Regarding pedophilia in the Torah

Don't you think that if a Sanhedrin were to be established, they would be ultra-Orthodox rabbis who are not enlightened at all, so they wouldn't change the halacha?

I don't know how to answer that question. You have to direct it to the Messiah the King. He will decide who will sit there. If you ask me who I will sit there, that's a different question.

If the future Sanhedrin may abolish a mitzvah because it is not in keeping with the spirit of the times, the original Sanhedrin probably also established/interpreted/established a mitzvah according to the spirit of the times. Today it is not pleasant to say out loud that the High Priest should marry a young girl. Once they thought the opposite: a virgin (preferably a 12-year-old virgin) is purer and therefore worthy of the High Priest.

So, what is the authority of the Torah? If we can demand it “like matter” – According to this view, authority is in human hands and decisions are made according to the accepted fashion. The verses of the Torah are violated in some way (and its ends are forced? It is enough for you to pay a little money).

There is no such thing as the “Torah” when it is naked of interpretations. The Torah is always a text that has undergone interpretations throughout the generations and in our day. The interpretations also draw from the values of the period and the interpreter (see, for example, Halbertal's book, Interpretive Revolutions), it is impossible without it and it should not be without it.
We do not demand as a kind of material (=according to fashion) but as we understand, when understanding is a combination of considerations of reason and language. What you call “fashion” I call value perceptions.

Wouldn't it be nicer if our sovereign simply told us what he wanted from us, instead of us deciding for him what he wanted from us?

And I don't understand the difference between the (well-respected and well-honored) term "value perception" and the (slightly disparaging but no less accurate) term "fashion".

It would be much nicer, but it's not really possible. To give a text that covers all situations and environments and says what to do about each of them. It's not for nothing that there is no legal system in the world that doesn't need interpretations that change with time and circumstances.
If you don't understand this obvious difference, I have no way of explaining it to you. If you think moral values are a fad, then I disagree with you.

Why was it once thought that a 12-year-old girl was pure and the property of her father, and today they think differently (in the Western world; in other places, moral fashion is of course different today as well)?

And why do you expect the Sanhedrin to subordinate the Torah to the Western moral perception, and not to that accepted among the Amazon tribes, who after all are much closer in every sense to the lifestyle of our forefather Jacob.

You are taking us to the hackneyed debate about moral relativism. Instead of getting into it, I will ask you how it is that in the 17th century and onwards people thought the world was straight and now they think it is curved (general relativity)? And how it was that people thought the world was deterministic and now they think it is not (quantum)? Furthermore, in different scientific communities today there are different perceptions of quantum theory. Apparently physics is a matter of fashion.

Physical theories can be confirmed (I didn't write “proven”) and most importantly – can be refuted. Can a moral concept be refuted? Your analogy is extremely flawed and I think you are aware of this.

My analogy is excellent, and I am indeed aware of it. What I have now become aware of is your attempts to evade.
You claimed that the very existence of differences of opinion and change over time is evidence that this is a fad, and I showed you that it is not. Now you make a different claim: science can be refuted or confirmed and faith cannot (as your parallel question here). Indeed true. But that does not mean that this is a fad. Mathematics cannot be refuted either, and it is not a fad. By the way, the foundation of evolution cannot be refuted either, and it is not a fad either.
I assume that now you will make a third claim and claim that I am evasive and I know that I am wrong. I am waiting impatiently.

I did not claim that the mere existence of differences of opinion and variation (I was unable to punctuate that word of yours, it looks like a typo) over time is evidence that this is a fashion.

In your last message, you actually raised “other” claims that can be seen as evasion and deviation of the subject. I was unable to understand the claim regarding mathematics, that is, the context of the claim. Do you think I said something that contradicts the statement “mathematics cannot be refuted and this is not a fashion”?

And I am glad that you enjoy the correspondence with me 🙂

On the 1st of Omer, 2019

To Daniel, greetings,

On the contrary, according to the Torah and the interpretations of the Sages. A 12-year-old girl is an adult in every way, responsible for her actions in the full sense of the word. And so is a 13-year-old boy who is a “man” in every way. Whose father can bless: “Blessed is He who exempts me from this man’s punishment.”

A girl would be consecrated and married at the age of 12 and would have a mother who would keep a house and raise children. Boys would marry at the age of 18, to allow them to fulfill their responsibilities in the Bible, the Mishnah, and the Talmud, and to acquire a profession that would provide a livelihood. However, Rav Chisda testifies that his friends married at the age of 18, Says that he is better than them who got married at 16, and it would have been best if he had gotten married at 14. !

