Renewal of Halakha or the Destruction of Halakha – Part 3 – Torah and Labor Faithful

[Speaker A] And again, in very, very general terms: for anyone who wants, there’s a very nice article by Rabbi Professor Shlomo Zalman Havlin on this topic, along with others who wrote about the matter. Literary closure, for our purposes, means that there are stages in Jewish law. In other words, there are stages at which you stop and say: up to here, this already binds me, and I do not debate them and I do not disagree with them. For our purposes, let’s take one statement—a difficult statement, a complex statement—but: Rav Ashi and Ravina mark the end of authoritative ruling. Meaning, Rav Ashi and Ravina bind all of us, and we do not challenge their rulings. Talmud scholars have broken many pens over that sentence, but for our purposes we’ll accept it as it stands. Or, for our purposes, something fairly similar was said about Maimonides, and something similar was also said about the rulings of Rabbi Yosef Karo and the Rema—Rabbi Yosef Karo for the Sephardim and the Rema for Ashkenazim—that we do not challenge them and do not open our mouths against their rulings. To the point that Rabbi Yonatan Eybeschutz writes in Urim VeTummim, in his book Tummim, that it is obvious and evident that these things were said through divine inspiration, and one does not challenge them. It’s not that this was never done from time to time, but as a rule that statement exists in Jewish law. It exists in Jewish law in an almost sweeping form. It’s not completely agreed upon, but it is definitely a statement that is very widespread in halakhic literature. That brings us back, to some extent, to what we discussed earlier regarding basic laws that are not moved around every other day—so this is one of the tools for not moving them around. But beyond that, it definitely is part of the halakhic system of commitment to literary closure. Now, one can always ask what the source of literary closure is. There is discussion in the Kesef Mishneh, Rabbi Elchanan Wasserman, Rabbi Kook in Orach Mishpat, section 6—there are quite a few halakhic decisors who asked themselves what the source and basis of this literary closure is, and that is an important question. But for our purposes, indeed, the overwhelming majority of decisors did adhere to that literary closure and carried it forward in some way. Somewhere along the line they mentioned Rabbi Yosef Karo and the Rema as an example; there are decisors who cited them elsewhere. But yes, this too is part of the innovator’s challenge: how he deals with the issue of analogizing one matter to another, literary closure, and several other constraints that decisors intentionally imposed upon themselves, with positive intent, in order to keep Jewish law more or less stable, with measured flexibility according to the time. Thank you.

[Speaker B] What we’re going to do now is hear questions from the audience, and we want to give the three rabbis a chance to respond. So we’ll spend a few minutes gathering questions, and then each one will choose what he wants to address. We definitely do not promise that everything will be answered, but I hope many significant things will be.

[Speaker C] Actually, right at the beginning—I apologize for the hijacking, but that’s the power of those who are sitting here, and it should be used. I have to say something in relation to the two things—the two very distinguished speakers sitting here to my left, both Rabbi Professor Guttel and Rabbi Dr. Michael Abraham. Since neither of them called upon the teaching of Rabbi Berkovits in this matter here before us—

[Speaker A] I—

[Speaker C] know, yes, I said here, in our context. I want to make Rabbi Berkovits’s voice heard, if I may, and I think he very much would not have liked what we heard here. And I also want to explain why, really in a minute. Not because I’m saying I agree with him—I very much liked what I heard here—but I think he would not have liked it, and I’ll explain why. Because basically both Rabbi Dr. Abraham at the beginning and Rabbi Professor Guttel afterward explained what the mechanisms are by which Jewish law reacts to reality. That is to say: reality changes, Jewish law supposedly does not—so let’s see how to adapt Jewish law to reality. But Rabbi Berkovits would say: gentlemen, what have we missed? We have missed the role of Jewish law. When the Holy One, blessed be He, brought Torah down into the world more than three thousand years ago, He brought into the world a spiritual message that was, at the very least, an atomic bomb that changed the world from one end to the other in terms of consciousness and values. It eradicated idolatry from the world as an initiative, not as a reaction. It eradicated slavery from the world as an initiative, not as a reaction. It led to the fact that in the founding document of the United States in 1776 it would be absolutely clear that all human beings were created in the image of God. That did not exist beforehand, and therefore all are equal. In other words, Jewish law was originally a means for educating humanity and advancing value-concepts that were innovative in their time—not a reaction to various phenomena where we need to keep putting patch upon patch. And the time has come, Rabbi Berkovits would hold, to return to a halakhic mode of spiritual and moral initiative toward humanity, and not to asking how to stop making Jewish law look outdated, archaic, and disconnected from reality. And it’s important because this is an entirely different kind of discussion. That was what he lamented: that Jewish law is always reacting. And of course it reacts—anyone who reads two pages of halakhic literature sees dozens of reactions of Jewish law to reality in every single generation. But why is Jewish law always dragged along, trailing behind with a delay of a year, ten years, or five hundred years? Why doesn’t Jewish law advance the spiritual revolution of fifty years ahead, of a hundred years ahead? Why is it that today we ask whether Jewish law fits the modern scale of values, instead of asking whether Jewish law has made the modern scale of values more enlightened, more worthy, more successful—

