[Avodah] De-Chokifying Arayos (including MZ)

Meir Shinnar via Avodah avodah at lists.aishdas.org
Sun Jul 12 11:39:36 PDT 2015


> On Sun, Jul 05, 2015 at 05:20:08PM -0500, Lisa Liel wrote:
> : On 7/3/2015 5:16 PM, Micha Berger via Avodah wrote:
> :> Let me take a step toward de-chokifying arayos.
>
> : Why?  I mean, you can always find reasons to turn something into a
> : moral issue.  But why do you want to impose that on the halakha?  Is
> : the purpose to make things even worse?
>
> As I quoted from RAK, because they classically were not considered
> chuqim. Until our contemporaries took the issue from sexual morality
> to sexual ethics, these truths were considered self-evident. It's the
> choqification of dinei arayos that's inauthentic.
>
> In any case, since one doesn't pasqen from taamei hamitzvos, the din
> is the same either way. Nothhing in such exploration can "make things
> even worse".
>
> In Shmona prakim, the rambam seems to take the opposite view - trying to
reconcile the view that having a desire to sin is a sign of moral failing,
and that the overcoming of desire is a sign o f greatness - he argues that
to desire to sin is problematic in hamefursamot - but NOT in those
forbidden only for religious reasons - and he specifically applies that to
arayot - and needs to apply it to arayot, because the sugyot that deal with
kol hagadol mechavero yitzro gadol  mimenu - specifically apply to arayot.
One could argue whether the arayot the rambam means refers to all dine
arayot, or only to a subset (excluding mishkav zachar), although not sure
on what basis - but clearly the rambam here insists that arayot are NOT
self evident or even mefursamot
Meir Shinnar
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