The wise have the power to uproot evil in the wilderness.

Hello N. There is a series of laws that concern the authority of the Sages that have no source. They uproot something from the Torah in the Torah. Some of the first ones speak of uprooting the Torah (as in killing morality and more). There is a punishment that is not according to the law (which is of course an exception to this general authority). And of course, the infidel in the Torah and all the temple, etc. According to the Ramban, all their authority to enact (regulations and decrees) is like this. It is not reasonable to attribute this to the mechanism of a “yes” rejecting a “yes”, because there is not always a “yes”, and not every “no” is rejected in the face of a “yes”, etc. According to the Ramban, this does not apply at all, because there is neither a “yes” nor a “no”. Therefore, it is clear to me that this is not a “basket mechanism” of this type. There is something else here. Regarding some of them, I have long thought that this is an authority that the sages took upon themselves because there was no choice. And even when a source appears, it is a justification in retrospect. The unbeliever in the Torah and every temple, in my opinion, is a mashfaqar authority based on the perception of Rabbi Shekap regarding jurisprudence. The argument is that personal status and property laws and ownership are issues that every legal system considers itself entitled and obligated to regulate, and therefore even in the legal part of halakha (HOM and some Abbaaz) are also conducted in this way. Without public recognition of ownership or partnership (personal status), these have no validity. There is no need for a source for this because this is a legal perception that is correct for all people in the world, including us in general. The consent of the sages to ownership and sanctification expresses a public seal without which these acts have no validity. I further argue that the sages can revoke a child marriage in the middle (not retroactively), which is what scholars call “prospective revocation” (Avishalom Westreich and others insisted on this, and cited sources from the poskim). The reason is that what is revoked is not the act of the child marriage, but the recognition of the couple as a married couple. And when there is no recognition, there is no marriage/child marriage. What about punishment that is not lawful and uprooting something from the Torah? Some time ago I saw a halacha in Rambam that enlightened me on the matter. Halacha Memariam Pb 54: And a court may overturn even these things for the time being, even though it is smaller than the first, so that these decrees are not more severe than the words of the Torah itself, for every court may overturn even the words of the Torah, as a court that sees fit to strengthen the religion and to make a reservation so that the people do not transgress the words of the Torah, prepares and punishes them unlawfully, but does not establish the matter for generations and says that the law is thus, and likewise if they see fit to abolish a positive commandment or to transgress a negative commandment in order to bring many back to the religion or to save many of Israel from stumbling in other matters, they do according to what the time requires, just as a doctor cuts off a person’s hand or foot so that he may live a full life, so a court may instruct at times to transgress some commandments for the time being so that [all] may be observed, as the early sages said: One Sabbath was violated on him so that he may keep many Sabbaths. First, the comparison he makes from rabbinic to Torah is puzzling, since in the first two halakhahs in the same chapter he rules that the removal of Torah is easier (for which a different minyan is sufficient) than the removal of rabbinic (which also requires great wisdom and a minyan from the previous minyan). It is clear that he is talking here about freezing and not about changing. I am not disagreeing with the previous generations and am not changing the halakhah they established, but rather freezing it. Here there is no need for requirements of authority (minyan, greatness, etc.), because this is not a dispute. What is required here is a recognized rabbinic authority in the relevant generation that would have the authority to decide regarding its generation. If he comes to the conclusion that some halakhah is harmful (not erroneous, in which case this is a dispute about the previous halakhahs), he has the right and duty to freeze the halakhah for the time being. And as we know, nothing is more permanent than the temporary, and therefore such freezes remain in place until the coming of the righteous Redeemer or until wise men come in some generation who will reach the water to the soul and freeze the production (or thaw it). Note that the Rambam gives an example of this, the authority to punish unjustly. In other words, this moratorium is temporary, but precisely because of this, the authority is given to every Jewish religious leader in every generation. No need for rabbis, no Sanhedrin, or anything (no requirement is mentioned here, unlike the previous laws there). It is clear that this is an interpretive authority because it is not a halachic determination and therefore no source is required. Perhaps it can be said that the public that received the Torah accepted it with the understanding that it would have the possibility to manipulate it so that they could live and observe it in a logical manner. Now I return to my old thesis, regarding disproportionate punishment, and extend it to all these regulations of displacement and freezing. I argue that originally this authority was reserved for the king, since it is not an internal halakhic authority but for an institution parallel to the halakhic and Sanhedrin, as the “Ran” wrote that it has the authority to act disproportionately in order to close loopholes. When the monarchy was abolished, the authority passed to the Sanhedrin, and again it is explained that when one governmental institution is abolished, another institution takes over its powers. I wrote about this in column 101 and in more detail in column 164. See there the halakhic implications of this historical accident and the lack of awareness of it by all of us (such as the laws of community conduct in the Shulchan Arutz Sheva, which have nothing to do with halakhic).