[Avodah] Seeing G'zeiros Everywhere

[Micha Berger]

On Mon, Jan 04, 2010 at 05:59:56PM -0000, Chana Luntz wrote:
:               ... I wanted to add was that it can be very useful to keep a
: kind of church/state distinction in one's head in trying to think through
: the topic. Gezeros come from the "church" side - they are part of the powers
: that were granted to the talmidei chachamim by the Torah via the line
: enumerated in Avos....

Whereas the word "taqanah" seems to be a homonym, referring to both new
halakhah and new societal legislation.

There are places where this gets confusing, eg maaser kesafim. Rishonim
place maaser kesafim as de'oraisa, derabbanan or minhag chassidus. I
think the reason for the machloqes between the latter two positions
stems from exactly this point. Why did the autonomous qehillah collect
maaser? Was maaser kesafim a halachic taqanah or a state taqanah?

As for state penology... I assume that in a halachic state, most dangerous
people would be jailed. Eidus with hasra'ah is too infrequent to allow
for a safe society. Something else would have to be done with the person
proven guilty of theft on the evidence, without eidim.

:-)BBii!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             I long to accomplish a great and noble task,
micha at aishdas.org        but it is my chief duty to accomplish small
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