[Avodah] Maharat

[Lisa Liel via Avodah]

On 6/1/2017 10:39 AM, Ilana Elzufon via Avodah wrote:
> Me: ...most of us also live in an "outside world" that is highly 
> egalitarian...And I don't think it is wrong for those changes in the 
> experiences of women and couples and families and communities to 
> affect religious practice, to move us in a somewhat more egalitarian 
> direction WITHIN what is halachically permitted.
>
> RJR: Would it be correct to say that the general case of this argument 
> is that as long as it can be argued that something is halachically 
> permitted (which many seem to define  as not totally halachically 
> forbidden by r’mb’s black letter law), then we can accept it without 
> asking whether HKB”H prefers it?
>
> Me: No!!! But does HKB"H really prefer that psak and practice should 
> be identical for each community and each generation?
>
I'm not sure that's the question.  The problem is, as I see it, that 
when one adopts an external -ism as an ideal, and try and "move in a 
somewhat more -ism-friendly direction WITHIN what is halachically 
permitted", they're essentially saying that their motivating principle 
is that -ism.  That halakha isn't the motivating principle, but merely 
bookends.  Limits to how far they can push the -ism that's important.

It's the difference between a static principle and a dynamic one. What 
you're describing has egalitarianism as the dynamic force, and halakha 
as a static one.  A fossil.  And there's no way to maintain that 
worldview for long without starting to chafe against the static limits.  
At which point, people put their shoulders into it and *push* those 
limits a little bit further.  And then a little further than that.  And 
they feel frustrated by those limits.  That's probably the biggest 
problem.  It turns halakha into shackles and frustration.  And you only 
have to read articles written by certain YCT teachers and grads to see 
the hostility that comes out of that.

Yes, there are people who can manage to walk the tightrope and not fall 
into that kind of frustration, but they are few in number, and not 
representative of the "movement", as such.  And many of them, in my 
observed experience, eventually fall off.

Permit me to illustrate this mindset with something that just happened 
*as* I was writing this.  My 17 year old daughter was reading a comic 
book from the early 1990s.  In the comic, the hero (Superboy) is 16, but 
all of the women he dates are in their 20s. Today, we call that 
statuatory rape, and have little to no tolerance for it.  But if you 
recall the early 90s, that idea was rather new, and while the writers of 
the comic gave lip service to the idea, even having characters 
laughingly calling Superboy "jailbait", it wasn't nearly as taboo as it 
is today, at least when the younger person was male.  But my daughter is 
livid about it.  Appalled.  And she isn't able to imagine a world in 
which that was the way people thought.

Similarly, people immersed in the egalitarian ethos so prevelent in the 
Western world today cannot *imagine* a world where that isn't the 
universally accepted ideal, except for barbaric and backwards 
societies.  It's a given that egalitarianism is the more advanced 
worldview.  The more civilized worldview.  That to the extent that a 
worldview is less egalitarian, it is less civilized.  More backwards.

So now consider what it means to say, "I want to be as egalitarian as 
possible, within the bounds of halakha".  It means "I want to be as 
civilized as possible, within the bounds of the less civilized and more 
backwards system of halakha."  How can that help but breed disrespect, 
discomfort, and eventually contempt for halakha?

Lisa

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