[Speaker B] And more sophisticated?

[Speaker D] There was a lot of talk about the technical mechanisms of Jewish law. And at the beginning there was a bit of talk about the idea of Jewish law as something that is supposed to reflect a higher divine view in some sense. The question—and I think this too is part of the change that was discussed—is how do you describe a mechanism that is understandable to modern people, through which they can see Jewish law as a reflection of some kind of revelation, some kind of higher revelation that can affect the world? Not only how Jewish law formally progresses and develops historically, but also how, out of that history, Jewish law reflects revelation into the world. And because in the end this is the reason many people in the modern world want to observe Jewish law—because of some emotional or sociological need. They want to feel that these halakhic acts they are doing reflect some connection between themselves and something above them. Not only in the sociological or moral sense—those things are important—but in terms of revelation, in a theological-philosophical sense: how do you connect everything spoken about here to that idea of revelation in the world? That’s my question.

[Speaker F] The panelists didn’t address the question—when they spoke about the need for change, they didn’t speak about the need in an abstract way. For example, the question of when, outside the Land of Israel, one begins saying “Grant dew and rain.” Okay, so there’s a discussion, and of course today we know when the seasonal turning point is, and we don’t start saying it sixty days after the season—scientifically that’s not correct. And in terms of climate as well, there are responsa, there are people pressing to change it, to move it back to November, or even to go with something altogether more relevant to rainfall in the places outside the Land of Israel where people actually are. But the question is: who really cares when we begin saying “Grant dew and rain”? Does it really bother anyone whether we say it on the fifth of December or the sixth of December? True, it can be changed, and in the abstract one should do it because scientifically what is done today outside the Land of Israel is incorrect—but we’re talking about small things. So the question wasn’t addressed: what is considered significant enough to activate the mechanism for change?

[Speaker G] My thought was in response to the last question. The question is much deeper. My impression is that there’s a kind of distress that was expressed in these remarks. And not only does that distress exist, but most people who observe commandments do so by force of habit, and so on. And in a very short answer: which of the people really cares about changing Jewish law or not? We were part of—I was part of—three years of talks, of lectures that Yossi Sofer gave here in Modiin, and in the end I came to the conclusion: to whom was he speaking? The sheer emptiness of what is done today in the public sphere as religious acts is crying out to heaven. And therefore nobody cares whether it’s on September 15th or September 16th—everything is fine, fine, fine, fine, fine, fine, fine.

[Speaker F] It’s not important—

[Speaker G] The things really aren’t important. Religion itself isn’t that important. What matters is that for most people it just doesn’t matter. They don’t care what they pray, because there is almost no real need—or no need at all—for genuine commitment. Very little need for commitment, very little need for commitment, except for people who are either inside a certain society or framework, and then not observing commandments will cause them a kind of rejection or exclusion from the group—or, as I said, they do commandments by rote, they just go along, as one particular writer defined it, a certain rabbi in Makor Rishon, the Sabbath supplement of Makor Rishon, that most of our religious practice is expressed in just walking along these paths.

[Speaker I] And who was that?

[Speaker G] Rabbi Ilai Ofer, and of course Yoav Sorek responded to him, and so on. That is exactly where the full weight of these matters lies—

[Speaker B] These matters—and what kind of commitment—

[Speaker G] do we have at all to any kind of commitment, beyond simply being religious?

[Speaker B] And this is directed to the public, not to the halakhic decisors?

[Speaker G] I think the decisors are part of it.

