[Avodah] Questioning Authority

[Micha Berger]

On Wed, Oct 11, 2017 at 09:41:32AM -0400, Akiva Miller via Avodah wrote:
: I have always felt that it is (or ought to be) possible and permissible to
: *question* authority without challenging or rejecting authority...

I would have said "to ask questions", as to me "to question" something
is indeed to challenge. But that's just an English or perhaps English
dialect issue.

What's nice is that we don't have this issue in halachic jargon: there
is a clear difference between
1- a she'eilah, asking for information, ibua'ei lehu / miba'ei
on the oe hand, and
2- a qushya ("qasha"), tiyuvta, meisivei, where we challenge the given
statement.

....
: But frequently, the truth is that the parent has very good reasons for what
: he says. It's just that he's unable to put those reasons into clear words.
: He can't even explain it to himself in simple terms, because it is simply a
: gut feeling that he has, based on experience and intuition, he sees that
: this is the action or inaction which must be followed in this particular
: situation.

As far as I can tell, this is what RYBS calls "mesorah", and the same
notion of "mesorah" RHS invokves when arguing against ordaining women
or women leading inessential portions of davening?

(As opposed to those who think of "mesorah" as referring to mimeticism.)

: I think this is analogous to Torah leaders and Torah followers. When the
: leaders tell the followers what to do, or what to avoid, it is entirely
: reasonable for the followers to request explanations from the leaders. This
: is especially so, if the explanation will help them comply with the
: directive, or teach them how to apply the directive to other situations.
: But these requests must be made respectfully, carefully, and only up to a
: certain point.

We ask a poseiq a she'eilah, not a qushya. And -- as noted by the Maharal
in the Beer haGolah RMRabi and I beat to death -- we should be expecting
to understand rather than blindly follow.

The limit you speak of comes for the fact that a feel for how the halakhah
ought to be inherently can't be articulated.

To repply R/Dr Moshe Koppel's metaphor for halakhah, as much as halakhah
runs like a legal system, it also works like a language. People who only
know English as a second language could know rules of conjugation, but
it takes serious immersion in the language to know what kinds of poetic
license works and what violates the limits of acceptible English. We
native speakers know what "sounds right". But if an immigrant were to
ask why "the red big ball" sounds weird but "the big red ball" sounds
normal, how many of us could explain it? And if we did come up with
an explanation, isn't it a post-facto construct rather than the more
by-feel way the determination was really made?

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             For those with faith there are no questions.
micha at aishdas.org        For those who lack faith there are no answers.
http://www.aishdas.org                     - Rav Yaakov of Radzimin
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