[Avodah] Street Minyanim

[Chana Luntz]

I wrote:
> On the topic of street minyanim, and with the general back and forth 
> on how to rule (I have written something on mail-jewish on this)...

And RMB replied:

>Check out R' Gil Student's article on the subject.
>https://www.torahmusings.com/2020/04/are-porch-minyanim-kosher/

>Eh, I'll just include it here.

I read R' Student's piece on this - and assumed that most other people on
here had as well, which is why I didn't rehash the sources he brings.
Indeed RGS's piece is the one that characterises  RSM as bringing" a
half-way house" (with a link to the very brief teshuva, which is what I
quoted in my piece).    RGS did not discuss the half-way house any further
though, which was the part that was niggling at me.

Regarding RGS's piece itself - I wrote for mail-jewish (in a piece not yet
published):

<<What I find particularly fascinating about this issue is that it seems, at
least to me, to highlight fundamental differences between ways of
determining halacha, and illustrates the extent to which the methodology
invoked by Rav Ovadiah Yosef (but which has echoes in the Aruch HaShulchan
and other modern Ashkenazi psak), is in the ascendant, over the methodology
of the Mishna Brura.  Because if you take the classic Rav Ovadiah type
approach: - start with the relevant sugyos in the gemora, learn the
Rishonim, learn the Beis Yosef, and then use that to understand the Shulchan
Aruch, a mere possibility raised by the Rashba, that seeing one another is
enough to allow joining to a minyan (just as it is generally agreed that it
does for zimun) can be comfortably dismissed.  Certainly when ranged against
the straightforward reading of the gemora in Eruvin (that all participants
must be together in one place, or at least the second place must be
subservient and connected to the first, such as an antechamber to a main
room) and the way the gemora in Pesachim is understood by a majority of the
Rishonim.

But, if your way of learning halacha is to start with the Shulchan Aruch,
and then learn the classic Ashkenazi commentators on it, particularly those
right there on the page such as the Magen Avraham, followed by the Pri
Megadim and the Pri Chadash, you will end up with a very different
perspective. Because the Magen Avraham brings the logic of the Rashba as the
explanation of the Shulchan Aruch, and not just as a possibility, and from
there it flows down in the classic way into the Mishna Brura.  In Eastern
Europe, where texts of Rishonim were presumably often hard to come by, and
the Magen Avraham and the Taz and similar so often appear to have been the
key window into the Rishonic world, used to determine psak at least for
Ashkenazim, it is not that surprising that the views of the Magen Avraham,
followed by the Pri Megadim and Pri Chadash and then the Mishna Brura, would
form the basis of a position that, at least in a non-ideal scenario, would
allow mere seeing being used as the joining mechanism for a minyan.  That, I
think, is how they so often used to do it in der haim.  And it is very
interesting as to how the various poskim have ruled on the subject here, and
what it says about their derech halimud [way of learning halacha]>>

RGS is, if you read carefully, is the epitome of  the first approach
(although he works from Pesachim, rather than Eruvin, which is where I would
have started, but no matter).  One therefore finds the positions of Rav
Yitzchak Yosef and Rav Hershel Shechter easily comprehensible from his
piece, but, IMHO struggle to get a sense of the basis on which poskim of the
stature of Rav Asher Weiss have completely matired and participated in porch
minyanim (and indeed, insist that this is not a Sephardi or Ashkenazi thing,
and that everybody hold that they are mutar).  RGS does bring the Chida, but
the Chida is not usually the basis for Ashenazi poskim such as RAW and Rav
Shternbach, influential though he is in the Sephardi world.  

But it was on the basis that people had at least some grasp of the
difficulties with completely matiring porch minyanim, as set out by RGS,
that I raised the question as to how did R' Shlomo Miller select which parts
of divrei shebekedusha he would permit and which he would not!

>-Micha

Regards

Chana