Q&A: Authority of the Sages and the Connection to My Ancestors
Authority of the Sages and the Connection to My Ancestors
Question
Why, just because “this is what the Jewish people accepted upon themselves,” am I supposed to observe those things? If my forefathers, many years ago, decided that the Talmud or the Shulchan Arukh or whatever book it is determines Jewish law, that is the reality. How can I learn how to act based on that factual reality?
Answer
Exactly like the obligation to obey the law, which is founded on the fact that the public accepted the Knesset upon itself. Even a law enacted two hundred years ago remains binding as long as it has not been changed. The public is an entity in its own right that includes all the individuals who were and who will be, and it too can accept things upon itself that will obligate all its members.
By the way, even the very obligation to the Torah is based on our ancestors, who said, “We will do and we will hear,” and the later generation reaffirmed and accepted it.
Discussion on Answer
I explained it. Because the one that is obligated is the public, not a private individual, and anyone included in the public is thereby obligated automatically. The same is true in Jewish law. The responsum of the Rosh, brought in the laws of vows in Shulchan Arukh, Yoreh De’ah, says that for this reason communal vows also take effect on the children of those who made the vows, even though in an ordinary vow only the person himself obligates himself.
The Knesset doesn’t obligate me or anybody; it just says that if I break the law it will be possible to arrest me. If nobody is around, then nothing happened.
So if I don’t keep a custom because it isn’t relevant and doesn’t interest me, will there be enforcement against me?
This seems to me to be a problem with customs—to say something like, “the public is stupid, the public will pay.”
So that itself is the question: why does the fact that the Knesset was accepted by the public many years ago obligate the individual person many years later?