Torah and Jewish Idea > Torah and Jewish Idea
Breakdown of the Halakhic System - Two Earth-Shattering Shiurim - Exclusive
yaaqov:
--- Quote from: q_q_ on July 01, 2008, 06:32:32 PM ---safek means doubt. Let's translate the hebrew terms or expressions thrown in, so that jews that are not so familiar with hebrew, can follow the discussion.
--- End quote ---
Thanks for catching this.
I usually do. I just got caught up in the discussion, and figured that someone must have mentioned the English already. I'll try to remember for next time.
Lubab:
--- Quote from: judeanoncapta on July 01, 2008, 03:59:18 PM ---
--- Quote from: Lubab on July 01, 2008, 04:09:39 AM ---The Torah scholarship in this generation is pretty weak but I wouldn't say the halachik system has "broken down" because a Psak by a legitimate Rov is given the stamp of approval by G-d when He said the Rabbis are the ones who must decide the halacha, not Me.
--- End quote ---
You said that you are a Rabbi. Therefore you are precisely the one to decide the halakha. If you feel unwilling or unworthy to do so, please stop calling yourself a Rabbi. A Rabbi gives psak Halakha to the people. If he can't, he should step down.
--- End quote ---
Let me just deal with one thing at a time as time allows and first I'll deal with this because it was obviously meant to be incendiary.
I don't call myself a Rabbi. People call me a Rabbi that because I have have completed the course of study which gives me the title "yadin".
As you may or may not be aware there are different levels of Rabbis.
There's 'Yadin' and a 'Yadin Yadin'. A 'yadin yadin' can pasken halacha while a Yadin cannot. I can give you a ruling in Issur Veheter and Hilchos Shabbos. That's about it because that's what you need to know for "yadin". A yadid yadin needs to learn Choshen Mishpat and have at least one year of shimush (internship) under a practicing paskening Rov. It's similar to how there are B.A.s and PHDs. Different levels give you different levels of authority.
I don't know how it works in your yeshiva but that's how it works in Chabad and the Chabad tradition is rooted in a tradition going back to when before Chabad even existed. So there's no reason to correct people if they call me a Rabbi. Rabbi means teacher and I do teach Torah. When someone is a paskening Rov in my cicles we call them a "Rov" not a "Rabbi".
Lubab:
You are concerned that so many people have become convinced they can never understand something as well as a Rishon, Tanna etc. and therefore people today are not able to come up with their own ideas and you have a big problem with this.
Well first of all I don't think nobody is saying we should not try to reach that level of understanding. In the times of Moshiach we are told that we will understand things even better than the Rabbis of the Talmud so I'm not sure where you or your Rabbi is hearing this from but it certainly isn't from me.
At the same time we must recognize the danger in taking this concept too far.
The danger is as follows and is quite simple: some people may (because of their own ego or feelings of self accomplishment) be convinced that their learning is at the level of a Rashi, when in fact it is not.
Some people try to leave their imprint on the Torah. Others try to let the Torah leave an imprint on them. The latter is the proper way of learning and will lead to innovation automatically when someone studies hard. They won't even need to try to innovate because their understanding will be so clear that the innovations just come to them as a matter of course.
So you can run into a problem like this:
If you convince anyone or a person convinces himself that he understands a gemarah as good or better than someone like Rashi he might THINK he knows it better but in fact was so too absorbed in his own ego and his preconceived notions of what the gemarah means and therefore wasn't even really looking to understand Rashi's point of view in the first place. He never even gave Rashi a fair shot. So he misunderstood Rashi and now is going around saying he knows better than Rashi when in fact he's just making a mockery of himself and the Torah. I think this would qualify as the arrogance of ignorance that R' Kahane used to refer to.
I'm not saying you do that. I'm not saying your Rabbi does that. But I'm saying that attitude could lead to that and I have seen it lead to that and it's quite a sorry sight.
Lubab:
I also feel compelled to point out a major inconsistency in the way you are arguing with me here.
I gave you an explanation that contained a possible reconciliation of two views that at first seemed to you irreconcilable (re: saying Birchat Hamazon on cooked vegetables). My explanation was not "mystical" at all as you claim. Instead of saying one view is wrong I showed how both could be right and a different rule was better suited to a certain type of person or a certain generation.
It's on this thread for anyone to read and it's based on nothing but a relevant pasuk and some facts that are apparent to anyone living on this earth.
I never saw you once address the explanation specifically or point out why you think it's flawed in any way shape or form although you reject it.
So while with one side of your mouth you champion the right of the Torah student to be able to come up with his own innovation in Torah. I did (with the help of my Rabbi) exactly that and you derided me as just being "creative" (as if it's a bad thing!).