[Speaker H] Rabbi Michael Abraham asked about the title and said that we essentially began from the end, from the third question, and said: but there are earlier questions here. The reason for the title, and why we began with the third question, is not accidental. It’s because in the first question, as we saw, everyone agrees that there is a need; and in the second question, it seems that in very many cases the mechanisms do in fact allow it. And if we look at what the real debates are, they are debates over whether we are actually prepared for it and what the price is. For example, if we take the famous discussion about an orphan daughter saying Kaddish, the possible halakhic arguments are so weak that it’s quite clear that halakhically there is very broad room for it. The question there was whether we are prepared to take that step. Women being called up to the Torah—the same story. The issue of attitudes toward secular Jews in the context of utensils and all kinds of things like that—there is definitely room here halakhically, and a lot of the discussions, the shouting, and the questions are about whether we are going down a slippery slope or not. So that is the reason we gave the evening this title. Certainly.

[Speaker J] I asked both of you, and especially Rabbi Dr. Abraham. You say these things, and you started going in the direction of miracle and sukkah and then stopped very early, and you only really touched on small points like the second festival day in the Diaspora and things like that, and you said that in the end it’s impossible because there is no Sanhedrin. The feeling is really—come on. In other words, we always come back to ourselves and try once again to find precedents and pilpulim in the primary sources, heaps upon heaps of argumentation about whether precedents can be found. Why this narrowing? Why Sanhedrin? Why, after all, have I not heard a single Ashkenazi rabbi who permits eating legumes on Passover?

[Speaker K] Oded. Okay, Oded. Last Sabbath, in the newspaper.

[Speaker J] So there, he said it—Oded said it. Okay. But still, there are things that are objective, as the rabbi said, and things like that still aren’t presented because there’s no Sanhedrin. What is this framework? What are we dealing with? Small things—yes change, no change—but we’re not dealing with the big thing. And unless we confront that, instead of trying to find precedents in all of our vast responsa literature, we won’t really focus on the central thing, which in my opinion is the real cause of the suffocation. And I’m here among the younger people. Thank you.

[Speaker L] Maybe contrary to everything that’s been said so far, I’d be happy to get an answer: what is the difference between everything said here and Reform? Because I’m a little—I don’t understand the boundaries. And maybe in the last few questions it’s getting hotter and hotter—every question here is more heated than the previous one—because all the speakers really said very beautiful things and spoke about limitations, but none of them said exactly what the limitations are. And I came out confused. And also, maybe this is for the organizers: I think maybe they didn’t bring a complete panel, because the whole panel seems to be from the same side, and I’m sure there are many speakers who could have been brought who would have presented other things.

[Speaker B] Thank you. Questions from the floor, really quick ones. Anyone else? Yes.

[Speaker E] Actually, there was a quote here in principle from Rabbi Berkovits, but I didn’t really find any connection here between Berkovits’s famous book, The Development of Halakhah, and everything that was said here. I didn’t really see any connection to what that book contributes—at least in my opinion—in terms of practical materials, and that wasn’t really said here. I was kind of hoping to get some sort of picture connecting what Berkovits says with what the rabbis here are saying.

[Speaker B] It could be that that’s a task for Rabbi Tzachi, who will also speak about it in a bit. I think this is the last one. Yes.

[Speaker I] I think that at least Rabbi Pottel and Rabbi Michael Abraham spoke about Jewish law as a very uniform concept—as one concept. There is such a thing as Jewish law. But I think it’s clear to everyone today that change in Jewish law is really a question that cuts across different decisors whom we rely on every day, where each person basically turns to the decisor who seems most likely to give him the answer most suitable for him. Which turns each of us, in some sense, into a kind of halakhic decisor. That is, I will most likely consult a rabbi whose views I’m closer to. In other words, I more or less already know what answer I’m going to get; I maybe only need the halakhic framework. But the halakhic framework is a very, very broad framework. So in effect, the question of change in Jewish law is a very personal stance of the individual—whether the individual himself is prepared to change Jewish law, and not the public as a whole—because there are arguments both ways, and apparently this issue will not be decided within the public, but each person will have to decide independently.

