Q&A: Regarding Your Article on Modern Orthodoxy
Regarding Your Article on Modern Orthodoxy
Question
Regarding your article on Modern Orthodoxy, you bring up the issue of using overarching considerations and also mention the issue of conversion. In addition, you quote Maimonides (specifically as an opposing position) as saying that someone who cannot avoid speaking slander should go live in caves. So I just wanted to point out (and comment) that Maimonides דווקא strongly supports the meta-halakhic approach, even leniently.
In a responsum in Pe’er HaDor (section 132), Maimonides ruled in practice to permit the emancipation of a non-Jewish maidservant who had been living with a Jewish man, and also to convert her and marry her to the Jew, despite the fact that this initially involves violating an explicit law in the Mishnah (Yevamot 24b). Even so, Maimonides permitted this from the outset and not only after the fact. The explanation Maimonides gave for this was: “For the sake of making things right for those who return, we said: better that he eat the gravy and not the fat itself, and we relied on their saying, ‘It is a time to act for the Lord; they have voided Your Torah.'” Not only that, but he even writes there that they should marry them with blessings—that is, not with guilty feelings or anything like that. I thought this was a significant addition to the principled position you presented, and I also wanted to add: more power to you for the article itself.
Answer
Emancipating a slave or maidservant for some need was already permitted in the law of the Talmud itself (Rabbi Eliezer freed a slave to complete a quorum, and see the medieval authorities and later authorities on this). In my opinion there is nothing special in this ruling. Many halakhic decisors have rulings that go even further.
Discussion on Answer
I do not understand what you are saying. A conversion for the sake of marriage is not accepted from the outset, but if it was done after the fact it is valid, and all this is already in the law of the Talmud itself (Yevamot 24b).
No, that is not the novelty; rather, it is the fact that there is an explicit prohibition (which Maimonides recognizes) against converting someone for this purpose from the outset (as opposed to emancipating for a need, which really is not novel).
In other words, Jewish law does not allow a convert to come and say, “I am converting for the sake of marriage” (and Maimonides is the first decisor to innovate that the religious court must actually investigate this), and nevertheless, because of the need (or a meta-halakhic consideration), he permits it. He also notes that it is preferable that he eat the gravy and not the fat (as an instruction to the religious court itself or to the rabbi who asked him the question), which is exactly the opposite of Rabbi Isaac Arama, who ruled that “let them eat the fat” as private individuals, so long as they do not “eat gravy” with communal sanction.