[Avodah] [Areivim] Asifa - Lose Olam Haba

[Micha Berger]

On Sun, Jun 10, 2012 at 12:48:02AM +0100, Chana Luntz wrote:
:> I don't see in this a template for pesaq, but a rule about taxation and
:> semi-random surveys. How would someone apply it to a ruling (if it was
:> such) about EhE?
: 
: Well but one of the "halachic" requirements, as set out in the Chatam
: Sofer's teshuva, was that the Rav of the town needs to be consulted and give
: his consent to whatever the proposal is.  That is not just executive branch,
: but a halachic requirement for the executive branch to seek out the
: Judicial/legislative part.  Now if this Rav gives his consent, what would
: you call it?  I don't know that we have another name for it other than psak.
...

But that's no longer what we're discussing. We're talking about a
representative sample of a population being able to commit the entirety
to something. I argued that while there are cases in sampling a city
in order to make taxation or expenditure decisions for that city, it
doesn't work for pesaq.

What you are now pointing out is that after the representative sample
of the city agree that some tax or expenditure is appropriate, a rav is
consulted to make sure halakhah was not violated. So yes, he pasqens. But
not that his pesaq creates the binding nature of the law, it appears to
validate, not create. Nor do I see that we can deduce from there that
a rav can bind with a pesaq people who never accepted his authority --
this is the policy being applied across /his/ city on something that must
be consistent for the city.

It's the same difference between the the Moetzes deciding what the Agudah
would do, even though that touches many people, to deciding what members
of the Agudah should do, even when they might have posqim who do not
belong to the Moetzes, to their deciding what should be done even by
people with no fealty to the Agudah. City taxation is organizational
policy, being validated as mutar by the organization's rav.

(For that matter, persumably, we're speaking of the rav ha'ir setting
policy for that ir, not a rav being called upon to pasqen for people
unrelated to his authority.)

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             In the days of our sages, man didn't sin unless
micha at aishdas.org        he was overcome with a spirit of foolishness.
http://www.aishdas.org   Today, we don't do a mitzvah unless we receive
Fax: (270) 514-1507      a spirit of purity.      - Rav Yisrael Salanter