So is coming up with innovation in Torah a good thing or a bad thing?
Answer: it's good when you come to the conclusions that you like. But it's bad when you come to conclusions you don't like.
Which conclusions do you like? The ones that validate one opinion and throw the other to the dogs because this is the way you are convinced Torah should be learned.
The fact that you are able to with argue with such inconsistency only confirms what I've known since I first got into a discussion with you months ago: you are not really discussing with me. You are OPPOSING me. There's a big difference between those two things.
P.S. I see and understand your question about how the beraisa must have intened ONE thing. But if you agree with me that the beraisa was written with Ruach Hakodesh then I see no problem with saying that the beraisa (like a pasuk) was left intentionally ambigious to lend itself to two possible interpretations both of which are valid depending on the time, place, spritual level of the generation etc.
I gave you an example of how this can work with the cooked vegetable case and now you want me to show you how it could work in this case. I can do that but it won't help. First you need to recognize that more than one level of interpretation can both be true, both be intended by the author, and both be appropriate for different situations. Study the vegetable explantion to see how this works and just apply the same principle to any other dispute between Rishonim. Namely, find the underlying axiom that they both agree upon, and then look to see how they are applying the same axiom in different ways and then figure out for whom one opinion is valid and in what situation another might be valid. This is not easy stuff but this is the proper way to learn and it is a TRUE SEARCH FOR THE TRUTH to learn this way. If you throw out the other opinion you'll wind up with a half-truth and a half-truth is a whole lie.
Odds are likely that if you find yourself throwing out an opinion of someone of the stature of Rashi, that the problem is with your understanding of Rashi, not with the Rashi.
Could you be smarter than Rashi? Yes you could be if you learned as much in quantity and quality as he did and every student of Torah should be taught that they have that potential. But we also need to call a spade a spade and when someone hasn't even learned a thimblesfull of what Rashi knew we can't just let them go around deciding which Rashis he wants to reject and which ones he wants to accept.
q_q_:
regarding the hagar and keturah
you are ignoring the plain meaning of a rabbi that says regarding keturah "zoh hagar - this is hagar". But ok, I understand you -have- to ignore the plain meaning if it contradicts what another rabbi says.. Since you assume that all those rabbis opinions are true, and it's as if they came from the same sane consistent rabbi.
and since you don't have ruach hakodesh, you rightly said, your explanation is a -possible- explanation.
Though, as rabbi gottlieb said, "there's always an if". One doesn't really know 100% who one's parents are. Maybe they went to the hospital, found a baby that looked a bit like them, they weren't the parents but they convinced you that they were. It is remotely possible that the world was created 1 second ago. Is it possible that G-d doesn't exist ? Rabbi Gottlieb said, yes! There's always an If.
so the question you would have to ask regarding the explanations you come up with , is how likely is it that they are correct?
There are hundreds of creative explanations that rabbis without ruach hakodesh could come up with. All different. Not all correct.
So since you ignore the pshat of the words of rashi and ramban or of 2 midrashim , on hagar and keturah. You ignore it In favour of these poetic explanations that reconcile the 2. Then you really don't know if you are correct, or the other hundred creative rabbis(without ruach hakodesh) , with different explanations, are correct. And since all the explanations coiuld differ, it may be that only 1/100 of them are correct. Or 1/1000 of them. Or none of them, since there are another million creative explanations nobody had thought of yet, and one of those was correct.
An explanation that is invented, may be implausible.
What If blue elephants exist above your head.. You can't prove they don't. Maybe they do, there's always an If. Or, they may be plausible, simple explanations. But there may be millions of different ones that one could invent..
With this method, the likelyhood of anybody understanding -anything- of any rabbi of that era, is very slim.
Secondly.
Suppose rabbi A says X, and 50 years later, Rabbi B says Not X.
Both rabbis A and B lived in that ruach hakodesh era of rabbis.
Rabbi A 's students wre taught, and believed X. Do they then change their understanding 50 years later, when they hear Rabbi B?
It seems that you are claiming that at the end of that era, we know more about what the original rabbis of that era thought, than their original students. Because we are in possession of more facts, facts that they did not have.
And if you were correct about this idea that the reconciling explanation that reconciles - not just 2, but , say, 10 or 20 different rabbis is correct. Then surely, one would not have to think now for creative explanations to the most obvious problems. Rabbis would have been done already.. especially within that long period you mention, of ruach hakodesh..
one midrash says hagar and keturah were the same, another says not. There are rabbis writing on either side. So why are you the first person to come up with and write down, an explanation to reconcile it?
Why didn't these rabbis, with their ruach hakodesh, write an all encompassing explanation of how both are true..
If it was really the case then it would be absolutely fundamental
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