The authority of the sages
Hello Rabbi Michael,
I wanted to ask about accepting the authority of the Sages. From what I understand, you refer to accepting the authority of the Sages as accepting the authority of the rule of law. But morally, the reason I accept the authority of the Knesset is somewhat similar to the reason why people accept the majority decision in a group of travelers, even if it goes against their opinion. There is a kind of intuitive understanding that this is the right way to act towards your friends. This obligation is a moral obligation towards society. On the other hand, in the religious sphere, I do not feel obligated towards society to accept any religious authority. That is, whether I accept the authority of the Sages or not, I do not see it as a question that concerns society, or harms it. Therefore, I do not feel morally obligated to accept the authority of the Sages. Is there another reason, beyond the comparison to the “Knesset”, why we should accept the authority of the Sages? Or maybe I did not fully understand the analogy to the Knesset here?
Logically, I see no reason to fully adopt a fossilized set of laws, which due to all sorts of technical problems cannot come out of its stupor. It seems more logical to me to adopt the right things, and reject those that are wrong or irrelevant to our time.
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0 Answers
First, according to the Rambam (Shoresh A and Rish Hala Memariam) this is rooted in no tessur and the question does not arise. The difficulty in your words is only with the Ramban’s approach (in reaching the root A) which is shared by the Rambam. Furthermore, even according to the Rambam, one can ask that even if it is written in the Torah without tessur, what obligates me to obey the Torah? So what if my ancestors made a commitment at Mount Sinai? I do not want to. And do I have a moral obligation to obey? R. Shekap deals with this in Chapter 5, and claims that the foundation of the obligation to the Torah itself is our commitment by reason (and thus he explains that every reason that comes from reason is binding, since what is written in the Torah is also binding by reason, and the mouth that forbade can forbid again).
I understand this obligation differently than you do. It is not a moral obligation but a legal one. You are part of society and as such what it decides is as if you had decided, and therefore you must stand by your decisions. As long as you are part of society, these decisions bind you (not always morally, but always legally). Of course, the moment you decide that you are not part of it, it does not bind you.
As long as we are part of the community that is committed to the halakha, just as we committed to observing the halakha itself as part of the community that committed at Mount Sinai, so we are committed to the decision of the legislators of this community. They speak on our behalf.
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Asks:
For the sake of discussion, let’s assume that the Ramban is right.
Even if we say that there is a legal obligation here. What obligates me to the legal system? Regarding a moral obligation, I have an intuitive understanding that I am obligated to it, but regarding a legal obligation, I have no such understanding. The concept of “legal obligation” is also not very clear to me.
You wrote: “Of course, once you decide you’re not part of it, it doesn’t obligate you.” Is there any obligation to decide you’re part of it?
As for the community that is obligated to the law, the obligation is towards God, not towards society. Before I am obligated to the legislators (the rabbis), I am obligated to God (the Torah). Therefore, it seems to me that tefillin should be placed on the second Yom Tov of Galyot, for example (despite the rule that the Sages have determined that the Sages can cancel a positive commandment on Shoshana). What if the Sages had determined that they could cancel all the commandments as they wished? Even then, would we be obligated to them?
A current example of a clash between rabbinic and Dauraita is the words of the Rebbe of Gur at a conference against the “harms of technology”:
“In closing, the dayan, Rabbi Naftali Nussbaum, spoke, reading the famous Hasidic regulations, and ruling that a person whose parents have non-kosher instruments is not obligated to honor his father and mother and is forbidden to visit them.”
Even if I were a Gur Hasid, who believes that the Rebbe has the power to amend regulations, I would still ask myself, to whom am I more obligated, to the regulations, or to God?
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Rabbi:
The commitment is to God, but the one committing is the public. And I am committed as part of the public that committed. This is not a commitment to the public, of course. As long as I belong to Him, I am committed and stand by it. God expects us to stand by the commitment, but each person will decide whether it is right for them or not.
And this is the commitment to the legal system. According to my proposal, this is not a commitment to society but a commitment of a different kind. When I made a commitment (as part of society) I must uphold it. This is a demand from the person as a person and not towards another person. If this were a commitment to society, then it would have a moral basis, but I do not think that it is possible to place the law above morality. The attempts to do so are really unconvincing to me (see any book on legal theory). In fact, this is a kind of categorical imperative.
