:
: Perhaps that is the nature of humans - ki lo machshevosai
: machshevosaichem...

: In order to portray torah accurately one would needed a "higher" birds-eye
: view to encompass the whole; and as high as Rambam and Hirsch were they
: were not high enough to formulate a system that encompassed it all!
...
: Perhaps if either one had ascended higher they could have refined their
: systems to encompass more -
: Or more likely - no human gets that high!

: And even if Moshe Rabbeinu knew all the correct prattim, even he may
: not have been able for formulate a unifying theory.

One doesn't need a theory of everything, but if one wants to gain the
most possible from the performance of mitzvos means a theory that
(1) gives meaning to as much of what I do as possible (measured in hours
and effort, not number of dinim) and (2) gives me a mission statement I
can actually encompass.

It's that that makes me believe that HQBH made it possible for us to get
pretty close to a Grand Unified Pi'el Theory.

:-)BBii!
-Micha

PS: Sorry for the pun, doubly so to those who didn't even get the
reference. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unified_field_theory

-- 
Micha Berger             It's nice to be smart,
micha at aishdas.org        but it's smarter to be nice.
http://www.aishdas.org                   - R' Lazer Brody
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