Why is there an abyss between what is studied in yeshiva and the decisions made by that same public, decisions that are completely incompatible with its mode of study?

In every field there is a difference between theoretical expertise and practical work. The rabbinic leadership of the Haredi public is not versed in what is happening in the world or in non-Torah ways of thinking in various areas, and yet people attribute to them, unjustifiably, powers that are supposed to make up for that.

Moshe,
I’m not at all sure about Rabbi Kanievsky being disconnected. How do you know what he is involved in and what he isn’t?

Someone once said that to Rabbi Kanievsky himself—see how he responded:

How can a person testify about himself that he is up to date? If he reads the news and chats with others, then he can get a feel for whether he knows what they know. But someone whose input is filtered (and perhaps even guided)—I don’t see how he is supposed to know that he isn’t up to date. Only if there are serious holes in the story can he suspect that the account presented to him is lacking.

It reminds me of a bizarre post I saw on the Otzar HaHokhma forum by someone who describes himself as a judge on a religious court for monetary matters and writes as follows: “If both sides agree to a Torah adjudication, then the court judges—and if one of them we discover it, thank God.” That is an exceptionally detached statement (because if he didn’t identify the trickery, then he doesn’t know that he failed to identify it), and I was astonished to read it from a judge.

Here: https://forum.otzar.org/viewtopic.php?f=17&t=9787&hilit=%D7%A7%D7%90%D7%99&start=40#p96843

A key word was omitted from the quote (“is acting deceptively”), so I’ll copy it again; let the public fear and be astonished:

If both sides agree to a Torah adjudication, then the court judges—and if one of them is acting deceptively, we discover it, thank God.

Shai, I have to point out to you that your defense of those so-called “great ones of the generation” is troubling. As a rational person, are you really unable to discern the sociopathy and social dysfunction gripping them, to the point that they are willing to endanger the lives of their believers?
With much love, Binyamin, who comments to the whole world, Binyamin

Binyamin,
because those great ones of the generation are very intelligent people, and I don’t think they are as disconnected as people try to portray them. One of the patients at the place where I work approached Rabbi Kanievsky a few weeks ago to expel a dybbuk possessing him (a psychotic episode). Rabbi Kanievsky told him to ask the psychiatrist for a specific medication at a certain dosage in order to improve his condition. I don’t think he’s all that disconnected.

Binyamin, you’re exaggerating completely. Beyond that, they aren’t endangering only the lives of their believers, but the general public. That is my whole claim in the last column.

Shai,
The picture you are fighting against is that Rabbi Kanievsky is some delusional mystic. I too have heard statements from him that show otherwise (though there are also examples to the contrary). But the claim that he is disconnected from the world is weaker than that. He simply does not have relevant knowledge or familiarity with different modes of thought. That is certainly true.

Rabbi Michi, all the more so when it’s “the general public”!!!
Too bad the “great one of the generation” didn’t study Greek wisdom; from it he would have learned the famous rule of one of the “great ones of the Greeks” — “I know that I do not know” — and then he would not have come to such a terrible mistake (along with all the other mistakes).

A. It seems to me that even a person with above-average talent, along with a great deal of work, would not reach achievements like those of Rabbi Kanievsky—for example, writing Derekh Emunah, which is truly an amazing, breathtaking, and important book in its contribution!
Besides that, he knows a few other things in Torah as well.
So it seems to me that one can give him a bit of credit that he understands what is going on, and analyze things with the intelligence, seriousness, and diligence that brought about those achievements.
B. What is so complicated? Suppose they told him: there is a virus that causes serious illness mainly among older ages; the number of confirmed infected people is such-and-such; the Ministry of Health has ordered educational institutions to close (medical opinion up to this point).
It seems to me that any person with average intelligence or above can think a few steps ahead:
how many may get infected, in a rough estimate (a number that rises in geometric progression),
how many deaths there may be,
and make a value judgment—which a rabbi is entrusted with (Michi once argued that rabbis can decide whether to go to war when they have received professional information): Torah study in yeshivot while maintaining the rule of small groups, or send everyone home.
And the rabbi, through his low intelligence quotient, decided…
C. To claim that his grandsons are steering him—there’s no end to that kind of talk. He decides to rely on them, and apparently he knows them a bit…
One could also say that the doctors in the Ministry of Health are advising the political echelon that way so that when a commission of inquiry is established they won’t be caught being negligent—and meanwhile the economy will collapse!

Everything stated below is not directed at any specific rabbi, Heaven forbid, but at the principle. The examples of Rabbi Shach and Soloveitchik too are only based on what is publicly rumored; I have no information on the matter:

I have a feeling that many in the Haredi public understand that there is sometimes a problem with the leadership of this or that great rabbi, and yet the public finds itself forced to continue obeying his instructions because there is no alternative. Very similar to Likud voters who feel there is something problematic about Bibi yet continue to vote for him because, in their view, there is no alternative. Here too: the difficult decision to declare about a great man we believed in that he is already senile, or to expose that he never had that kind of judgment in the first place, is a faith crisis that there is really no way to deal with—and so they simply wait quietly until the leadership changes.

And in general, note that there is no halakhic mechanism—as far as I know—for replacing a Torah leader when he grows old or “his learning is forgotten.” So usually they isolate him from the public, as they did with Rabbi Shach and, some say, with Rabbi Dov Soloveitchik. The reason is that exposing their senility—if the rumors are true—would greatly damage the public’s faith that Torah protects and saves, and that “the minds of elderly Torah scholars become more settled with age.” Sometimes, when it is impossible to isolate the leader because he is not that senile, but rather in a borderline state that is not visible to the naked eye, they surround him with aides and other layers of protection, and he continues to function through their mediation. In short: there is a certain problematic aspect here, and it may be that the decision is to lose a few years of your own sound advice, so long as faith in the power of Torah remains standing. This is similar to Maimonides’ approach that the Torah will not change and sacrifices will always remain, because if justified changes—however justified—were made in the Torah, the people’s trust in the Torah would be damaged (it seems to me that this is also the logic in Sefer HaChinukh’s explanation of the commandment not to deviate). On this view of Maimonides there is a long article whose name and author I do not currently remember.