Question

With God’s help,
Rabbi, hello,
Introduction
Hello Rabbi. As part of my studies, I recently began doing in-depth study of topics that I find more relevant to my religious life. In the course of learning, I encountered a gap between my worldview and that of the sages. I wanted to ask you about the authority of the sages and the places where the values that guided them are no longer accepted today—and not only that, but sometimes there is even a head-on clash between the values that guided them and the values that guide us.
I wanted to present several examples I encountered just this year, and I’m sure there are more…
Between man and God
Coercion regarding commandments—so yes, we found various tricks to avoid it, but in the end, if you had the ability to enforce commandments through financial coercion, leaving aside death penalties, would you impose fines on everyone who desecrates the Sabbath or on a person who has sexual relations before marriage, etc., or do you believe in free choice, absence of coercion, and freedom of opinion?
Is it permissible to save a non-Jew on the Sabbath? Seemingly not, and even the permission based on “for the sake of peaceful relations” does not sit right with me, because if I save a non-Jew it would be because he was created in the image of God. A practical difference would be a case where there is no chance anyone would know that I could have saved him—and also in terms of the inner world that guides me.
Women
When a woman stops screaming during the rape, she becomes forbidden to her husband immediately, and today we understand that: (a) sociologically, women go silent when they are raped, and (b) I simply cannot accept that a woman who, in the midst of that suffering and terrible situation, for a moment lost her emotional strength, would become forbidden to her husband. (I don’t know whether at least they gave her her ketubah payment.)
Most of the attitude of the Sages toward women—whether “whoever teaches his daughter Torah, it is as though he teaches her frivolity,” or the idea that she is under the authority of the father until she passes into the hands of the husband, plus the term ba’al, which signifies both the act of intercourse and ownership, clarifying the matter of “a woman is acquired,” and the continuation of the chapter dealing with other acquisitions… The statement “It is better to dwell as two than to dwell as a widow” expresses a certain presumption that seems to me not to hold true in our times.
Rabbi Kook even says that a woman may not vote because she is under the authority of her husband or father.
A woman is obligated to nurse the children as part of her obligations toward the husband, and when she is not married to him she is not obligated in the matter, whereas in my world of values the woman is obligated to nurse the children as part of her obligation toward the children and toward God, not toward the husband. There have already been cases in history in which women were exempted from the obligation because of divorce or promiscuity.
Likewise, the division of inheritance that the Sages present is also different from what is customary today, and it does not seem to me to be equal in its treatment of women.
Similarly, in that same area, the division of money at the time of divorce is supposed to be according to usufruct property and guaranteed property, whereas today we divide equally between husband and wife—and not only as a practical arrangement, but because that is the general desire.
In the framework of plaintiff and defendant, generally we do not operate according to this in the rabbinical courts, even though there is such a possibility. I won’t elaborate, but if there are our courts and courts of non-Jews, one should go to our courts—but cameras do not constitute evidence whereas two people do. A person can harm many women, but as long as there is no evidence he will remain innocent, women’s testimony….
The fact that a child from age 13 is responsible for his actions seems completely absurd… What today we perceive as sexual exploitation was considered by the Sages to be a legitimate act of a father marrying off his daughter, and after a certain amount of time she can, admittedly, demand a divorce, but….. And children’s rights in general.
Monetary law
Regarding the obligations involved in building a city as the Sages formulated them in the first chapter of Bava Batra, in practice we do not aspire to this. Maybe one can say it verbally, but we do not even try to be careful about partitions between one courtyard and another, even though there are laws of division in such cases, and more.
Likewise regarding ordinary presumptions of ownership and presumptions based on usage, our conception of property differs from that of the Sages, and it may be that we need to change, but at least for now we do not conduct ourselves that way, and it does not even seem to be an aspiration.
Likewise regarding “this one benefits and that one does not lose,” our conception of property today is based on the idea that if something is mine, no one else has any right to do anything with it even if it does not harm me. It may be that one should advance in that direction as a matter of piety, but from there to calling it “the trait of Sodom” is a big leap.
Likewise regarding charity, we operate various mechanisms that exist in every country called the welfare office, and we give charity to poor people we meet, etc. In your opinion, is there a need specifically to return to the mechanism of local charity collectors, and distribution through the soup kitchen, etc.?
Regarding “you shall surely rebuke,” I do not see a halakhic reason not to rebuke, but people today do not rebuke out of the perception that it is the other person’s business and I have no right to intervene, despite the fact that there is a halakhic obligation.
A king as a positive commandment, or democratic rule, which would be the statutes of the nations, God forbid.
In conclusion
It may be that some of these claims are really not all that fundamental, or that they have a specific solution, or that they express something different, but the general direction is expressed by many small points that present the gap between the worlds.
To sum up my claim: in general there is a gap between the world of the Sages and our world. I also want to point out that in the end, in most of the cases I presented, we conduct ourselves not in accordance with the words of the Sages, so why do we still glorify tractates that discuss public, social, and gender order when we do not act according to them at all, and in some of them we really think the opposite.
Forgive me for any mistakes or inaccuracies in presenting the words of the sages; I apologize in advance.
The question
So the question is: do we need to change our norms to what was practiced in the time of the Sages and ignore today’s universal values, or erase the laws of the Sages and adopt universal values?
If option A, then how exactly do I change my worldview? And why? After all, if the sages came in order to run society in the best way possible,
If option B, then how? And how much? If there is a gap between us and the worldview of the Sages, then why not redesign everything from scratch? With a renewed examination according to the principles, and formulate new tractates built on the principles of the sages.
If the possibility is more complex, I would be glad to receive some general guidelines for how to think about it.
Yehuda Saadia