[Speaker B] Thank you. I have two last questions. I wanted to ask Rabbi Michael: you spoke about a critical mass, a multiplication of points that become unbearable, and if one day you were to open your eyes and there would be a line of decisors from—as you call them—the highest rank, who would renew everything, would you not be somewhat threatened by the possibility that by morning you would no longer recognize what it looks like? In other words, you’d wake up and there would be an entirely different religion here? Is there such a point? Or will the mechanisms protect you? And for Rabbi Pottel, I’m interested again—maybe there isn’t enough time to address it—but you didn’t address presumptions: presumptions about human nature, presumptions about women’s nature, and the whole fear of issuing rulings that goes along with that. Let’s try to do this. Who wants to start? Rabbi Pottel?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] All right, I’ll try to go more or less in the order I wrote down.

[Speaker B] We have ten minutes for each of you.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Ah, okay, fine. First of all, maybe a comment on what Rabbi Tzachi opened with. I think that’s not the right description of what I said. In other words, I definitely was talking about the question of what is the truth that Jewish law demands of us today, and not only about how we react to reality. Changes in reality are not only changes in facts, but also changes in values, in social outlook, in social structure, and it’s clear that I meant that as well. That’s the first point.

[Speaker C] Reaction and not initiative—reaction to changes and not initiating the change—that’s the point.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Fine. But if I think I want to change things, that too is a kind of present state. My current state is that I think this is what should be done today. In other words, that can also face toward the future. In any case, never mind—that’s what I meant. In that sense I just want to clarify. Quite a few of the questions revolved around the fact that basically… either we stayed at a general level and didn’t come down to specific examples, perhaps, or somehow I stopped everything at the level of what is possible after opening with how strong the need for change is. So here I really have to apologize—that’s exactly what I said. It’s true that in terms of the proportion of things in what I said—and this is a general comment—I generally don’t like panels. I don’t like panels because it’s good to hear many views, but then it means you hear only a little from each one. And the moment you have twenty minutes to present your doctrine, you simply can’t really say what you mean. So I’ll say it in these ten minutes, and I’ll add a few things. Unequivocally, I think that very many things are possible. That opening line that says nothing is possible was only an opening line. At the end I said a sentence or two that, because of lack of time, I left in that form. But these rules of Maimonides’—it’s in the Talmud, but as formulated by Maimonides—that a Torah-level matter needs a formally constituted court to change it, and a rabbinic matter requires one greater in wisdom and number to change it—that is a framework. Within that framework there are very many examples. I even mentioned the last chapter in Rabbi Guttel’s book, which shows that the authors of Tosafot especially excel in this: they change many things despite those rules, and they define various quasi-rules or pseudo-rules, however you want to call them, by which it is still possible to anchor change within the framework of the rules and yet make changes. If I spell it out a bit more, then clearly first of all, even at the level of the heading itself, when sages of a generation—and here, yes, it does require some kind of agreement, though by the way not every change requires agreement in my opinion—but in a place where sages decide to make a new enactment, not to uproot something previous, but to make a new enactment that freezes a previous enactment or decree, that is not necessarily the same thing as changing. And that is an option that exists, I think, on a broader scale than the options described by the mechanisms of change. Another thing: where the original ruling is clearly based on a mistake in reading reality—not on a reality that has changed—in my humble opinion, even in such a case there is no obstacle to changing it. Where not changing leads to serious damage, to desecration of God’s name, to problems of one sort or another—there too there are precedents that allow changing it; there is the Maharshal and other precedents for changing it. In a moment I’ll also speak about the need for precedents. So I’m just saying this briefly so that we understand there is a richness of mechanisms within this apparently closed and rigid picture. But that requires technical analysis, turning to sources, bringing examples, making not-simple definitions that require nuance. And for me, what was important was to lay out the framework of the discussion, divide it into three questions, into three levels, so that anyone who gets to the end has to pass through all three of those levels. And therefore it was less important to me to get into each of those levels in detail. This is an opportunity to address what came up there. I don’t agree that the first two levels are self-evident and we’re stuck only on the third level. In my opinion, as I think Rabbi Guttel expressed, there are definitely disputes over the question of what is possible, and certainly also over the question of what is desirable, by the way—what is right to change. And there are disputes over what can be changed—not over the very possibility of change; I think on that we would agree, and I would learn that from his book—but