By the way, I think most people have this intuition. When you ask them and they don’t know what to answer, then all sorts of rationalizations arise that put it on morality.
Perhaps my words have implications for the question of whether there is an obligation to obey the law when it does not harm anyone. I argue that there is. See my discussion of the categorical imperative in Notebook 4. But if the reasoning is moral (as is customary, and not as Kant does who also posits morality as a categorical imperative) then it seems not. Note that according to Kant, morality is not an intuition on which the legal obligation can be based, but rather the opposite: the moral obligation is based on a legal intuition.
This is what I describe in my article on ontic and moral gratitude.
Regarding the obligation to the sages, it is clear that it is derived from the command of God, the Blessed, but this commandment we made to the people and around it we united, and as such it is the source of the validity of the law. And now, by virtue of it, the sages have the authority to determine things for all of us. If they deviate and it becomes apparent to the public that they are not acting in His name, the obligation has expired. In the meantime, we have not decided to throw them out, and there is a feeling among most of us that they apparently did not exceed their authority.
Regarding the matter of the Rebbe of Gur. When God Himself tells us to obey, there is no contradiction. If the Rebbe of Gur were to say not to obey God, we should not listen to him. But regulations are part of the halakha. It is like someone who sets a condition so that you do not skip the seventh (which is invalid) versus so that you do not skip the seventh (which is valid). And certainly in the same way that you mentioned that the Rebbe of Gur did not even correct a regulation but interpreted the halakha itself that wicked parents should not be honored (there is a disagreement among the Rishonim about this, by the way), and he only explained who is wicked in our day. There is no conflict here at all.
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Asks:
From what you said, I understand that there are three types of obligation: religious, moral, and legal.
Now the question arises: what happens when there is a conflict between obligations that stem from different sources? I assume that religious obligation is supreme. But regarding a conflict between a moral obligation and a legal obligation, what would be the answer?
Additionally, from this analysis it follows that the prohibition on putting on tefillin on the second Yom Tiv of Galyot stems from a legal obligation, while on the other hand, the obligation to put on tefillin on the second Yom Tiv of Galyot stems from a religious obligation. On the surface, according to this, it seems that one should put on tefillin on the second Yom Tiv because the religious obligation is stronger, isn’t it?
Additionally, what is the source of the validity of the legal obligation in your opinion if you do not base it on morality?
By the way, regarding the Rebbe of Gur, the Shulchan Aruch ruled as Maimonides said, that even if the parents are wicked, one must honor them.
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Rabbi:
1. The halakhic obligation is like a legal obligation, except that it is directed towards the halakhic system.
2. The question of conflict also exists regardless of me. The fact that morality is what requires obedience to the legal system does not mean that it will always prevail over legal instruction. Just as, according to those who believe that morality requires obedience to halakha, halakha still rejects morality (at least in the accepted understandings).
3. Questions of conflict also exist within morality itself, and there is no simple way or algorithm to decide. I wrote about this in the third book of the Quartet, Man as Hay. In the meantime, the theory has been developed further (and in the third book of the Apert theological trilogy, apparently).
4. As I explained, both the prohibition and the obligation to place tefillin in the hawam arise from religious obligation (which is based on a legal obligation towards Halacha).
5. I do not accept the claim that religious duty is stronger than others. Everything is according to its own merits. The Chazo spoke about the fifth part of the Shulchan Aruch, and his intention was that sometimes God’s will in morality overrides a settled law. And so it is with regard to a sin for its own sake. And so it is with regard to the words of the author of the Akida regarding the institution of prostitution and various other examples.
6. Why is a source needed for legal obligation? This is a fundamental principle, like the principle underlying moral obligation. After all, if I do not place one above the other, then it is clear that each of them is based on a separate principle. The entire chain of reasoning ends with a principle that cannot be reasoned. We intuitively feel that it is true. The same applies to morality and the same applies to law.
