[Avodah] Normal People Don't Care About Those Things

[Meir Shinnar]

My response to Micha’s post generated several responses by him, and by by Ilana Elzufon

I will start Ilana’s post, and the Mendelson issue
I wrote
the first person I know who is explicit about actions being primary is Mendelson. While he is viewed now by many as Reform,in his lifetime he was viewed by most to be Orthodox
 Ilana wrote
To the best of my knowledge, Rav Moshe Mendelssohn himself was most definitely Orthodox (although that term may be a bit anachronistic?), even if his ideas later became important in the development of Reform. The view that he himself was somehow Reform seems to be based primarily on ignorance.

Response:
Looking at my post, I wasn’t sufficiently clear.  I fully agree with Ilana that Mendelson is Orhtodox  My point is that while Mendelson was considered Orthodox in hisletime, late on more and more people considered him trade - and my guess is that most haredm or hared adjacent who know who Mendelson was would think of him as trafe.
RMB first agrees with me then in a second post, disagrees.
First reply

> So much so, that when they had to post their curriculum, Volozhin told
> the Russian government they learned Chumash with his Biur. Certainly
> not something they would claim if they thought he was treif. Even if
> you think they were lying to / exagerating to the government to sound
> more worldly.

Then he apparently changed his mind
> So he was Orthodopractic, and more people don't bother considering
> someone with heterodoxical beliefs alone outside the camp. Which is
> where this discussion's subject line came from.
> 
> Nor do I personally think that believing heresy always makes one
> halachically someone we must treat like a min, apikoreis or kofer, and
> for that matter whether or not we assume the heavenly court will treat
> him as one -- I cannot assume that nebich an apiqoreis "ein lo cheileq
> le'olam haba", although the Rambam (in a very Aristotilian move) did.
> 
> But since thebelieds themselves now fit in R, not O, I stand by theidea++
> that the notion that the Torah only requires and revelation only
> transmitted orthopraxy is from Reform, or if you prefer proto-Reform.

Several points:

1.  If Volozhin  considered Mendelson Orthodox enough  to teach in Volozhin - then by any reasonable standard he is Orthodox 
2.  Wrt Reform, I think you have the causation backwards.  Reform was initially criticized for NOT being Orthoprax - with open violations of the accepted halachic norms.  When that became standard, people looked at why this happened, and then focused also on ideology.  However, the primary driver (At least initially) to Reform, was the lack of Orthopraxy….
 Indeed, I find it extremely strange (even shocking)  that one would accuse Reform of originating the idea that practice is what is important.  Rather than reform claiming that behavior is necessary, traditional Reform rejects both traditional praxia AND traditional hashkafa, but the reaction against them was driven by problems with praxis - not hashkafa.  Modern Reform is more tolerant and even advocates for more traditional praxis, but is still not Orhtoprax.


3.  Wrt to later sources, two from RYBS z”l
     a) In the 1950w, he was willing to join with Rav Saul Lieberman z”l to set up a joint bet din with the Conservative movement to handle great and giittin.  The Conservative movement already taught biblical criticism, amongst other issues in hashkafah.  However, what killed the bet din that Lieberman could not guarantee that the Conservative movement would follow the bet din’s rulings - that is, Orthopraxy versus hashkafa

      b).  The Rav is cited as calling Franz Rosenzweig  Hayehudi hagadol.    I (for what it’s worth) fully agree with that assessment.Now, Rosenzwei  became increasingly observant, and apparently received smicha from Rav Nobel (leader of non Hirschan Orthodoxy in Frankfurt). .  However, it is not clear he became fully observant.,His machshava - - a powerful and original machshava - is not Orthodox by your definition, and yet he is hayehudi hagadol by RYBS - something few of us can claim or would have merited.

> I would argue that the halachic definition of who is a kofeir has beendecided by subsequent minhag Yisrael to be someone whose beliefs don’t fit the 13 iqarim. And if we are to hold like the Radvaz, he reachedthat conclusion the wrong way.


First, that is a major accusation against the Radvaz, one of our major poskim — one can disagree with his maksana,or the reasoning, but it still a stsuhva by major charon.

However, wrt to your answer about the 13 ikkarim - we have been down that road before (very “fruitfully”0, and while that is a common shorthand for true belief, it does not describe reality .
	a. First, as Marc Chapiro demonstrated,, many gdolim held beliefs that are clearly against the 13 ikkarim.  We would be writing many people out of Orthodoxy.
	b.  Second, I don’t know (and the past no one could post) a coherent answer) of what  exactly are the 13 ikkarim.  Eg, forbidding prayer to angels - while some people try to rewrite piyutim, most of us still say shalom Aleichem with (barchuni leshalom..
There are tshuvot trying to reconcile mintag with the ikkarim - but it is not clear how to definewht that ikkar actually means (last go round no one did).
Therefore, requiring belief in the 13 ikkarim means requiring belief in something we can’t actually define - or something that is not the actual standard of the community. 

Lastly,, one of the issues we have is semantic.
You argue that belief is required - but that false belief does not make you a halakhic epikoros..  Thaerrefore, halachically, while some beliefs may have a status as true,wrong hbeleifsave no halachic consequence - and it is tought to call  something that has no halachic consequence as required.

I would say that the closet to a required belief is that one believes that doing mitzvoth is, in some sense, avodat haboreh - rather than the equivalent of Ukrainian fold dancing - eg, keeping close to tradition or the emotional feeling that it generates.  However, even here , we usually say mitoch shelo lishma ba lishma  - and would still include him, so even this is not truly required.  However, there are some major thinkers widely accepted as Orthodox  whose notions of how its became or are avodat haboreh are, too many, quite radical (eg, Yeshaya Leibowitz z”l)

Here is where the Radvaz comes in.  If you hold honest beliefs that are against what the community holds as essential - that is fine.  If you do actions to promote these beliefs in public - then the community needs to enforce communal norms.  Again, it is the action of promoting such beliefs - that has halachic consequences - not the belief itself.

This is essentially my position - that is ultimately required is proper action - not proper belief.  Some actions are intrinsically tied to proper belief - but wrong belief by itself is permissible if due to honest thinking..

 What remains is how to define what beliefs whose public promulgation is problematic..  One point is that for the Rambam, the notion of ikkarim is not time dependent, except that some only make sense after a certain time (eg, Matan Torah only makes sense after Sinai, and mashiach ben David only makes sense after malkhut David.  However, the notion thatt ikkarim are subject to halachic determination he would have found strange- although the halachicconsequences of wrong beliefs may be subject to halachic determination..

Someone we know wrote an excellent book about widening your tent- and I would recommend widening your tent of Orthodoxy..

Meir Shinnar







-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.aishdas.org/pipermail/avodah-aishdas.org/attachments/20260122/adfd0cdc/attachment.htm>