there are definitely many possibilities, many disputes over what can be changed. It’s simply not true otherwise. But more than that: in my eyes, one of the illnesses of contemporary halakhic discourse is the lack of distinction between the levels, when sages—and certainly non-sages as well—want to say that as a matter of policy it is not right to change, and so they say: it is forbidden. And that is not the same thing. They use a halakhic term in order to express a position that is actually one of halakhic policy. And there are all kinds of reasons for this. Some of the reasons may be to close the discussion off, not to raise possibilities of disagreeing with them, not to accept what they say, to look for another way out—I don’t know. There are all kinds of reasons. Sometimes it’s simply lack of attention. There are dozens and hundreds of examples. And therefore I do think it is very important to put all three of these levels on the table and discuss them one after the other: what is right, what is possible, and what the prices are. In my opinion, it’s very important in every one of these questions. Another point that came up in several of the questions as well: where is the… where is the existentialism? Have we become formalists? Has obedience overshadowed essence? And here, actually, I want to join the fossils. In other words, I think the essence of serving God—and with all due respect to this generation—the essence of serving God is obedience. Obedience, and the willingness to do things even if I don’t identify with them, and even if it goes against what I myself perhaps think. Think—not in the sense of two possibilities of what I think, whether this is what I think the Holy One, blessed be He, wants, or whether this is what I think is right. Those are not always the same thing. And I think obedience is the root of religious life. In that sense, I am very Leibowitzian. And I think I very much do not join all the voices—or some of the voices—that came up here saying that we have placed obedience at the top of our priorities and it has replaced the essence, the meaning of the commandments. I think it was always at the top of our priorities and it should remain at the top of our priorities. I only think we need to ask: to what exactly am I obligated to obey? In other words, what is that thing to which I must obey? And here, my interpretation definitely matters—what Rabbi Yitzhak said earlier. Clearly, Jewish law is not some given organ; I too am part of what Jewish law says. The interpreter is part of what Jewish law says. But the interpreter has to be honest enough to distinguish between the question of what I think God wants and the question of what I think is right to do, and those are not always the same thing. In that sense I really do want to join what appears to be the conservative position. Okay. They asked what the difference is between us, between my proposals, and Reform. I didn’t get to talk about it because that question doesn’t interest me at all—another one of the questions that doesn’t interest me at all. Even if you call all my proposals Reform, then I’m Reform—what do I care? The question is whether these proposals are correct. I don’t care what they’re called. If they’re called Reform, then let them be Reform. There are proposals that arise from Reform circles that are correct proposals, and they are rejected only because they come from there. And there are proposals that arise from Orthodox circles and are accepted even though they are incorrect, only because they come from there. So as far as I’m concerned, one should discuss the proposal on its merits and not the label hanging over the head of the one proposing it. That’s a procedural suggestion. So I’m taking the question of what the difference is from Reform off the table. By the way, there is a difference from the Reform outlook, aside from sociology, but that doesn’t interest me. What matters to me is what is right, not what the difference is between me and the Reform. As far as I’m concerned, there need not be a difference. If they are right, then I’m with them. Okay. The choice of a rabbi—the choice of a rabbi according to how well his answers match what I want to receive—someone raised that issue. Here one has to distinguish between two things that seem very close but are not the same. Choosing a rabbi based on what I identify with—that is what one should do; there is nothing invalid about it. That is what a person should do. But choosing the rabbi according to the answer to a specific question here or there—that’s the kind of thing the Talmud criticizes as taking both the stringencies of Beit Shammai and the stringencies of Beit Hillel, and that is wickedness. These are two things that look very similar, but there is an ocean between them. One last point, which I also wrote about in the newspaper and Rachel asked about too—this is a good chance to talk about it: first-order halakhic ruling and second-order halakhic ruling. It seems to me that here lies not a small part of the disagreements I would have with Rabbi Guttel. I am definitely in favor of returning to first-order halakhic ruling, as I wrote there. Of course that requires a more systematic and detailed presentation, but I definitely do not necessarily look for precedents. The Talmud has authority—one might say mandatory authority. Although again, what is ‘the Talmud’? Each of us may say something different; our interpretations are also part of the Talmud. But fine, the discourse is still of that kind. I do not accept a parallel status for the Shulchan Arukh, and even if a hundred decisors say so, that is not important enough to me. It matters, and it has weight, but not enough. It is not mandatory. The Talmud is sealed by the Sanhedrin. After the Talmud there is no mandatory authority. What?