7. Regarding the obligation to honor a wicked father, the things are well-known and ancient. Incidentally, according to some opinions, honoring a wicked father after his death does not exist in Halacha either. The words of the Rebbe of Gur are indeed in accordance with Halacha, and perhaps this in itself proves that his intention is to correct a regulation and not just to interpret it as I wrote before. And perhaps he does not mean that there is no obligation to honor them, but rather that if honoring them leads us to fail, there is no obligation to do so (You shall fear your mother and father, and you shall keep my Sabbaths). But I truly feel embarrassed to defend such vain words and explain them.
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Asks:
Further to this question, I remember that in one of your recorded lessons you argued regarding the halacha that worms born as fruit are permitted, which is a halacha that is based on error (that worms are born from fruit, see attached image). (From Nadav Schnerb’s book on this week’s parashat – “Keren Zavit”) Therefore, the halacha is null and void, and worms are forbidden. But this contradicts your statements that we accepted the authority of the Sages and the Talmud even where they were wrong. If you say that where it is clear to us that they were wrong (as he called it on Shabbat, for example) then the halacha is not like the halacha, perhaps this will open the way to nullifying regulations that have no basis, or other halacha that appear to be incorrect?
Additionally, if we say that we should be stricter about worms that were “born in fruit,” it follows that eating figs nowadays would be very complicated from a halachic perspective (see the kosher link: http://www.kosharot.co.il/show_bama.asp?id=61849). It seems unlikely to me that the Sages understood that this is how one should act before eating a fig. Perhaps if the Sages had known that there is no such thing as worms being born from a fruit, they would still not have brought about a situation where a fig requires very careful examination before eating it (one of the seven species) because it seems very unlikely that this is the intention of the Torah. If I had to interpret the intention of the Torah in the prohibitions on worms and vermin, I would interpret that the entire prohibition is for intentional eating (for example, Thai worm soup), but not when the worms are inside a fruit in a small quantity, and there is no intention to eat the worm but only the fruit (similar to the dictum Risha dala nicha liya, or its taste is a defect). What do you think about this?
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Rabbi:
When a Sage ruling is based on an error, it is automatically null and void. This is not a situation of nullifying reason, but of “purchasing an error.” If the Sages had known what we know, they would not have corrected it in the first place. After all, this is not an error that was created in our time, but existed in their time as well, but they did not know about it. Nullification of reason is when reality has changed, not when knowledge about reality has been added.
Your opinion regarding the prohibition of eating worms when it is impossible has a place (the Torah was not given to the ministering angels, its ways are pleasant, etc.), although I hesitate whether it is sufficient to permit it. It can be expanded according to the principle of possible but not intended or not possible but intended (Pesachim 25), and it seems to me that the Arvasheh speaks to the Hadiya about not intending to eat worms (and perhaps it is related to the dispute of the poskim in Och 36 regarding the doubt of the Risha ruling. See the commentary on the halakhah there). But this opinion is new, and does not explain the Sages’ ruling itself. You are only claiming that the ruling is indeed invalid, but that there is room for permitting for another reason.
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Asks:
I remember you saying in one of the recorded lessons that even where the Sages were wrong, we are obligated to follow their ruling, similar to a law enacted by the Knesset, that even if the law is wrong, we are still obligated to it. If so, why do you see the mistake here as “making a mistake,” but in other places where the Sages were wrong, you still say that we are obligated to follow their ruling?
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Rabbi:
I was only talking about factual error. When it comes to halakhic error, it is binding, but not regarding facts. There is no authority regarding facts (either they are correct or not). There is authority regarding norms (meaning we can be required to act according to incorrect norms only because of considerations of authority).
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Asks:
Do you mean that only where the halachic error is serious is it binding? Or even when it comes to halachic errors that lead to a halachic voice, apparently true, are we even then obligated to make a mistake? And if so, why? After all, the words of the rabbi and the words of the student, whose words do we hear?
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Rabbi:
It seems to me that even mistakes in the wording are binding because the ruling of the Gemara is binding. Although in such a case one could say that it is appropriate to be stricter because the halachic truth is different (which does not happen in the opposite case).
Regarding the interpretation of the rabbi’s words, the rabbi also said in “La Tesur” to listen to the sages and accept the public’s decision (on the authority of the Talmud).
