Q&A: Revoking Rights
Revoking Rights
Question
Good morning,
I wanted to know your opinion on the issue of depriving a minority within a community of its rights by means of a vote.
A community that is identified as Anglo-Saxon (a large majority of the community’s members immigrated from the U.S., Canada, Australia, or England) is in the process of choosing a rabbi for the community.
The criteria for the candidate are, of course, rabbinic ordination, noble character traits, and so on.
But the possibility has come up of bringing in a rabbi who does not speak English.
Part of the community argues that this is perfectly fine, while the other part argues that since they cannot participate in classes, talks, and consultations in Hebrew, it is unfair to bring in a rabbi who will not be able to provide them with the communal-spiritual services. (Depriving members of rights by a majority decision.)
Is it problematic if a decision on this matter is made according to the majority of the community?
Is it ethical? Moral? Halakhic / of Jewish law?
Best regards
Answer
Hello,
I don’t think there is a halakhic answer here, but there are certainly ethical aspects to it.
In principle, a community follows the majority. True, the view of Rabbenu Tam and those aligned with him is that communal decisions are accepted only unanimously. But the ruling in the Shulchan Arukh, and by all the halakhic decisors, is not in accordance with him.
But ethically, it seems very reasonable to me that there is no place for the tyranny of the majority. Just as in a state, the majority does not always decide. If this decision significantly harms the minority, and the advantage it gives the majority is not decisive (since there are also other worthy rabbis who do know English), one should not dismiss the minority’s objection. Of course, my assumption is that not knowing English is indeed a very significant harm (the minority’s Hebrew is not sufficient to allow them to communicate reasonably with the rabbi and understand his classes and talks, as you wrote).
It is true, however, that the majority can still decide, and then the minority is free to leave the community and look for another community that suits it. The question is what happens if the minority invested money in building the synagogue or the community’s infrastructure, and if it leaves it loses its investment. Here there may be room to leave and sue for some kind of compensation in court or in a religious court (this requires halakhic-legal examination. I am writing this only as food for thought).
By the way, I think that if the majority is not prepared to take the minority into account in this way, then the community in any case no longer really constitutes one community, and perhaps it would be right to dissolve it.