Q&A: Early and Later Authorities
Early and Later Authorities
Question
Have a good week.
What, in your view, is the difference between our being bound by the Talmud because of the people's acceptance, and the medieval authorities (Rishonim) and the great later authorities (Acharonim), whom we can disagree with even though the people also accepted their words (it is rare to find later halakhic decisors who disagree with the Rishonim)?
Answer
Because this we accepted, and those we did not. People disagree with the medieval and later authorities, and the Rosh in Sanhedrin is even cited in the Shulchan Arukh as saying that one may disagree with any post-Talmudic sage. Whether that is rare or not does not really matter.
Discussion on Answer
I already answered everything. If you want to insist—be my guest.
According to your view, that there is no difference whether it is rare or not, then among the Rishonim too there were some who disagreed with the Talmud, admittedly very rarely—but what is the difference between that and this?
There aren't any there. Certainly not in halakhic rulings.
Maimonides' responsa, no. 395 [Blau edition] / no. 260 [Freiman edition] (to the sages of Lunel):
Question: In Sefer Kinyan (Laws of Neighbors 2:16) it is written that between one garden and another, ten handbreadths are sufficient, but at the beginning of Bava Batra (2b) it seems obvious to us that in the case of a garden, visual intrusion is considered damage, just as in a courtyard. If so, why is four cubits not required? Let our teacher, our master, our great sage instruct us, for we thirst for his reply as a deer longs for streams of water.
Answer: This question was not one for great people such as yourselves to ask. Do you not distinguish between visual intrusion that is major damage—where a person sees his fellow while he stands, sits, and relieves himself—and visual intrusion where he sees his fellow's standing grain because of the evil eye? Those latter matters are pious practice, that one should not look at another with an evil eye. And that distinction stated there is merely a forced answer and is not according to the halakhic conclusion. Rather, the main case of visual intrusion in a courtyard is in a place where people live, but for rooftops four cubits are not required, because people do not ordinarily live on rooftops; rather, a partition of ten handbreadths is sufficient, so that he will be caught like a thief. All the more so for gardens, since people do not ordinarily live there. And if because of that matter of the evil eye, we would even obligate him to build a fence in a valley, for the main place of his fellow's standing grain is in a valley. Yet it has already been clarified (Mishnah Bava Batra 2a; Laws of Neighbors 2:16) that one is not obligated to fence a valley at all, neither with four cubits nor with ten. We are never concerned with visual intrusion except regarding people and in places fixed for residence, like courtyards. And those statements made there—"a garden is different"—are merely a forced answer. This is obvious, and it is not fitting to elaborate further.
You are mixing different things together. When a factual error occurred (because of primitive science, for example), then of course no one has any authority. I have written more than once that the Talmudic ruling permitting the killing of a louse is null and void. I am talking about disagreeing with the Talmud in Jewish law, not in facts.
The Rosh in Sanhedrin says this regarding the Rishonim in relation to the Geonim, since the Rishonim indeed did not accept the words of the Geonim and often disagree with them.
Doesn't the fact that it is rare prove acceptance? After all, there was no formal gathering where everyone assembled and decided not to disagree with the words of the Talmud; rather, over the generations it became accepted not to disagree with them. In the same way, over the generations it became accepted that the later authorities would not disagree with the Rishonim (except in unusual cases). So why is that binding while this is not?