Regarding the debate with Yaron Yadan
Hi Dr. Rabbi Michael,
I listened to your debate with Yaron Yadan. Overall, I agree with your comments.
With your Honor’s forgiveness I’d like to disagree with this:
In your debate, you said to him:
“If you would hear from Hashem himself, you would be confident to do so even though it negates the Musar. But if it’s only the opinion of Chazal, you would not, because sages can be wrong”
I want to comment: if the sages can make a mistake, why keep the exact 39 fathers of the Sabbath, since in the Torah itself it only says do not do any work and only the sages are defining it with that definition?
In my opinion, in both cases we need to follow blindly the Torah even in negates the Musar:
1) Explicit in the Torah
2) Understanding the Sages in the Torah
Sincerely,
Hello.
I write in Hebrew because I assume you understand.
Thank you for your letter.
First of all, factually, do you disagree that their sages could make mistakes? There is a proverb in the Torah, there are mistakes by sages in the Talmud itself. If you agree that they can make mistakes like any other person, then there is always a risk of making mistakes. Now I can address your question.
Fear is not a certain mistake. In the normal situation, I carry out their instructions because there is no reason not to. Why assume that there is always a mistake? Beyond that, they have authority by virtue of “thou shalt not transgress,” and therefore they must be obeyed despite the fear of making a mistake (not because they are right but because they have the authority).
But when there is a serious moral cost to the law in question, the possibility of error must be taken into account. It is not right to act in such a problematic way if it is not truly the true law, just because of considerations of authority.
As an aside, in many cases even the poskim simply find a way to circumvent the halakhic teaching through interpretation, by claiming that we cannot attack, peaceful means, blasphemy, etc.
Take, for example, saving the life of a Gentile on Shabbat, and look at what the poskim say about it. Beyond that, what would you do without the arguments that the poskim make? Most people would work around it themselves in some way.
The only question is whether they are willing to admit out loud that they do this, or whether they deny it but actually do it this way.
Best regards,
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