[Avodah] [Areivim] Halacha of speeding/Jewish ethics curriculum de velopment help

[kennethgmiller at juno.com]

R' Micha Berger wrote:
> He argues that halakhah is similarly best transmitted by creating
> "native speakers". ... Mind goes beyond algorithm. What's captured
> is not the complete picture; we're missing the equivalent of what
> "sounds right" and the limits of "poetic license".

R' Joel Rich asked:
> Yes, but the problem ... is when we try to look back to a time
> period that was more based on "sounds right" and deduce what
> algorithm they used.  Now if we were 100% accurate in these
> attempts, we'd replicate their results and have a great set of
> algorithms to use for new cases.  My observation is that our 
> attempts (throughout the generations) have been yielding less than
> 100% accuracy and we then use a fudge factor.

Perhaps I'm misunderstanding RJR, but with all due respect, I think he is missing RMB's point.

Any effort to "deduce what algorithm they used" is doomed to failure.

There was no algorithm for them to use.

They didn't need one.

You can read this paragraph without any trouble. But you can't describe the method - the algorithm - that you use for decoding it. You can read a sentense and the mispeled wurds just jump out at you. You didn't have to looked them up. The words simply "look right" or "don't look right". I don't know a subjunctive from a participle, but I know English. It's the non-natives who need and use algorithms, like checking verb lists and grammar books.

So too in halacha. When RMB writes about "native speakers" whose "mind goes beyond algorithm", he's referring to poskim who say things like, "In situation ABC, it is mutar/assur to do XYZ. I can't cite you chapter and verse, but that *IS* the halacha." They just KNOW that they have the right answer. They may not be able to explain how they arrived at that answer, they may not understand the thought process themselves, but they give the answer that "looks right".

I'm a non-native speaker in Halacha. I have to look everything up, in a manner not unlike the tourist who is always looking in his phrase-book, or the student who refers to his dictionaries and verb lists. A translation manufactured in such a way has a decent chance of being intelligible, but it also has a decent chance of being stilted and sounding "not right". For poetry and rhetoric, there's no substitute for a native speaker.

Akvia Miller

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