[Avodah] Who First Said it?

[Micha Berger]

Just to chime in with yet another repetition of my opinion about
chumros, just to show how it informs my opinion here:

I could see keeping up this new practice if and only if the repetition of
"zeikher" and "zekher" is turned into a mnemonic for the kehillah. If it's
the difference between them just hearing the words and them remembering
that the point is "memorial / reminder", not "memory", then I like
the idea.

Otherwise, chumros just off being chosheish for things.... I think the
cheshash needs to be pretty severe. Otherwise, what's pesaq for? Dealing
with a she'eilah as though it's a safeiq is a last measure, when the
poseiq can't be machri'ah. Not grounds for a new practice when there
already was clearly established pesaq and the existence of a safeiq
itself needs to be proven.

IOW, to my mind, chumros should actually increase ahavas veyir'as Hashem,
qedushah, yashrus.... Being machmir just to avoid machloqes not only
appeals to me less; to me it feels like a violation of the halachic
process. In my eyes, for whatever it's worth, such a machmir is too
close to the gemara's use of "hakesil bachosheikh holeikh" (RH 14b,
Chullin 44a, in explanation of Qoheles 2:14).


Side-notes:

Until RZS shows that the Lub practice predates that of those communities
who accepted the MB as "poseiq acharon" (in quotes), my personal feeling
is that we're going to find that it really does date back to the MB.

RSMandel convinced me way back in 2002 (see
<http://www.aishdas.org/avodah/vol09/v09n055.shtml#04>) to take the
MB's haqdamah at face value. It was written to be a survey of shitos
that post-date the standardization of the page of the SA, to make them
available to people who can't collect every seifer. It wasn't written
to be a collection of pesaq. If we see the CC's statements that look
like pesaq as statements of theory, what one would do if only theory
mattered and not the momentum of existing norms based on other shitos,
then this whole chumrah looks even less compelling.

And if you don't read the MB based on the haqdamah, and read his apparent
pesaqim the way they look -- as pesaqim lehalakhah ulemaaseh -- one is
left wondering why the CC often followed existing Litvisher pesaq rather
than his own seifer. Whether it's the size of his 4 kosos, the CC's
tucked-in tzitzis, etc...

RRW calls the MB's chumros a mussarification of halakhah. Personally,
I think my own approach of only accepting chumros that directly impact
yir'as Shamayim to be more mussarified. After all, the Brisker chumrah is
also this notion of being chosheish for the shitas hamachmir; and no one
(okay: no one who knows the topic) would accuse them of a mussar slant.

R' Dr Haym Soloveitchik points to the MB's approach as an early harbinger
of the textualization of halakhah. Which is why the post-reconstruction
period focused on his seifer rather than (e.g.) the AhS. But if the MB
was intended as a text divorced from practice, this is "only" true of
those who turned it into a seifer pesaq, R' Aharon Kamenecki, R' Yaakov
Kotler, etc...

That's not to say that this aids RDHS's thesis by moving even more of
the textualization to the post-holocaust era. Again, the Brisker chumrah
-- by his own namesake -- was intended lemaaseh, defied mimeticism,
and was even further before the Shoah.

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             The mind is a wonderful organ
micha at aishdas.org        for justifying decisions
http://www.aishdas.org   the heart already reached.
Fax: (270) 514-1507