[Avodah] Halacha vs. Policy - Poll re: Who To Marry

[kennethgmiller at juno.com]

R' Michael Makovi wrote:
> I've seen this before, and I've never understood where Rabbi
> Kaminetsky gets his prima facie from.

R' Isaac Balbin responded:
> Indeed, and this is why you have a problem with it. ...
> You have life and experience by virtue of the fact that you
> have not spent your days in a cloistered environment surrounded
> only by limudei kodesh. I don't say that disparagingly. This
> may well not be the case for the brilliant avreich who is ready
> to serve his apprenticeship. In certain groups it's in fact the
> rule rather than the exception.

This is very similar to how I was going to respond. Except that I would phrase it more in terms of the textual learning one gets from learning from seforim, versus the mimetic learning one gets from apprenticeship.

Personally, I am among those who would have answered that niddah is worse than intermarriage, based on the obvious difference in penalties. One is Karays d'Oraisa, and the other might not even be d'Oraisa at all - of course the first is worse!

Yet at the same time, I recognized that Jews of all stripes have an abhorrence to intermarriage which far surpasses almost any other aveira. It took me a very long time to understand the reasons for that extreme attitude, but I finally did reach an explanation which satisfied me, B"H.

Akiva Miller

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