[Avodah] tefillin on chol hamoed

[Akiva Miller via Avodah]

R' Eli Turkel quoted from somewhere:

> When it comes to EY,  the claim is that it is minhag Eretz Yisroel not
> to put on Tefillen during Chol Moed.  However,  according to Rabbi
> Chaim Pinchas Scheinberg, Z'L, Rabbi Binyamin Hamburger, and I am sure
> others, there is no such thing as minhag EY. EY is a melting pot with
> congregations having many different minhagim.
>
> Thus, to assert that one should not put on Tefillen, because one lives
> in EY seems to me to be unjustified.  Indeed,  I am told that there
> are people who live in Eretz Yisroel who put on Tefillen privately.
> Furthermore, there are some minyanim in EY at which Tefillen are worn
> publicly on Chol Moed. Ehrlau'er is one.

My ONLY problem with the above is in the use of the word "thus". The author
claims to have brought some evidence, and introduces his conclusion with
the word "thus".

But in my opinion, the author has not proven his point, because he does not
explain what he mean by the word "minhag". On the one hand, he seems to say
that it's not possible for there to be a unified "minhag EY", but his only
evidence is the existence of other other congregations, each having their
own minhag.

For his argument to make sense, in my opinion, the author would have to
explain the development of the minhag as followed in Rabbi Scheinberg's
congregation, and the minhag as followed in Rabbi Hamburger's congergation,
and then explain why that does not apply to EY in general.

In other words, if they concede the validity of a Minhag Frankfurt, or a
Minhag Lita, or a Minhag Bagdad, or whatever, surely they did not appear
out of the blue, fully established, decreed by the sages of those places.
Rather, they developed over time, based on the practices of the people and
rabbis who lived in certain areas. Some of those practices were accepted
and became part of the local minhag, and some were rejected, and I would
like to believe that Rabbis Scheinberg and Hamburger have a shita that
explains those rules.

The fact that there are individuals who follow their own practices at home,
and/or shuls which follow their own practices that differ from the other
shuls in the area, does NOT disprove the existence of a local minhag. The
fact that individuals or shuls that follow their own practice in private
might actually *support* the local public minhag - or maybe they are wrong
for going against the local minhag.

RET wrote:

> The vast majority of religious people in EY with almost all poskim
> require everyone in EY to follow the minhagim of EY. R Hamburger has
> been fighting this position for years claiming that the ancient
> ashkenazi (German) minhagim are the most accurate and therefore they
> should not change.

And, as I have asked many times, what is the starting point for the
definition of "ancient", and why does being ancient mean that it should not
change? Just as one example, choose any piyut you like. Once a time it had
not yet been written, so I ask, why was the minhag changed to include it?
People say that deleting this piyut is an unjustified change to the
established minhag, but I wonder if *introducing* the piyut is an
unjustified change to the established minhag. There must be rules to answer
this, and if those rules could be determined, these questions would go away.

Akiva Miller
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