[Speaker E] The Shulchan Arukh itself didn’t write that, of course.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, the man. He wrote it to those who at the time thought like the Shulchan Arukh. And therefore it seems to me that on this matter there is a kind of begging the question when people take precedents in order to justify precedent-based ruling. If I challenge precedent-based ruling and say: I want to go into the Talmud and check what the Talmud says—for me, the Torah, the Talmud, the sources that are mandatory for me—what do they tell me today, in my reality today, as I understand things today? As far as I’m concerned, if I reach a very, very clear conclusion, I am willing to go very radically against a great many major decisors, medieval authorities (Rishonim) and later authorities (Acharonim), though I am unworthy even to grasp the hem of their garments. I am willing to go against them, and that is where I think we need to return. And to understand what the Holy One, blessed be He, really wants from me, even if there is no question about it in the responsa Tzimtzemat Haman. One might have thought that it was raised there by the questioner’s method in the responsa Tzimtzemat Haman, where he did indeed say that an orphan daughter says Kaddish. Yes, I wrote about that orphan daughter’s Kaddish issue, because it was really one of the funniest things I’ve seen recently: detailed halakhic responsa on orphan daughter’s Kaddish—someone said this here and there are sources there and so on. It’s a non-issue. It’s simply not a halakhic question; there is nothing to discuss at all. It’s nonsense. And there is no point discussing nonsense; there is no need to bring this or that precedent. That’s all. Now, of course there are many examples that can be discussed, and the questions gave an opportunity to fill in a few more aspects.

[Speaker A] All right, now we have lots of time. If we had started with that, things would have been—

[Speaker L] Much livelier here—

[Speaker A] And there would have been no question at all about the direction of the panel here, so that would have been a good direction. Unfortunately, we don’t want the students calling to us to recite the morning Shema, so we’ll really do this briefly. Yes, on this I completely agree with Rabbi Dr. Michael Abraham that we disagree significantly on this subject. We obviously don’t have the time now to deal with it, but on this topic we definitely see things in a completely different way. And I’ll say this: the precedents are on my side, but that doesn’t interest you. Fine. So on that, we inform you, ladies and gentlemen, that we disagree, and with that we’ll end the matter. I’ll now return, in my view, to the beginning of things—to the remarks of Rabbi Dr. Tzvi Hershkovitz. Twice I do not accept what you said about the issue of reaction. First, after Einstein we speak of relativity—it all depends on the eye of the beholder. What you call reaction, I can call initiative, and vice versa. Clearly a substantial part of the world of responsa literature was created as questions that led to answers, so obviously it was reality that led to the response. But first of all there are also responsa that aren’t like that, such as Terumat HaDeshen, at least in part. But also a substantial part of halakhic activity, and so on and so forth, includes initiative as well. I wrote an article about modes of education embedded within halakhic literature—that is, a decisor whose whole aim was actually to educate; he just did it incidentally, on the way. In other words, he really does have a positive initiative, and that is what drives him. And by the way, even the example you brought regarding the United States and its founding—according to your own approach, that too is also a reaction, so there is a logical flaw there as well. But regarding the substance and the essence: there are also—not enough—but several quite stable examples in our own time that were done from the outset purely as initiative and not only as reaction. Just for our purposes: the seventh year—let’s talk about the Sabbatical year. Right now there is a very, very interesting discourse not only about the otzar beit din arrangement in the halakhic sense, but also about taking that thing to sociological aspects, economic aspects, and so on and so forth. That is a matter of initiative that did not come merely to solve some small problem as a response, but to go far beyond that. In other words, I think halakhic decisors, at least some of them, definitely did rise to that dimension of initiative as well. Regarding two or three questions that I want to group together: I completely agree that what is missing is explanation; what is missing is accessibility to the world of Jewish law. True, Jewish law is a language—a language that must be acquired. Naturally, someone who has not acquired it does not have the language and does not understand this discourse in the best possible way. As a result, there really is a problem of—call it explanation, call it communication, call it accessibility, whatever polished terms you want. Bottom line, halakhic discourse looks technical, looks sterile, and does not appear to deal with the substance of things and their essence and so on and so forth—which, in very many cases, not all but very many, is not true. Therefore I completely agree with you—or you started with this and then later said it explicitly—I completely agree that there is a major challenge here for halakhic decisors to speak, excuse the expression, in human language. Or that someone should do that work. By the way, there are several things being done in that direction, but I definitely agree completely that the matter needs to be improved. As far as I’m concerned, there is no such thing as a small matter in Jewish law. I think that… again, here I relied on the faithful…