[Avodah] Fwd: Torat Chaim VeAhavat Chesed

[Micha Berger via Avodah]

On Thu, Jun 11, 2015 at 2:17 I wrote:
: What I think we really mean is a willingness to be meqabel es ha'emes
: mimi she'omro, rather than take a maximalist attitude toward mesoretic
: and Torah-derived statements. But that's quite a bit meta from anyone
: today using the Moreh as a foundational element of their hashkafah.
...
: Given my above assertion that the only thread that runs consistently
: through "rationalism" from the Rambam to today is to choose qabel es
: ha'emes mimi she'omro over taking some baal mesorah's statement maximally...

The thought hit me this morning that there is another and drastically
different way to view this point.

"Qabel es ha'ames mimi she'omro" is a bit of a circularity. Obviously
we want to accept the truth from whomever says it, and not errors.
So we're deciding what is true /before/ we decide to accept it, not
/because/ we accept it.

We could therefore say that the single consistent theme we associate
with throwing the word "rationalism" about is critical thought. When
we judge Aristo's, Copernicus's, Darwin's or Einstein's thought as
true, do we second guess that asessment, or accept their ideas as
true?

And consequently we can phrase this chiluq a third way: As being abut
how much authority we give rabbinic works in comparison to how much
we trust our own critical thinking. The higher the pedestal we put the
historical rabbinate, the more of their statements one would logically
choose to suspend judgment and accept.

(Not only accept, but accept as literal.)


As for the original premise... Rather than looking to RYK's or anyone
else's ideas as to what from Chassidus would most benefit MO, perhaps
we should look at the Neo-Chassidic phenomenon to see de facto what MO
Jews who are open to such experimentation are drawn to.

And if those two questions yeild different answers, why?

:-)BBii!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             What we do for ourselves dies with us.
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