[Avodah] The Anisakis Fish Ads: What It All Means

[Micha Berger]

RHM asked if the anisakis of Chazal's day, that has been living in the
Mediterranian since the Mitzriyim and named by Aristo, is the same as
ours found in our oceans today. I can only think to repeat RNSlifkin's
comparison of the issur on salmon with anisakis with a new issur on
bee honey. Would you ask whether maybe today's bee wasn't the same that
makes the devash of the derashah?


On Thu, Jun 02, 2011 at 03:23:09PM -0400, Prof. Levine wrote:
> For an enlargement of the ad at the beginning of the article see  
> http://personal.stevens.edu/~llevine/anisakis.jpg
...

This brings up the meta-issue of how halakhah works. And therefore gives
me an opening to re-post what I wrote on the 5 Towns Jewish Times site
and RDE's blog.

Rabbi Yair Hoffman writes on 5TJT
<http://www.5tjt.com/international-news/10569-conflicting-kashrus-rulings-translated>
which opens:
    So what do you do when you open up the newspaper and find two
    diametrically opposed Kashrus rulings and letters from leading
    Poskim? The newspaper was Wednesday's issue of the HaModiah and the
    two ads appear on pages D5 and D14 respectively.

That paragraph frankly scared me.

What a sad comment on the fall of normative halachic process! We
apparently have gotten so used to deciding things for ourselves based
on English popularizations of the halakhah that the obvious answer is
missing. You aren't supposed to decide halakhah from letters in the
newspaper.

Halakhah is detemined by consensus, not majority. You don't need to find
the one true halakhah -- if there are still conflicting letters from
gedolei haposeqim, there isn't one. (And even that's unclear, one of the
signatores is also on record refusing to pasqen about anasakis.) So what
do you do?

Go to your own poseiq! Yes, that's right, Judaism is supposed to be
based on a personal relationship with one's mentor. You get a pesaq from
someone whose path in Torah observance is similar to yours, who you know,
and who knows you well enough to know where you are holding and what
you're capable of.

Pesaqim in newspapers? It just doesn't work that way. The ads have value,
informing LORs that there is an issue to research. But you can't decide
halakhah for yourself from newspaper ads!

We have become neo-Karaites, we turn to texts. No concept of the value
of shimush rabbanim -- the quality that recommended Yehoshua as Moshe's
successor and the loss of which created such doubt and confusion in
the days of Batei Hillel veShammai. Judaism is supposed to be a living
tradition; Oral Torah is after all, oral. "Asei lekha rav"!

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             Today is the 44th day, which is
micha at aishdas.org        6 weeks and 2 days in/toward the omer.
http://www.aishdas.org   Gevurah sheb'Malchus: What type of justice
Fax: (270) 514-1507                            does unity demand?