So with rabbinic laws you can cut corners? Unlike the Netivot HaMishpat, I would say that the Holy One, blessed be He, gave the sages substantive authority, so even if they do not arrive at the truth, their authority is binding because of "do not deviate," which is an intrinsic prohibition, and therefore the rabbinic obligations are also substantive.

I wondered whether to add that clarification. Obviously not. It was only an borrowed example. With rabbinic laws there is religious value to obedience, and when you do not obey, you commit a religious transgression. It is only that the act itself is not problematic in itself. And of course there are also those who disagree with the Netivot HaMishpat.

Rabbi Michi, you left your words open to degrees: everyone will cut corners a little wherever it seems right to him? If he wants, he’ll pay taxes, and if he wants, he’ll hide income? Obviously violating public regulations is an intrinsic offense by force of public consent. That is, there are reciprocal relations between the collective and the individual, and therefore this is something essential. One should note that the demands of the law regulate relations between people and have no value beyond the value of organizing life within a public framework. That is different from the religious essence of eating pork, which does not harm society at all; the essence there is not merely a religious value.

Indeed, I spoke in degrees. What is wrong with that? An ordinary citizen in a democratic state cuts corners. That is the way of the world. One should remember that the validity of the law comes from the consent of the citizens, and they accept it up to a point that includes some corner-cutting.

From your words it sounds like if the force of accepting the authority of the sages comes from our acceptance of the authority of the sages, subject to minor corner-cutting by the average person, then it follows that there is no religious prohibition in minor corner-cutting regarding rabbinic laws. (Not the case of accidental violation of rabbinic law discussed by the Netivot.)

He explicitly wrote that there is, and that one who violates rabbinic law violates a religious command. And it is forbidden to cut corners. Rather, there is a view that this is not because the specific rabbinic prohibition itself is what is severe (to use the example: not because there is something inherently severe about eating schnitzel while drinking a cup of milk), but because there is something severe about not obeying the sages. It should also be noted that this opinion is not the only one.
I think this is the kind of arguing and distortion of his words that you engage in—whether innocently or intentionally—in how you present the Rabbi’s words, and sometimes he gets angry about it.
To tell the truth, justifiably.

Tam, you beat me to it, I’m really with you on this.

Tam, it also follows from your words that if the basis of the sages’ authority is the rooster crowing in the morning, then when the rooster does not crow there is no obligation to listen to them. Tautologies do not follow from my words. They are true on their own.

With all due respect, Rabbi, I did not manage to understand. After all, Maimonides and Nachmanides disagreed about the obligation regarding rabbinic safeguards, and Rabbi Elchanan Wasserman expanded on this in his booklet on Torah law and rabbinic law. From the Rabbi’s words it sounds as though the obligation is formal, like laws at most, and so it is not clear how this becomes more than the obligations of ordinary laws, which are subject to corner-cutting. After all, rabbinic prohibitions do not apply to the object but to the person, and this is like the implication of the Netivot regarding accidental violation. So why are such cases of corner-cutting considered Torah prohibitions?
Ratzhai, I didn’t fully get what you were saying, sorry.
Binyamin, I didn’t ask, and I don’t understand whether your going with me is supposed to help me or hurt me… and enough.

It seems to me that you did not try to understand, rather than that you were unable to. Because this is not very complicated. But I will nevertheless grant you that understanding, and the merit of the public will depend on me.

What you wrote above is a tautology. You wrote that if we assume the authority of the sages depends on public acceptance, and if public acceptance is only up to the point of some corner-cutting, then it would be permitted to cut corners. To that I said that you are entirely right, but that has nothing to do with what I said. It is just a logical tautology. That is why I brought the rooster-crowing example. As for me, I did not say anywhere that the authority of the sages is founded on public acceptance. I do not think so either.

My remarks are not directly related to the dispute between Maimonides and Nachmanides. Many later authorities wrote that violating rabbinic laws—not necessarily safeguards—is a transgression of obedience and not an intrinsic transgression, a special kind of law applying to the person and certainly not a law applying to the object. That is why I brought the Netivot HaMishpat as an example, and there are many others, as is well known. But of course that does not mean, in any way I can think of, that the basis of the obligation according to them is our acceptance of them. What connection is there? Where did I write that? I do not think so, neither according to Maimonides nor according to Nachmanides. So what does that have to do with corner-cutting?

That is how I understood it from Dvir’s question. I will quote:
And elsewhere the Rabbi wrote that the authority of the Babylonian Talmud comes from the acceptance of the people, and just as the laws of the state apply to me, so too the laws of the Talmud apply to me.

So what is the Rabbi’s view regarding our obligation to the sages?

One must distinguish between the authority of the Sanhedrin, which comes from "do not deviate"—and about that Maimonides and Nachmanides disagree—and the authority of the Talmud, which in my opinion (like the Kesef Mishneh in the laws of rebels) comes from the fact that the sages of Israel accepted it, and not necessarily the public. But even regarding the Talmud, I see no license whatsoever to cut corners, for there they accepted it fully and not only up to a point of corner-cutting. What was accepted was that the Talmud expresses the authoritative and binding interpretation of the Torah, and now the obligation is just like the obligation to the Torah. There is no room for comparison.