According to the Torah, a 12-year-old girl and a 13-year-old boy are not ‘minors’ whose minds are not fully formed and who need the guardianship of their parents. And when you impose responsibility and recognition on the boy that he is a ‘man’/‘woman’ adult. – the recognition and responsibility ‘fulfill themselves’. A boy whose mind and responsibility society believes in – will behave like an adult and not like a ‘stupid teenager’

With best wishes, Yaron Fish”l Ordner

To commenter Yaron, I don't know if you've heard of a book called the Shulchan Aruch, which was written about five hundred years ago. In this book (Even HaEzer, beginning of verse 37) it is written that a father sanctifies his house when it is a "girl," meaning at the age of 12. Maybe you haven't heard of the book, and maybe you don't accept it. Your right. But to claim that this is not the position of the Torah and the interpretations of the Sages is not true. It is even incorrect. And it is even false.

To be honest, I don't really enjoy it, but I have ways of answering everyone who asks.
To my disappointment, my memory is also failing me now. You wrote:
Why was it once thought that a 12-year-old girl was pure and the property of her father, and today they think differently (in the Western world; in other places, moral fashion is of course different today as well)?
Isn't this an argument in favor of fashion that relies on change (as it should be) over the generations? If so, I probably have serious reading comprehension problems.
I'll leave the rest to the readers. Everyone will decide whether there is an unanswered question here or not. I can't seem to spot one. Good luck.

As for your last response to Yaron, here too it is clear that you are dealing with matters of which you have no idea. First, Yaron is correct in his descriptions of the halacha (including that in the Shulchan Arba). Second, even in the past, the halacha did not perceive the girl as the father's property. The fact that he could sanctify her does not indicate that she was his property. This is an interpretive error of ignorance. This right was given to him because of his responsibility for her fate (once upon a time a girl or woman could not support herself and therefore the father saw it as his duty to find a partner for his daughter who would support and support her) and not because of ownership of her. Even today, parents can give instructions to their children (to go to school, to wear or not to wear things, etc.). Does this mean that the children are their property?

The father sanctifies his daughter without her knowledge, as long as she is young. And so when she is a girl, her permission is in his hand and her sanctification is in her father's. And so he is entitled to find her and to do with her hands and to write her down. (Even HaEzer, sign 37)

Her permission is in his hand.

He can make her a prostitute and a boil-stricken woman if he wants, from this various conclusions are derived related to the laws of mammon/nasiqin (sanctification).

In my wording, she is “the father's property”. This is very different from &#8220her permission is in his hand”?

On the 26th of Nisan 5621

To Daniel, Greetings,

Thank you for the interesting information about Rabbi Yosef Karo and his book Shulchan Aruch. The truth is that I heard his voice thirty years ago (in 5621) when Prof. Meir Benayahu, the late, asked me to proofread his book Yosef Bichiri, and even brought some comments in my name under the title of Shulchan Levinger 🙂

If you look at the sign you mentioned (A.H.S., 37) Section 8. You will discover the guidance of Rabbi Yosef Karo: “It is a mitzvah that a man should not sanctify his daughter when she is small until she grows up and says, ‘I want so-and-so,’” and its origin is in the word “kiddushin.”

Nevertheless, the Torah permitted a father to sanctify his daughter even when she is small, and the reason for this is probably because there are sometimes constraints that fear, due to the vicissitudes of time, that if they do not seize the golden opportunity that currently exists to find a decent match and on good financial terms, an opportunity that may not come again (as the Rema noted there).

The father is the natural guardian of his children. The love of parents and their devotion to their children is one of the strongest loves. And it is incumbent upon the father to find for his daughter the “rest that will be best for her” in the optimal way, and to find her the match that will bring her a life of happiness. Even in the case of a little orphan who has no father, the Sages gave guardianship to her mother and her brother who would marry her (except that in this case the kiddushin are not valid from the Torah, she can marry when she reaches the age of 12, which is the age of adulthood). And she insisted on a loving guardian who would not make his daughter miserable, but would consult with her before making the fateful decision.

Again, we need to understand. In a reality where girls usually married at the age of 12-12.5 and boys at the age of 14-18 already establish an independent home, the years before that were not years of a free and magical childhood. The girl was a full partner with her mother in the housework. She did an internship. A few years of cooking and baking, cleaning and laundry, sewing and embroidery, and looking after the little children, and preparing herself for the age of 12 when she would establish a faithful home in Israel.

