[Avodah] RSRH on nature of Torah; implications for Dox vs. Prax

[Micha Berger]

On Sun, May 01, 2011 at 02:46:26PM -0400, T613K at aol.com wrote:
: Christianity says about Judaism (and sometimes, what MO say about RW), and  
: Hirsch knocked down their fatuous arguments over and over throughout his  
: brilliant and inspiring writings.

... or what R says about halakhic movements, and C says about our rigid
fealty to halakhah and how it's made.

But not MO vs RW. There it's an issue of disagreeing about which parts
of halakhah are iqar, and which are tafeil. And perceptions on each side
about their own observance and about the observances of the others. All
topics that past discussion has proven to divide rather than unite us,
and thus not really for this forum.

I recently offered this definition of halakhah:
    Halakhah is a G-d-given process for finding ways for we, as
    individuals and as part of a community complete our souls.

Where I'm not claiming we agree on how to approach the task of completion:
whether it's the Rambam's concept of yedi'ah, chassidic deveiqus (whether
Chabad or Gachas), TiDE's ennoblement, the Gra's sheviras hamidos hara'os
(whether through mussar or by metaphysical effects of talmud Torah),
etc... If someone has a more generic way of phrasing that, please
speak up.

Continuing now to the relevent part:
    Hashem gave us this process in the form of a legal system to allow
    us the creativity of finding ways that speak to us in each generation
    with its challenges and opportunities while still being rigid enough
    to keep us loyal to His definition of the task.

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             Today is the 13th day, which is
micha at aishdas.org        1 week and 6 days in/toward the omer.
http://www.aishdas.org   Yesod sheb'Gevurah: To what extent is judgment
Fax: (270) 514-1507                   necessary for a good relationship?