[Avodah] Hashkafah and the Siddur

[Micha Berger via Avodah]

On Wed, Jun 21, 2017 at 11:00:14PM -0400, Yaakov Jaffe wrote:
: Thank you for your perspective.  I understand your argument - rather than
: my three-options (hashkafa a, hashkafa b and hashkafa c), you suggest a
: fourth with a & b side by side, for the reader to chose.  I hadn't
: considered it - but it does have a lot to offer!

We need to distinguish between a specific commentary -- R' Hirsch's
Pentateuch, Mesoret haRav works, Divrei Moshe -- and an anonymous
collector of footnotes as in the Stone Chumush, the ArtStroll or RCA
siddurim, etc... And I want to acknowledge the gray areas. R/Lord Sack's
siddur can be either, depending upon whether someone bought it out of
esteem for R' Sacks and wanting to know his position, or it's as just
Koren's contender in that market.

I am only talking about the latter category, the anonymous shul chumash
or siddur.

Chareidism is founded on the need to protect ourselves from the modern.
And only after dealing with the thread, one considers the opportunities.
And part of that defense mechanism is deffering decisions to those
more knowledgable. In contrast, Mod-O embraces the West's admiration
of autonomy. Thus leaving a gap between the communities about when one
turns to gedolim for answers, and when not.

A side-effect of how "daas Torah" is formulated is that it has little
tolerance for plurality. "The gedolim hold" is an oft-repeated idiom, in
my hometown of Passaic, even by people who -- if you made them stop and
consider the question -- know "the gedolim" often disagree. Because if we
need to choose between valid answers, we could run the risk of choosing
wrongly, a dangerous variant of one, the other, or in combination.

A comparative unknown yeshivish rav or collection of avreikhem providing
such commentary, choosing a consistent style of comment over others is
perceived from that mindset. As promoting one position as the sole truly
normative approach.

The same often happens with Rashi. We think of Rashi's position as the
default, because it's girsa diyenuqa, and another rishon is seen as the
machadesh. Did the brothers sell Yoseif or did they find the pit empty
after the Moavim got there first and selling him? There is a machloqes
tannaim about Rivqa's age when married, but Rashi quotes one, and that
becomes the default in some circles.

In other circles, peshat is more likely to trump medrashic stories. With
the position of numerous rishonim and acharonim (are there cholqim?) that
medrashic stories are repeated for their nimshalim, not the story itself.

Which brings me to a second effect of daas Torah... The more one takes pride
in deferring to authority the more likely one is to embrace the maximalist
position, to accept that which is further from rationalist, from what the
autonomous decision would have been. A second reason why Rivqa must have
been 3 when married, not 15.

Yes, many people know both, but isn't there a clear emotional attitude
about one position being normative rather than the other?

I therefore think that giving a survey of opinions is itself an
inherently MO way of doing this kind of text. It allows someone to choose
autonomously between rationalism, mysticism, maximalism, etc... without
the relatively-unknown rabbi -- or anyone but my own rav, his rav, his
rav's rav... ("my gadol" is a much more MO view than "the gedolim) --
setting himself to tell large numbers of the observant community what
to view as the mainstream, and what is an acceptable but avant-gard
alternative, even if they ever learn of the other options.


If we want RYBS's position to be viewed as part of the mainstream, or R'
Herschel Schachter's (which is far closer to yeshivish but still not
something ArtScroll would quote too often) or R' Aharon Soloveitchik
or RALichtenstein, R' Amital, R CY Goldvicht or any other rosh yeshivas
hesder, R' Kook, etc... there has to be chumashim that put these ideas
in the hands of the common people, the ones who aren't spending spare
time hanging out in the sefarim store or following e-zines, blogs,
email lists or even FB groups that discuss (usually: argue) such things.

:-)BBii!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             A sick person never rejects a healing procedure
micha at aishdas.org        as "unbefitting." Why, then, do we care what
http://www.aishdas.org   other people think when dealing with spiritual
Fax: (270) 514-1507      matters?              - Rav Yisrael Salanter