[Avodah] The Concept of Authority

[kennethgmiller at juno.com]

This is a spinoff of the current thread "Seeing G'zeiros Everywhere". In that thread, R' Rich Wolpoe is analyzing and categorizing different kinds of gezeros. I am more interested in understanding to what extent, and under what authority, we are obligated to follow any particular rule.

Let's say, for example, that the government tells me to do a certain thing. Am I *obligated* to do it? My feeling is that if the situation is one which is covered by Dina D'malchusa Dina, then, yes, I am obligated to do it, by whatever mechanism it is that requires me to follow DDD, for which see below. But if it is a situation where DDD does not apply, then I am not truly obligated to do it. It is probably in my best interests to obey them, because I want to avoid jail or whatever other penalties they have the power to enforce. But that is a very different thing than what I mean by "obligation". As a person whose only allegiance is to Hashem, I feel obliged to do what He wants me to do, and I feel no other real obligations.

A) D'ORAISA

G-d told me to follow the Torah. Therefore, I am obligated to do whatever it is that the Torah tells me to do. (This logic may appear self-evident and superfluous. But it needs to be stated, because the next categories will follow the pattern which I am establishing here.)

D'Oraisas are so straightforward in this sense, that I have not much else to say about them.

B) D'RABANAN

There is one d'Oraisa (or perhaps a group of them) which is unique in its vagueness. It does not prescribe or proscribe any particular acts, other than that we obey our rabbis. We must obey them when they rule on whether or not the Torah law has been violated, and the Torah even authorizes them to establish new laws.

I refrain from citing any specific pesukim, because I am aware that they are various disputes about which psukim teach which things. There is also some disagreement about exactly which rabbis have this authority. But clearly, there *is* a group of acts, which if I violate them, I have violated the Torah's mitzva of obeying the rabbis.

Therefore: Because I am obligated to listen to HaShem, and He told me to obey the Torah, and the Torah tells me to obey the rabbis, I am thus obligated to do these things.

Exactly which rabbis are empowered to create these obligations? One view is that this power rests only in the Sanhedrin, or in some similar organization, by whatever name it might be known, such as the Beis Din Hagadol. According to this view, laws and decisions issued by individuals or by other organizations would not rise to this level. We might be obliged to follow such laws if they fall into one of the categories below, but they don't fall into *this* category -- Our obligation to obey does not stem directly from these pesukim of the Torah.

Some extend this level of obligation to any law cited in the Gemara, on the basis of the Gemara being accepted by all of Klal Yisrael. This is unclear to me, because the logic of "Klal Yisrael accepted it" fits one of my descriptions below, and it does *not* seem to fit the Torah description of where the people in authority issue decisions and enactments irrespective of the populace's will.

(I have a vague memories that some would hold this category to include decrees issued even more recently than the Gemara. I personally do not understand how the Torah's law to obey the chachamim could possibly apply to a chacham who does not have "real semicha". I suppose it might apply if a generation had one single undisputed leader. But we have not had any such leaders. Some point to the Shulchan Aruch as an example of a univerally accepted authority, but I think the Rama disproves that. "Universally respected" is not the same thing as "universally accepted".)

C) MINHAG

Am I truly obligated to follow a minhag? Perhaps not. After all, it isn't something that the rabbis told me to do, right? On what basis am I obligated?

I have heard two different arguments for why minhagim must be followed. One stems from the pasuk "Shma bni musar avicha, v'al titosh Toras imecha." (Mishlei 1:8) According to this, since HaShem told me to obey the Torah, and the Torah told me to obey the rabbis, and the rabbis told me - based on this pasuk - that I must do these sort of things, the chain of command is intact, and I am obligated to follow those minhagim which are referred to by that pasuk.

Another logic which I've heard is that a minhag is a sort of neder. Once a person has done a certain thing three times, he has essentially sworn to continue doing it. I suspect that this is why personal minhagim are binding, and Mishlei is why communal minhagim are binding.

But what is a minhag, and what is not? Sometimes we'll see a posek rule that something is a "minhag ta'us" or a "minhag shtus", or something similar. Clearly, in their opinion, such a minhag is not a real minhag, and is not binding. A much more complicated problem, is that the word minhag sometimes means "an obligatory custom", and sometimes it simply means "this is what people do".

An example of the latter is is found in my recent post (Digest 27:1), where I cited the Rama and MB regarding the practice of not eating dried fruit on Pesach. Is it a binding custom, or just what people do?

D) COMMUNAL RULES

We often see rules adopted by one community but not by another. One example of this would be Cherem D'Rabenu Gershom in all its details, which was enacted and adopted by a specific procedure. I'm really not sure what the reason is to say that this is binding. If one wants to say that it is a kind of minhag, it is surely a different kind of minhag than kitniyos, which just sort of grew on its own and was never actually *enacted*. Or perhaps it is a sort of neder.

But my wild guess is that it is closer to this sort of non-DDD governmental law which I described in the beginning of this post: I follow the rule because it is in my best interests to do so, because the community has accepted upon itself to put me in cherem (whatever that means) if I violate it, and I do not want to be put in cherem. The community has an obligation (a binding neder from past generations) if I violate the rule, but other than expediency I do not have any obligation to follow that rule.

Let's take the example, recently mentioned by RRW, of a community which bans spending over a certain amount for a simcha. I would put that in this category. Such takanos either explicitly state what should happen to violators, or else the violators implicitly risk a certain degree of ostracism from their community. (But unless the takana was legislated by a Beis Din of "real semuchim", I do not see how this could be considered a d'Rabanan.)

E) POLICY

Many of the things that are in this category end up being here because they would have been in one of the above categories, except that they were explicitly accepted "bli neder". Most commonly, a person or group will see an action which generally leads to good or bad results, and they therefore try to do or avoid that action in the future. It becomes their "policy" to do that thing or avoid that thing.

For example, a hashgacha organization might insist on certain rules for the companies which they supervise, and these rules have no direct connection to kashrus. These rules serve only to make the supervising easier, or to demonstrate seriousness to the factory workers so that they'll be less likely to cheat. For example, RRW recently cited a ban on bringing non-mevushal wine into a kosher restaurant. Presuming that it has an acceptable hechsher, there's really nothing wrong with bringing it in, except that it makes more work for the mashgiach.

These rules are not binding on that hashgacha, nor on any competing organizations, in any sense whatsoever. It's simply a more efficient or more convenient way of doing things, and to these rules can be changed any time they find a different way to be more efficient or more convenient.

I predict that when RRW has catalogued the different kinds of gezeros, it will turn out that they do not all fall into the same category of obligation.

Akiva Miller

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