[Avodah] Bene Israel of India

[Rich, Joel]

>  My questions is how do we know we got it right and they need to switch
> to our understanding of halacha?

Because we have a continuous mesorah from the Tana'im and Amora'im
who had the authority to decide halacha for all Israel.

> If they need to switch, why did later deviations (e.g. ashkenaz vs.
> sfard) not have to pick one approach once they rediscovered each other?

Ashkenaz and Sefard didn't "rediscover" each other; they were always
in contact, and their differences in halacha, as opposed to minhag, are
merely a function of which poskim each gives more weight to.  If the BY
had talmidei chachamim and poskim, working from the same sources as ours,
then we would have to take them into account once we discovered them,
and they would be entitled to follow their psakim as they had done before.
But they had no TC or poskim; they were amei ha'aretz who did things out
of tradition, which was mostly lost or garbled over the years.  And the
opinions of amei ha'aretz don't count at all.  "Kulei alma lo pligi"
doesn't include AH.

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They claim a continuous mesorah as well.  If I were them I would argue that our forefathers breached halacha by writing the oral law down.
KT
Joel Rich

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