[Avodah] Halacha is about sources. Lo BaShamayim hi.

[Lisa Liel]

Well, yes and no.  Lo bashamayim hi doesn't mean that everyone gets to 
make their own decisions.  It means that it's in the hands of man, 
specifically the rabbis.

There are two opposite tendencies that are both very worrying, in my 
opinion.  On the one side, there's the idea that you have to go to a 
rabbi to decide whether to have ketchup or mustard on your hotdog.  
Questions that are clearly *not* halakhic, like that.  There are people 
who won't make life decisions at all without consulting their rav.  
That's disturbing, and not at all what Judaism is about.

Then there's the other side, which could be called Talmudic Karaism, or 
Rishonic Karaism.  It's the reduction of our Torah sources to Torah 
she'bikhtav.  Just because the Mishnah and Gemara were written down 
doesn't mean that they are supposed to be treated as Torah she'bikhtav.  
They aren't just books that we can each pick up and read and apply our 
own logic to, any more than the Karaites were legitimate in doing that 
to the Chumash.

Lisa

On 2/12/2012 8:34 PM, Rabbi Meir G. Rabi, its Kosher! wrote:
>
> Halacha is about sources.  Lo bashamayim hi.
>
> Perhaps one Jew's Shomayim is another Jew's source?
>
> It may be a third Jew's sauce.
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Avodah mailing list
> Avodah at lists.aishdas.org
> http://lists.aishdas.org/listinfo.cgi/avodah-aishdas.org
>    
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.aishdas.org/pipermail/avodah-aishdas.org/attachments/20120213/122f567e/attachment-0002.htm>