[Avodah] mutav sheyihiyu shoggim

[Micha Berger]

On Sun, Jul 20, 2025 at 08:49:43AM -0400, Akiva Miller via Avodah wrote:
> The devil is in the details. There's no way to answer your question without
> knowing more context, and exactly how HE phrased that which you quote as
> "there must be a heter because everyone does it"...

Let's start building a taxonomy:

1 - It could be a limud zekhus. So there is a heter in the sense of some
    qulah which makes it less bad than it seems.
    a- ... and the rav considers is assur, just not as greviously so as
       one might assume.
    b- ... and the rav considers the heter valid, but still shouldn't be
       treated as baseline halakhah, now that someone bothered to question
       that norm.

2- It looks like mimetic tradition is at odds with textual halakhah. But,
   a community has been doing it for a long time. Their rabbanim didn't
   object. And thus the poseiq is saying: "It must be that minds greater
   than mine decided it was indeed in line with halakhah." Relying on
   an unknown but presumed formal sevara. A kind of "textualism" despite
   the lack of actual text.

3- It looks like mimetic tradition is at odds with textual halakhah. But,
   "im lo nevi'im heim, benei nevi'im heim" and "she'eiris Yisra'el lo
   ya'asu avla". The mimetic tradition itself is taken as evidence that
   it is mutar. And the poseiq isn't following an assumed formal
   justification.

I think #3 is what the AhS means when RYME says something like, "it is as
if there were a bas qol...". I think this is a canonical list of cases:

- OC 34:3:   making a berakhah on Rashi Tefillin, not R Tam

- 117:4:     chu"l communities asking for rain based on what was done in
             Bavel, even though that was caused by their local rain
             patterns.

- 128:64:    Ashkenazim in chu"l duchenin only on holidays

- 345:18:    community eiruvin and a reshus harabbim requiring 60,000
             people

- YD 275:13: We hold like the Rambam on how to write a pesuchah, rather
             than leave a gap that would fulfill all shitos.

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger                 Imagine waking up tomorrow
http://www.aishdas.org/asp   with only the things
Author: Widen Your Tent      we thanked Hashem for today!
- https://amzn.to/2JRxnDF