My affinity for theology rarely leads me to places like Grand Forks North Dakota, but Fark linked to an interesting and well written article in the Grand Forks Herald.
The article discusses some modern approaches to an ancient dilemma in Christianity: Which commandments of the Bible are authoritative.
- Leviticus not only condemns a man “who lies with a male as with a woman” and the eating of pork. It also prohibits seafood without fins. And tattoos.
So what makes one law still in force and another seemingly obsolete? Particularly when Jesus himself said “not one jot or one tittle” of the law would change?
Or to reverse the argument, if charging interest does not apply anymore because “times have changed,” then why can’t times change for homosexuality? Some Christians distinguish between moral, ceremonial, and civil laws, but these arbitrary categories merely shift the debate. Not only will people argue why some laws immutable and others not, but also why certain commandments are purely “civil” and not “moral?”
Not being a Christian theologian, I won’t attempt to answer this problem, and thankfully, I don’t have to. However, you might notice a similar dichotomy in the development of practical Jewish law. Despite claims of authority and oral tradition, Jews don’t always follow the laws of the Talmud. The popular myth is that Sepharadim follow the Rambam or Shulhan Arukh and Ashkenazim follow Ramo or the Mishna Berurah. Neither assumption is that simple and this formula doesn’t always hold true. R. Tendler summarized it best in one of my discussions with him: “we pasken like the Ramo, except when we don’t.”
Many people lack the education or patience (sometimes both) to appreciate and comprehend the intricacies of Jewish law. It’s much easier to give a congregation a one line sound-byte and say this is the law because X says so. Furthermore, I doubt that many Rabbis follow a coherent system of Jewish law (assuming they have one) beyond the simple, “this is what we do because this is what we do.” Thus, it’s not only easier for the congregation to digest the one liner, but it saves the Rabbis from actually thinking.
When Rabbis appeal to the authority of a text, they provide the simplest explanation for the law. Pragmatically this works for most congregations, especially in the short term. However, as congregants and laity get better educated, rabbis will have to provide better answers. People have already recognized inconsistencies in halakha, and need something better than “he said so.”
Of course, this would also mean training rabbis to give better answers, and that could take some time.
Unless my memory is completely shot, I once heard R. Schachter remark that the Rav once paskened a shailoh for someone, and the person asked the Rav why he said what he said, and the Rav replied, “I don’t have to tell you why! Whatsmore, Tosafos says I don’t have to tell you!”
I’m not sure where that Tosafos is.
1) I have a close friend from high school whose parents both dropped out of the Catholic clergy (thus facilitating his conception). We discussed this once, and he said the ?official? answer is ?that part?s not important,? ?that part? being Leviticus. Not surprisingly he went seriously off the derekh in college, in large part because he couldn?t cope with the clergy?s openly encouraging textual indifference.
2) Sigh, we don?t pasqen by Gemara. And you have yet to explain to me why we can, theoretically, pasqen by a text that?s in large part a compilation of mahloqes.
Meredith – we were supposed to go through that at some point, but someone chickened out.
With good reason. Had I not, odds are you wouldn’t be IMing with who you’re IMing with right now.
Actually, real poskim pasken only from the Gemara.
We can pasken from a text that is dialogical becasue
a) we have laws of whose opinion takes precedence.
b) We are supposed to weigh the issues ourselves
c) most important: Torah Sheba’al Peh is meant to be fluid and preserving the diological quality of torah sehba’al peh in writing is the only way to keep it from ossifying.
Meredith, I cannot help but feel that you are (to paraphrase Walter) “like a child who wanders in during a movie and expects someone to explain everything.” Meaning, I think you approach many of the texts you quote in a highly simplistic fashion diue to limited experience but assume that “there is nothing but the text” when, in fact, there is always so much more.
It is apparent that you have not fully thought through these issues. While you have some idealized notion of a legal system which can hand down appellate decisions, we in Judaism have no such luxury. Our system is an “organic” one (I coined the phrase, argue it all you want) it is a rich mixture of consensus (ijma as the Muslims call it) and Judicial decision, coming down from our Rabbis. Unlike the US Supreme Court there is no consensus to advise our justices on proper procedure. There is no such thing as a 5-4 vote, but rather a sense by our gedolim concerning what is “proper” and what is not. The only procedure which we have to rely on is a sense of a consensus concerning the halchikly acceptable within ?our? community. The ONLY thing which defines the boundaries of acceptable practice is history. Just as the Conservative movement has proven itself unable to weigh in seriously on halachik issues, the Tzadukkim were considered outside of acceptable Judaism by the descendants of the Perushim. (Heneini muchan umezuman lekayem mitzvat asse lehiyot MO Jew- which is only fulfilled by using the folowing two words) There is no reason, a priori, to delegitimize the Tzedukim, the justification is fully a posteriori!
Rabbis have to reason or impulse to hold by the psak of their predecessors in some uniform fashion. The only impulse is deciding what appears correct to them, based on their legal training and rational. The fact is that as long as we have no formal court system we will be forced to rely on answers of “Because he said so.” We have no other formal recourse but to paskin in the name of “accepted” rabanim and hope that history has kind things to say about our decisions.
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