Cyberdov

Thank you again for the opportunity to explain myself to the members of Areivim.

You asked about the last paragraph of my recent dvar Torah on Mishpatim, which outlined some very general issues regarding halakha and how it changes. Obviously this is a topic of great interest and that has received much discussion and treatment by many people of greater stature than myself. My intention with that paragraph was not to prescribe any methodology for halakhic change, but simply to note the inevitable relationship between the way we understand the narratives in which the Law was given develops alongside the Law itself. (The following joke comes to mind: How do you know Yaakov Avinu wore a black hat? Vayetzei Yaakov-and his mother would never let him go out without a hat!) This was the whole point of the dvar Torah.

I believe the questioners were particularly concerned with the sentence ‘We who inherit the law must be prepared to adapt it to meaningful in the narrative setting in which we find ourselves.’ Read one way, I can understand how that could be understood to mean ‘We should change halakha to reflect our values.’ A more conservative (small-c) reading would not go as far, and instead understand it as ‘We have to submit ourselves to the halakha, and try to make it meaningful in light of the living conditions and values of society in which we find ourselves.’ This is the kind of large-scale subject that cannot be dealt with or adequately explained in a short writing, but is best discussed through face-to-face havrusa.

In either case, let me make a few points about halakhic change:

1. As I have already intimated in our earlier correspondence, it is lav davka that halakhic change always means change l’kula. (Though there’s also a big discussion to be had about the values of humra and kula. I would refer you in particular to a teshuva of R’ Kook [Oreach Mishpat 112, though see all of them from 108-114] on the subject of kitniyot, in which he forcefully states the halakhic imperative on rabbanim to be meikil in issues of psak halakha, a value which runs counter to the widespread trend in the opposite direction [see, of course, Prof. Haym Soloveitchik’s article in Tradition some 12 years ago, about which the culture of humra is a substantial topic]). I see some significant ‘humrot hadashot’ that could take place, particularly in the areas of k’vod habriot: how we treat workers; how and what we eat; how we approach the excluded of society-all these are areas that, heretofore, have not received major treatment within mainstream orthodoxy. Yes, you have the occasional book on ‘business ethics’ and the like, but the vast majority of divrei Torah on Shabbos morning in shul are still about ritual details-typically how to be more punctilious in their observance-and not about ethical questions, about which the Torah has as much, if not more, to say. This would be an excellent place for Jews of all stripes to agree on some humrot.

2. It seems to me that the greatest challenge to Orthodoxy and our self-perception as the inheritors of the mantel of ‘Torah-true Judaism’ is the basic question that has bedeviled Western society since the Renaissance, namely self-consciousness. We can probably all agree that halakha changes-one only need learn the Gemara or the Beit Yosef to see that. So the question is not ‘does halakha change’? but rather ‘Can halakhic change happen in a conscious manner’ Can we actively change halakha, or must it ‘change on its own’??

 

In my experience, Orthodox Jews tend not to mind the idea that halakha changes; they just don’t want to know that it’s changing. That’s all well and good, except that the pace of change has increased exponentially in the last century. The challenge that those of us in the M.O. camp feel is this tension between the rapid pace of change in the rest of society, and the struggle of halakha to keep up. No question there have been major changes: Women’s learning is probably the biggest of them, which until 100 years ago was unheard of, and today women learn in a graduate Gemara program at YU, not to mention Drisha and many fine institutions in Israel.

 

So the question becomes, How can change happen in a way that is still authentic? For many the answer is that if a ‘Gadol’ says something is okay then that gives an appropriate gashpunka, and conveys a sense of authenticity. But as one of my rebbeim was fond of saying, a posek needs to poskin the shoel as much as the shaila-in order to give a satisfactory psak halakha, you really have to know the individual for whom you are poskining, their particular needs and struggles, their story (which relates back to my dvar Torah, btw). And while I have only the greatest respect for the Gedolim I have had the honor to meet and learn with over the years, I can certainly appreciate how shomrei halakha who have grown up environments and families far different from those these Gedolim are familiar with might feel-with some legitimacy-that the Gadol sitting before them can’t fully understand them. Kal v’chomer for issues of public pronouncement, which tend to be more machmir than oral psak !

 (since oral psak generally better takes into account the individuality of the shoel). And in the age of mass communication, public pronouncements shape the attitudes of communities (see Haym Soloveitchik, again).

 

So here’s the question: How to acknowledge the tremendous struggle of many Jews to live committed halakhic lives while they have been shaped by such ‘newfangled’ values as historicism, science, and gender equality, values which halakha is still only beginning to deal with, and which many Gedolim seem unable to deal with in a way that speaks to an important segment of the amcha (not to mention the vast majority of Jews who aren’t shomrei halakha)? Do we simply write them out, and say ‘Sorry Charlie, your values have no place in the world of halakhic Judaism’? Or does halakha contain within it the ability to adapt and deal with these new categories, while retaining its authenticity? I for one believe it would be a disservice to Hakosh Baruch Hu’s Torah to say that it doesn’t.  

It’s late. I’m sure that’s enough food for fodder.

Kol tuv,

Josh