[Avodah] The Rosh ruled that a rav was a zaken mamre

[kennethgmiller at juno.com]

R' Joel Rich wrote:
: 3. The beit din or some other authority (therein lies another rub)
: takes the power originally allocated to the Jewish king to maintain
: civil society.

Yeah, I keep forgeting this point. It is very difficult for me -- in our day when the rabbonim have no real authority and merely tell their opinions -- to imagine when it was otherwise.

I'd like to ask where they get this authority, given the reality that the melech has these powers and the Rosh was not a melech. But that might be getting it backwards, because I don't really know the definition of a melech.

It is simple to know who a kohen is: it is a man whose father is a kohen. It is simple to know who a rabbi is: it is a man who was given that authority by someone who already has it (and perhaps other conditions, for Real Semicha TM).

But I have no idea what the definition of the melech is, and the haftara for Chayei Sarah (1 Melachim chap 1) does nothing to clarify it for me. How did Adoniyah become the melech? *Did* he become the melech? Was he a legitimate melech? Is there such a thing as a *pasul* melech? The pshat of the story gives me the impression that anyone who is accepted as melech by his constituency (not necessarily all of Klal Yisrael) is a melech, and of so, that would also apply to the Rosh.

Am I making any sense? Or am I simply illustrating the dangers of have too little knowledge of a subject?

Akiva Miller

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