[Avodah] Texualism and the Mishnah Berurah by R. Micha Berger

[Prof. Levine via Avodah]

 From http://www.aishdas.org/asp/texualism-and-the-mishnah-berurah

The author  [of the Mishnah Brurah,  the Chofetz 
Chaim] is clear: the purpose of the book was not 
to provide his own ruling, but to survey the 
later posqim who have added complexity to the 
field so that someone looking to reach a decision 
knows who wrote on the matter.

Yes, the CC (or his son or other students who 
worked with him) often gave his own opinion, 
including our “ba’al nefesh yachmir“, but it is 
unclear to me he intended that opinion to be a 
pragmatic ruling rather than a theoretical 
statement. This would explain why the Mishnah 
Berurah’s rulings diverge from accepted practice 
so much more often than the Arukh haShulchan (a 
contemporary work from the same region). Halakhah 
lemaaseh, pragmatic rulings, need to take such 
precedent and continuity into account; discussions of textual theory do not.

As further evidence that the Mishnah Berurah was 
not intended to be a practical law guide, we have 
a lot of testimony that shows that its own author 
often followed the common Lithuanian practice 
over his own “ruling”. Despite the origin of 
wearing one’s tzitzis strings out being in the 
MB, the CC did not. His qiddush cup doesn’t hold 
as much wine as the MB would require. (It is 
still in the hands of the Zaks family and has 
been checked repeatedly.) He advocated for 
building city eiruvin for carrying on Shabbos 
despite BH 364 “ve’achar“. The Chafeitz Chaim did 
not say “Berikh Shemeih” when taking out the 
Torah. 
Etc
<http://www.aishdas.org/asp/texualism-and-the-mishnah-berurah#footnote_0_4329>1

I am suggesting that the CC’s textualist and 
formal stance in the MB is simply because the MB 
was a book for studying texts. And he did not 
intend to deemphasize mimetic tradition (the flow 
of practice transmitted culturally).

This shift happened when the Chazon Ish in Israel 
and a number of American rashei yeshiva (such as 
R’ Aharon Kotler) promoted the idea of using the 
Mishnah Berurah as a poseiq acharon.

See the above URL for more.  YL




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