This is very similar to the words of the author of the Ran sermons, who makes it difficult to understand how an elder from Me’ra is taught to listen to the law when he knows that they are wrong (the assumption is that an elder from Me’ra who thinks that they are wrong is probably right, since this is someone who has come to be taught. At least he himself is supposed to assume that they are wrong), since the mistake will cause him spiritual harm (at least according to the naturalist system that transgressions cause harm)? And he replies that not even breaking the law is a transgression, and therefore disobeying them also causes harm. ———————————————————————————————————————- Asks: I thought of an idea that might explain the commitment to the Talmud:
The obligation, according to the sages, arises from the fact that the obligation to observe the commandments was imposed on the Jewish people as a people first and foremost (and not on each individual as an individual), and from this, the people’s collective understanding of the Torah is the path that binds the individual, even where the individual disagrees with this understanding. Today, the people understand the Torah in accordance with what is stated in the Talmud and the people see the Talmud as the correct interpretation of the Torah. Therefore, even if the individual disagrees with this perception, he is still obligated to the collective understanding. This is also the difference between moral obligation and halakhic obligation, in that moral obligation is individual (each person is obligated to how he understands morality, not how society understands morality) and halakhic is collective.
What do you think about this idea? ———————————————————————————————————————- Rabbi: It’s kind of like what I wrote myself above. Although it seems to me that the public doesn’t necessarily assume that the Talmud is right, but rather sees it as binding. It’s not exactly the same thing. In any case, such principles are too sweeping and general, and therefore there will be cases in which it is possible to deviate from them. The collective understanding has weight, but there are other principles that come into play when deciding what we should do. When the public decision is clearly wrong, or clearly harmful, then with all due respect to this model I will not necessarily obey it. Beyond that, the collective understanding is created by all the understandings of the individuals, and I am also one of the individuals. Therefore, I must necessarily formulate my own position and contribute it to the general weighing. If I always act according to a statistical survey of what the majority believes, then I will never be able to formulate my own position.
Regarding the interpretation of the rabbi’s words, the rabbi also said in “La Tesur” to listen to the sages and accept the public’s decision (on the authority of the Talmud).
This is very similar to the words of the author of the Ran sermons, who makes it difficult to understand how an elder from Me’ra is taught to listen to the law when he knows that they are wrong (the assumption is that an elder from Me’ra who thinks that they are wrong is probably right, since this is someone who has come to be taught. At least he himself is supposed to assume that they are wrong), since the mistake will cause him spiritual harm (at least according to the naturalist system that transgressions cause harm)? And he replies that not even breaking the law is a transgression, and therefore disobeying them also causes harm. ———————————————————————————————————————- Asks: I thought of an idea that might explain the commitment to the Talmud:
The obligation, according to the sages, arises from the fact that the obligation to observe the commandments was imposed on the Jewish people as a people first and foremost (and not on each individual as an individual), and from this, the people’s collective understanding of the Torah is the path that binds the individual, even where the individual disagrees with this understanding. Today, the people understand the Torah in accordance with what is stated in the Talmud and the people see the Talmud as the correct interpretation of the Torah. Therefore, even if the individual disagrees with this perception, he is still obligated to the collective understanding. This is also the difference between moral obligation and halakhic obligation, in that moral obligation is individual (each person is obligated to how he understands morality, not how society understands morality) and halakhic is collective.
What do you think about this idea? ———————————————————————————————————————- Rabbi: It’s kind of like what I wrote myself above. Although it seems to me that the public doesn’t necessarily assume that the Talmud is right, but rather sees it as binding. It’s not exactly the same thing. In any case, such principles are too sweeping and general, and therefore there will be cases in which it is possible to deviate from them. The collective understanding has weight, but there are other principles that come into play when deciding what we should do. When the public decision is clearly wrong, or clearly harmful, then with all due respect to this model I will not necessarily obey it. Beyond that, the collective understanding is created by all the understandings of the individuals, and I am also one of the individuals. Therefore, I must necessarily formulate my own position and contribute it to the general weighing. If I always act according to a statistical survey of what the majority believes, then I will never be able to formulate my own position.
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