Question

Honorable Rabbi, hello,
I wanted to ask you about an idea that has been occupying me a lot lately. I’ve been delving deeply into the concept of prophecy, and I’d be interested to hear your opinion about my recent conclusions. I wonder whether the concept of an individual’s prophecy regarding what obligates him personally can connect an Orthodox approach and a Reform one.
One can identify in the understanding of prophecy as I understand it a combination of rational enlightenment, dialogicality, and the light associative play of the imagination. But it can also be understood in other ways.
I would have liked to formulate everything as a question, since this is a responsa forum, but I can’t find a better formulation than what I wrote on Facebook as an opinion post.
What I’m dealing with here is the tension between the individual’s understanding of how it is proper for him himself to live according to the truth as he understands it, and the demand of religious law — but specifically from the point of view of religion.
The question whether a person should do what he believes in is one question. Here I hold that not only should a person do what he believes in, but it may be that a religious person is obligated to encourage a person to do the truth he believes in as against the rules of Jewish law, as part of the religious agenda itself. (This is also included in the tone of admiration for “the sage who understands on his own.”)
On the other hand, the Reform person, who advocates personal autonomy vis-à-vis Jewish law, is obligated to aspire to idealistic truth and not merely to what is convenient for him, as well as to study and delve into the laws of religion day and night.
And here are the words from the post —
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The figure of the prophet — between Orthodoxy and Reform
The prophet stands in the storm, stands before the lightning and thunder of the clouds of divine glory. What distinguishes the prophet in Jewish law is that the word of God that his ears hear obligates him more than the written law, according to Jewish law itself. He hears directly. His word overrides the law, specifically when he understands his prophecy as a temporary directive — either for himself or when he instructs it to the people.
We, whose ears are heavy from hearing, nevertheless sometimes hear some echo of a heavenly voice; something enters and says its piece. In fact, only thanks to this voice do we phenomenologically understand the concept of prophecy of the purer prophets of truth and justice. Only thanks to our faint little prophecies can we understand the biblical story of hearing the voice at Mount Sinai.
As those who hold fast to the foundation of foundations and pillar of wisdoms, we know that God alone is truth, and we say at the end of the Shema, “The Lord your God is truth,” and therefore every partial truth is really the word of God. A prophet who prophesies in the name of idol worship has testified about himself that he did not prophesy from the truth, and therefore one may not listen to him. Idol worship is precisely the severing from truth into falsehood. It is exactly what blocks the ear from the prophetic voice. It is impossible for a true prophetic voice to say to worship idols. That is a contradiction in terms.
In this sense, the concept of prophecy is a concept that mediates between the Reform idea of personal autonomy to choose in the face of the laws of Jewish law, and total commitment to what it says.
That is, so long as a person does not hear the voice of truth and identify it as such, he is obligated to the halakhic law, and insofar as he hears a truth that differs from what the law says, and identifies that as his obligation, he must act according to that truth.
The obligation to listen to the true voice of God is a halakhic obligation under the laws of prophecy. A prophet who suppresses his prophecy is liable to death at the hands of Heaven. This is the spiritual death of one who listens to his inclination or to human counsel — even if these are the most intelligent and educated people of his generation — and forgets to listen to the truth that he understands.
It should be noted that Jewish law itself, in terms of its own narrative, is nothing but a continuation of what Moses was commanded to tell the Jewish people. However, when one person speaks to another, apparently he speaks in general terms, whereas one can always ask about the particulars, and “general and particular, particular and general, general and particular and general — you derive only what is similar to the particular.” Thus the private individual can always inquire further into the particular truth spoken to his ears as against the general one.
On the other hand, a person is not exempt from dealing with the rules. There needs to be a balance between Torah study and private prophecy. The law was given so that it be heard, and you are not free to neglect it, for it is not your inheritance without the toil of study.
In this way autonomy is created for the individual, but only one that concerns doing truth, and not one that merely seeks leniencies for itself. An autonomy for the individual that also requires constant study of the tradition, and not one that abandons the past, so that its transmission to the next generation grows thin.
In this way prophecy enables a person to live in a reality that is both Orthodox and Reform at once. And the more unique a person is, the more he is required to follow his private prophecies; and the more he wishes to go along the social furrow, the more he should cleave to the general Jewish law.
“You are one and Your name is one, and who is like Your people, one nation in the land?”

Thank you, Sabbath peace, and may you be sealed for a good year,
Ofir