[Avodah] More on Reviving a Ritual of Tending to the dead

[Joseph Kaplan]

On Dec 30, 2010, at 5:50 PM, Chana Luntz wrote:
> Once it is clear that the shofar blowing itself is halachically
> innocuous and mutar, then it becomes clear that (according to some,
> including RYBS) sometimes the mutar becomes assur because of the other
> things that the environment or group doing the otherwise halachically
> mutar act are doing (for example, having mixed pews). This is by no
> means intuitively correct (and in fact I am not at all convinced that
> everybody by any means would agree that it is correct in the kind of
> circumstances described). But once you make that leap, then it becomes
> very easy to argue for it to apply to groups different from the ones
> that perhaps RYBS applied it to, wherever the line in the sand is now
> to be drawn. It is precisely the same logic which might say, even if
> a tahara (shofar) by a C or R Jew (MFMP) is halachically mutar, we need
> to keep people out of the domain of C and R (MMFP).

Yes, something mutar can become assur because of other things, but
it's the nature of the other things that's critical to this thread.
RYBS made his quite striking decision because of the crisis situation
in the US at that time concerning mixed pew synagogues which were on
the point of decimating O synagogues with mechitzot. He didn't do it
because of what a *person* thought or the ideology of a movement. IOW,
if there was a C synagogue that decided, on RH, to have a separate seat
davening, the decision of RYBS would not have applied even though the
rabbi, congregants and shofar blower all believed in C ideology; there's
no reason to believe that in such a circumstance he wouldn't have told
the young man who asked the question to go to that shul to hear shofar.
Similarly, since the actual tahara being performed by the C and R
chevrot follows O traditions (that's the assumption of this thread),
then RYBS's statement and the reasoning behind them cannot be used as
proof against the argument that the affiliation and beliefs of those
performing this chesed shel emet should not, certainly in a situation
here no tahara would take place without them (i.e., bedieved), deter
their use. One can, of course, make the argument that it should deter
their use; however, one can't base that argument on a conclusion drawn
from RYBS's statements concerning mixed pews.

Joseph Kaplan