Question

Rabbi, do you remember that at the time you wrote in the Shabbat supplement, in response to the discussion about the ruling issued by the rabbis of the Beit Hillel organization regarding women reciting the mourner’s Kaddish, that the rabbis of Beit Hillel were mistaken because they were following a second-order method of halakhic ruling, and that if they do so then their opponents are justified in criticizing the interpretation of the sources they cite, and therefore they should rule on the basis of first-order considerations and say that the words of the halakhic decisors on this issue were said against the background of a reality that is not necessarily relevant?
 
So here, in the latest issue, there is an interview by Yair Sheleg with Amnon Shapira, and Yair Sheleg asks him exactly this question about the booklet he published some time ago in favor of a mixed youth movement as an ideal from the outset. Yair Sheleg argues to him that the interpretation of the sources he brings is forced, and asks why he does not simply put on the table the claim that those sources are speaking about a different reality from ours and therefore are not relevant [according to his view, of course]. To my amazement, Amnon Shapira did not really deny this at all; he simply argued that the target audience the booklet is meant to persuade is “the black-kippah 16-17-year-olds for whom sociological language doesn’t speak, only Jewish law does,” and therefore one has to make arguments that will speak to them.
 
 
To tell the truth, I was pretty stunned—with all due respect to Amnon Shapira. What he is basically saying is that this is deliberate manipulation, and that his use of “second-order halakhic ruling” is not because he thinks that is the right way, but purely for marketing and propaganda purposes.
 
What I don’t understand is whether he thinks the potential readers of the booklet are complete dolts who won’t notice that this is an unreliable interpretation of the sources, and what will those “black-kippah 16-17-year-olds” at whom the booklet is aimed say after they read what the baker himself says about his own dough in this interview?
 
Your friend Nadav Shnerb wrote in his comments in the Shabbat supplement of Makor Rishon in several cases that this is exactly what really infuriates him about the liberal religious camp: instead of putting what they think on the table, they try to bend over backwards and invent forced interpretations of the sources, without honesty.
 
What amazed me in that interview was that Amnon Shapira practically admits it openly……