Answer

Hello, Rabbi David.
 
More power to you. Just one note: “The opinion of laypeople is the opposite of the Torah’s opinion” is not from the Taz but, if I remember correctly, from the Sema in section 3.
 
May you be sealed for a good year.
 
And just one more comment. I really do not agree with these words of Moshe Shainfeld. In my opinion, the opinion of laypeople is in many cases much straighter and sounder than that of yeshiva students, kollel scholars, and even rabbis. I have long explained to myself that this is the meaning of the Jewish law that a decree or ordinance that was not accepted by the public is nullified. People think this is a compromise with reality, which fails to reach the required spiritual level. But in my humble opinion that is a mistake. The feedback of laypeople (the people out in the fields) is what determines whether there is sound common sense here or the crooked reasoning of Torah scholars sitting in study halls, detached from life, making determinations that are very logical in the theoretical scholarly world but wrong for the practical world. Therefore, when a ruling does not spread among the public, it should be annulled, because it is mistaken. The Torah was given for this world, and whatever does not suit the people out in the fields carries a presumption of being a crooked rule, unfit to be practiced.
 
This also explains why, in our times, baseless stringencies spread like cancer through a field of thorns. They just keep accumulating and never recede. The explanation is that nowadays, anyone who does not accept these new stringencies belongs to the world but not to “the olam,” and so his opinion doesn’t count (he isn’t a “Torah person”). What happens is that these decrees receive no feedback from laypeople with sound judgment. And so a positive feedback loop is created that leads to an explosion. There is no restraint of the kind Jewish law requires regarding new ordinances and decrees.
 
As an aside, I’ll add something I once read from my friend Rabbi Benny Lau. He wrote that one of the disasters of our generation is that its leaders are yeshiva heads rather than community rabbis or city rabbis. Yeshiva heads are brilliant people who sharpen themselves against brilliant children. They get feedback on contradictions and are judged by intellectual flashes of brilliance. But rabbis get feedback from laypeople who tell them that what they are saying doesn’t hold water—it just doesn’t make sense. That is what is needed in order to make decisions. Again, the feedback of the people out in the fields.
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Questioner:
1.      If I understood you correctly, it’s not that you disagree with Moshe Shainfeld, but that you disagree with the Sema? I’m not shocked, but is that what you meant?
 
2.      An enlightening comment I heard this week from a mutual friend, namely Yitzhak Baruch Rosenblum, may he live long and well: People have already wondered why the early authorities chose to begin, precisely at the moment when all the Jewish people come to synagogue in great excitement, with the annulment of vows—which is dry Jewish law and not especially stirring. His answer was: Jewish law is the framework that preserved the Jewish people as such throughout the generations. Jewish law wore out and smiled in the face of all the ever-renewing and enthusiastic ideas of their time, taken up as emotional needs—Hasidism, Kabbalah, Breslov, and so on. Dry Jewish law is the stubborn framework without which every other content passes and vanishes from the world, and new things come in their place.
Is all the Jewish people here? Great—there’s a startup opportunity. We can use the occasion to solve a halakhic problem of vows and oaths that the masses stumble over. After the halakhic solution, we can move on to all the rest—enthusiasm, regret, and repentance.
3.      One of the readers responded to my remarks and claimed that the Chafetz Chaim explains that even criticism that ought to be said [harmful speech is permitted, in his wording] becomes forbidden if the speaker gets pleasure from telling it. I answered him that one must distinguish between pleasure from the other person’s pain itself, even if he deserves it, and incidental pleasure, such as showing that I am clever. Was I right?
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Rabbi:
1. Indeed. Though one must distinguish between interpreting Torah, where laypeople are certainly liable to err, and reasoning about whether something is intrinsically correct or not. There laypeople have the advantage of common sense.
2. I said the same things at my son’s wedding canopy (see the attached file, especially toward the end). I explained there that reading the ketubah comes to bring everyone down from the heavens, with the beat of angel wings, to the ground of reality. To sharpen for us that betrothal and marriage are first and foremost a contract and a mutual halakhic commitment, and only afterward love, respect, and emotional relations between the spouses. It seems to me that without the first, it is very hard to reach the second (except in a lucky case).
3. I do not agree with the Chafetz Chaim either (well, after the Sema, that’s already small change. Moses our teacher, watch out!), just as I do not agree with the Netziv (and other later authorities, such as Rabbi Kook in Mishpat Kohen), who wrote that in the case of a transgression for the sake of Heaven, it is forbidden to do it unless one does it purely for that sake. To me this is absurd. After all, the permission to tell harmful speech for a constructive purpose is because of the benefit involved—for example, telling a bride something problematic about the groom she chose and that he did not reveal to her. So because I enjoy it, I should refrain from telling her and thus ruin the bride’s life? That sounds completely absurd to me. And the same applies to a transgression for the sake of Heaven. Think about Jael, the wife of Heber the Kenite. Suppose she would have enjoyed Sisera’s coming to her. Would it then have been forbidden for her to do it, and would she have had to leave our great enemy alive, so that afterward he might defeat us in war? In my opinion, permissions based on outcome are not conditional on intentions. And that is what I think.
May you be sealed for a good year,
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Avi:
Hello Rabbi,

I think the Chafetz Chaim would not disagree with you on the principled level; rather, he would argue that it is impossible for someone who enjoys the matter to exercise correct judgment as to whether it is constructive or not. Seemingly, there is proof for his view from the prohibition against accepting a bribe even when it does not alter the ruling.
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Rabbi:
So what are you proposing? That he should forbid it to himself because maybe he judged incorrectly? And what about the benefit—what happens to that? In general, we do not find anywhere that a person is forbidden to rule for himself. It depends on knowledge, not on personal bias.
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Avi:
Sometimes the potential for harm is no smaller than the potential for benefit. It seems very reasonable to me that in such a case, a decent person would not rely on his own judgment if he knows he has a personal stake—certainly when dealing with an “open ticket” like a transgression for the sake of Heaven (less so regarding harmful speech).

Of course, there are cases where a decision must be made “under fire,” as with Jael and Sisera. I wasn’t talking about such cases.
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Rabbi:
If you have time to consult, that is always good. Still, there is no such halakhic obligation. Consultation is intended for someone who does not know on his own. Whether to decide by yourself or not is a question of policy, not of Jewish law.