And so did her son. At the age of 5-10 he had already mastered the Bible ‘straight and upside down’, and at the age of 10-15 he acquired proficiency in all six sections of the Mishnah, and at the same time learned a craft that would provide him with a decent living. Rabbi Kapach describes in the introduction to his edition of ’Hovat HaLevvot’ dedicated to Rav Ratzon (rad’a) Tsarem (from whom he studied Torah after the passing of his grandfather Rabbi Yechiya Kapach) and writes that at the age of eight, the age at which a boy in Yemen plans his future – Rabbi Ratzon chose to study the profession of goldsmithing.

Rabbi Kapach himself married his relative Bracha, who was 11, at the age of 16, and when she was 14, his eldest son was born. And as I said: responsibility – brings maturity.

With blessings, may it be well

Since today is ‘Holocaust and Heroism Remembrance Day’, I will mention my mother-in-law (Chaya Yakobowicz, nee Wolkowitz) who at the age of five (!) was left as a lonely child in a Nazi labor camp, after her parents were murdered. She was adopted in the camp by a young woman named Hanna Wolbrum (later: Wroclawski), who instructed her to say that she was 14 and to go to work. When a German officer suspected the girl and handed her a doll to play with – Chaya rejected the doll and said: ‘I am not a girl. I am 14 years old and I want to and can work. And that's how I survived the camp. When there is no choice, you become an adult even at the age of five!

In those days, the High Priest could have been a 17-year-old boy, as was Aristobulus III, whom Herod forced to appoint as High Priest at the age of 17, in place of his grandfather Hyrcanus, who was disqualified because of a deformity inflicted on him by Herod. A 17-year-old High Priest is certainly likely to marry a 12-year-old woman.

Today, it is assumed that the High Priest who will be appointed – will be at least in his forties, having married a girl his own age long before, when both were in their twenties. It is assumed that the Committee for the Approval of Senior Appointments, before which the appointment will be brought for approval – will ensure that the High Priest has a high level of Torah and general education and has many years of seniority and experience in public positions. A middle-aged High Priest – will have no need to marry a 12-year-old girl.

With regards, Office of the Legal Advisor to the Ministry of Religious Services

What you mentioned about the “right of the father to give his daughter to a snake.” Such a “right” is unlikely to be realized in life, because no father would want to do this. And even if, God forbid, a father were to be found who wanted to do this, the court would force the snake not to be circumcised, because “a scoundrel and a scoundrel” is included in the mishnah among those who are forced to be expelled because “no man should live with a snake in captivity,” and they would not allow him to be circumcised.

The Sages explain ironically, to a young man who tempts a young woman to be consecrated to him without her father's consent, thereby expressing distrust in the father and his judgment: If in your eyes the groom that the father has designated for his beloved daughter is so terrible and resembles in your eyes a "scoundrel and a scoundrel", if you have denied the father his judgment - at least do not deny him the financial income, the money for the consecration.

Usually, it is precisely the girl's decision to marry her chosen one against the opinion of an experienced lover - that is liable to land her in the hands of a "scoundrel and a scoundrel", whether literally or metaphorically. Sometimes the closeness of love blinds the gaze of a young couple who are in love and are enchanted, from seeing correctly the faults of their partner, faults that an objective view of an experienced person would have revealed in time.

The age of a girl (12-125) is a transitional period. The girl is an adult and her actions have full legal validity. But just as the sages commanded the father to consult his daughter when making a fateful decision, so the daughter's father is instructed not to treat the father as a "transparent" person, but to act in consultation with him and not to give up his experienced perspective.

With greetings, Ya'far

The initials Menom”sh are especially amusing

In paragraph 4, line 1
The period of ’adolescence’ (age 12-12.5) is a transitional period. The girl is considered ‘old’, and her actions have full legal validity, but at the same time the father also has the authority during this period to sanctify his daughter. But just as the father…

Now I saw that the law is only for someone who has already been appointed High Priest and is still single.
So they won't have to change the law at all.
That's a very remote thing that will happen, and even if they do want to appoint someone who is single, they will simply tell him to marry first of his choosing and only then will they appoint him. There is no problem here.

The problem is that, God forbid, his wife has passed away and he cannot be without a wife. At least not on Yom Kippur.