Q&A: Moving Matters Among Those Standing Still
Moving Matters Among Those Standing Still
Question
In honor of our master, may the one whose Torah / wisdom bears the title live long and well,
On the Sabbath I studied the third of the volumes, namely Moving Matters Among Those Standing Still, and it is indeed an impressive work.
A general comment: the opening of most of the essays, by building on an older article, conveys on the one hand that you didn’t slap this together and that you’ve really worked on the topic, and on the other hand gives the feeling that the structure of the trilogy was worked out according to what already existed…
And I have several matters to ask about in it; is it preferable to divide them up by topic?
In any case, for now I’ll start with the first.
Chapter 14 — the criterion for issuing a halakhic ruling for oneself: you already wrote that it is fluid.
But to my humble understanding that is puzzling.
After all, there can be quite a few lines of reasoning and sources that a person will miss before he knows additional Talmudic topics / passages, and sometimes he has no way of recognizing the need for more topics, and even if he does know, he cannot cover everything.
So are we talking here about a person who has studied most topics — and lives by them? If so, you have narrowed personal halakhic ruling considerably. The same would apply if we limit this to very specific, narrowly defined topics.
And to this it should be added that usually the topics people get tangled up in are the broad ones that touch several areas.
Thank you, and more power to you.
Answer
It’s hard to give a sharp criterion here. I wrote there that a person can test himself and see whether he arrives at the conclusions he himself had thought beforehand, and also at the views of clearly authoritative halakhic decisors; then he can issue halakhic rulings for himself. That also covers this issue.
As for the comment about whether the book is based on what already existed — there is something to that. But what already existed is what seemed important to me, and therefore I wrote about it. Maybe I missed things out (actually, it’s obvious that I did). But it is an intentional structure that covers the main things I had to say and what seemed important to me.
Discussion on Answer
It is indeed an important topic, but I don’t have sharp criteria, and I don’t see what there is to write about it. What little I had to say I wrote in Meisharim A. There I addressed the importance of autonomous halakhic ruling, but the criterion for when a person can issue halakhic rulings for himself was more or less what I wrote here.
If I understand correctly, your intention is that he should see whether his power of reasoning is good — which is a fairly well-known rule, that if he often arrives at the same conclusions as the sages, then he is on the right path — is that what you mean?
Because if so, it doesn’t seem to me that this is an issue of Jewish law, but of learning.\
This is an important topic.
In my opinion, this is something that quite a few learners wrestle with: from what point do I decide in accordance with my own understanding?
Possibly this would be worthy of an article (I seem to recall that in Meisharim or something similar you once wrote on the subject), or at least a column, no?