[Avodah] Rambam Hilchot Trumot

[Micha Berger]

On Fri, Dec 21, 2018 at 12:33:08PM +1100, Isaac Balbin via Avodah wrote:
: When R' Aron Soloveichik z"l was asked about the difference between the
: Mesora of today and yesteryear he explained that in his generation,
: whilst they certainly knew about the Mesora -- they had the level of
: Kiblu MeRaboseinu -- theirs was accented and qualified by the mimetic
: tradition which happens via seeing the Baal HaMesora -- Ra'inu --
: performing Masoretic acts and decisions...

I am not sure we are correctly using the word "mimetic" when discussing
the unconscious copying norms and aborbing the culture of such a small
"community" as that of posqim.

However, if I understand what you mean correctly, I wrote something similar
on Torah Musincs, where I tried to nail down what RYBS and RHS mean by
the term "Mesorah".
<https://www.torahmusings.com/2015/08/what-does-masorah-mean>

Teasers, as they state my point without proving basis:

   The word "masorah" is overloaded with too many meanings.
   ...
   For regular pesak too there is an element that is a craft, an art, a
   skill, the kind of thing one needs to learn from shimush, not by
   studying from texts.

     Kara veshanah velo shimeish talmid chacham, harei zeh am
     ha'aretz....
     If he read scripture and studied law, but did not serve a talmid
     chacham, such a person is an am haaretz (an ignorant peasant).
     - Sotah 22a

   ...
   Similarly, a poseik needs to pick up that feel, and not only the formal
   rules. He needs the unstructured knowledge of halakhah.

   Consider this rather poetic description of how the Rav experienced his
   shiur, entering the dialog of Torah through the ages as he joins his
   students in the classroom. Notice how he winds up by discussing this
   experience as "masorah":
   ...

   ... In an article in Jewish Action, Rav Schachter provides his
   definition of the word. He opens:

     What is Mesorah?

     Mesorah is not primarily a corpus of knowledge to master but a
     process of accessing a chain of student-teacher relationships that
     reaches back to Sinai. Moshe received the Torah and transmitted it
     to his student, Yehoshua, who in turn taught it to his students and
     so on, continuing through today. The nature of transmission of the
     mesorah is instruction from a rebbe to his student. We connect to
     the mesorah, to the sacred structure of laws, beliefs and attitudes,
     through our teachers.

   ...
   The Rav identifies masorah as the ineffable skill to think like a
   poseik. Masorah is a skill obtained from those who explain how the
   prior generations developed the law, how the community down the ages
   conversed about the law, from living in a culture of mimeticism.

   ...
   Without masorah, the poseik has no way of determining which solutions
   to new problems are in concert with the spirit of previous rulings.
   Halakhah is not frozen; it does not have inertia, but it does have
   momentum. Apprenticeship, training under a master, transmits the feel
   for where the halakhah has historically been taken. Following reasoning
   found in a minority ruling is appropriate only when one is motivated by
   the Torah's own principles. The person who speaks halakhah as a first
   language knows when an innovative change is within "poetic license",
   and when the result simply violates the Torah's "grammar."

   As R. Yochanan quotes in the name of Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai, "gedolah
   shimushah shel Torah yoseir meilimudah - the apprenticeship of Torah is
   greater than its study".

:-)BBii!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             Friendship is like stone. A stone has no value,
micha at aishdas.org        but by rubbing one stone against another,
http://www.aishdas.org   sparks of fire emerge. 
Fax: (270) 514-1507                  - Rav Mordechai of Lechovitz