The Importance of the Interaction Between Jewish Law and Reality

Opening Post by the Rabbi

The Importance of the Interaction Between Jewish Law and Reality

Posted on 20/9/2011

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The Importance of the Interaction Between Jewish Law and Reality

I am not sure there is really a topic for discussion here, but there is an insight here that someone may perhaps find interesting.

Recently, a newly observant man with whom I am in contact called me. He now lives in a fairly stringent ultra-Orthodox community, and every day new decrees descend upon him: Why do you wear a backpack (like people on the street)? Why is your name So-and-so? That is not fitting for a proper religious Jew. He tells me that there are people who are careful to keep their beds far from their wives’ beds at all times for fear of the evil eye, and many more things our forefathers never imagined. The pressure on him is great, as if these were simple, self-evident matters with nothing novel about them—our ancestral custom from time immemorial.

He asked me what to do with all these directives that keep landing on him, and I told him to ignore them. But he also asked why this is developing so wildly in the first place. How has the religious world become so detached from life, and so strange in its thinking? When I thought about it, I suddenly discovered a certain fundamental structural failure, and here it is.

Not long ago, I read an interesting distinction in an article by Rabbi Benny Lau. He wrote that in earlier generations, religious leadership was in the hands of community rabbis, who were in contact with laypeople and with the broader public. They knew the reality and guided people accordingly. In recent generations, leadership has passed to heads of rabbinic academies, many of whom, as is well known, think in a somewhat detached way (some would say childishly, but this is not the place). The feedback they receive comes from young students, who usually examine the logic and coherence of the intellectual structure, and much less its common sense and fit with life. Even those leaders today who are not heads of academies, such as Rabbi Chaim Kanievsky and Rabbi Yosef Shalom Elyashiv, are, as far as I know, secluded in their rooms and not really in direct contact with the public (except through intermediaries and aides).

In fact, the lack of contact with the public is not merely a situation that arose after the fact; it is part of ultra-Orthodox ideology. The leading rabbinic authority is supposed to sit secluded in his room, his eyes gazing into the distance. He knows better than I do what is happening out there and what ought to be done about every matter. The ultra-Orthodox world advocates erecting walls that will separate it from the public sphere (including the ultra-Orthodox public itself, which constantly absorbs torrents of criticism). The entire ultra-Orthodox world is supposed to be a kind of one great study hall, in keeping with the myth of Noah’s Ark, which will protect those who sit inside it from the flood outside.

In fact, the importance of the connection between Jewish law and life is already found in the sources of Jewish law. If an enactment or decree does not spread through the majority of the Jewish people, it is void. That is, the public has something to say about rabbinic legislation. The healthy state of affairs is that the legislation of the Sages is subject to the criticism of the public, of reality, and of lay common sense. In this way, a more correct and truer Jewish law is created. The detached constructions of the study hall are supposed to pass through the crucible of criticism by the common sense of the public. To be sure, the Sema wrote that the outlook of laypeople is the opposite of the rabbinic outlook, but that is a good thing, and the rabbinic outlook by itself is as far from Jewish law as an outlook with no laypeople in it at all. The correct Jewish law lies in a dialectical mediation between these two.

What happens today? All sorts of stringencies in Jewish law, or simply insane fantasies, are created, and there is no feedback from the public, or from reality, to balance them. If there are circles in ultra-Orthodox society that did not accept this stringency, they are regarded as belonging not to "the in-group" but only to "the world," and therefore they do not count. Only those who accept all this nonsense are considered the God-fearing public, and consequently the new inventions are never tested against criticism from the public at large. This is a mechanism that closes itself off from criticism, and thus the wild growths, some of which I mentioned above, are created.

Another example: bans on radio, computers, and the internet were not accepted at all by the broader public (including the ultra-Orthodox public), yet they are still considered outright prohibitions. For whoever did not accept them is not regarded as part of the public. But if that is so, then there is here a mechanism that uproots the possibility of public criticism. If everyone who does not accept an enactment or decree is not considered someone who must be taken into account, then how can there ever be a case of an enactment or decree that does not spread through the public?

In sum, the ideal that tries to turn all society into one big study hall (Noah’s Ark) actually places a barrier between the study hall and the public, and thereby cripples authentic Jewish law. It becomes the thought-world of a closed monastery, lacking the interaction, so important, between theoretical Jewish law and reality. That is how the wild growths that sprout among us day after day are produced. It is important to understand that what suffers from this detachment is not the public but the study hall and Jewish law as a whole.

[Let me just clarify that I do not mean to include, among the public whose response must be taken into account regarding the spread of new rules of Jewish law, those who are not committed to Jewish law at the principled level. That would be nonsense. I mean taking into account all circles of society that are in principle faithful to Jewish law.]

Source (forum "Stop Here, We Think"): http://www.bhol.co.il/forums/topic.asp?topic_id=2916260&forum_id=1364