[Avodah] Seeing Policies Everywhere

[kennethgmiller at juno.com]

R' Rich Wolpoe wrote:
> Thus those g'zeiros - both Talmudic - AND perhaps
> post-Talmudic - that have been voted upon are not subject
> to repeal w/o another vote.

How are you going to arrange such a vote in any post-Sanhedrin time?

> Hypothetically:
> RMF could have himself been gozeir "no smoking" [just like
> a p'saq]
> Or he could have assmbled all the rabbis in North America
> and had a "Minyan" ratify such a g'zeira.

I do not see how this is possible, even hypothetically, simply for lack of a consensus on who counts as a "Rabbi". I'm not even talking about counting clergy from C and R. I'm referring to distinguishing between semicha from respected yeshivos, and semicha from less respected institutions, or people who got whatever semicha some years ago and have had some other sort of job since then. Who counts, and who doesn't?

Even if you were successful at arranging for a great number of recognized rabbis to attend, and even if an overwhelming majority of them voted in favor of this gezeira, you would still need at least an approximation of the number of qualified rabbis who did not attend. Without knowing these numbers, it is not possible to meet this criterion of "minyan".

This is why I don't understand how the scenario described by RRW might ever have occurred since the disbanding of the Sanhedrin.

Or perhaps I am misunderstanding exactly what "minyan" means in this context.

> Now go back to Igros Moshe and see how RMF treated
> Agudas haRabbanim as a "MINYAN" legabei certain
> cases - EG microphone on Shabbos.

Well, I suppose there can be communities, especially small ones, or well-organized ones, where it is very clear who is a rabbi and who is not. If you could get past the problem that today's semicha is not "real" semicha, then I suppose they could organize some sort of get-together, during which they could ratify some gezeros, which would then be binding, but only on that specific community. You would still have a problem of defining who the members of that community are. That could easily apply to any shtetl in the Alter Heim, and maybe even a few more recently. But was the jurisdiction of the Agudas haRabbanim ever so clearly defined? (If you can point me to specific places where the Igros Moshe treated the Agudas haRabbanim as a "minyan", I'll be happy to look them up.)

Akiva Miller

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