Thank you for the detailed response. But what about a responsum that is not logically correct, not just outweighed in the final balance? Then aside from the very act of examining it, does it have no value as the commandment of Torah study?

According to the Rabbi’s words, it would seem that studying Spinoza’s theology, for example, counts as Torah study (not in the object itself), because I am weighing the topic?
Did I infer correctly?

There was a glitch here in the order of the posts (this comment is appearing for me above the two comments it refers to):

Shai, definitely. Though in my opinion it is nonsense. But if you are weighing it, then according to your approach you should examine it.

Shiko, if you are dealing with a logical contradiction, then not only is it not Torah study, you have done nothing at all. At most you moved your lips.

Throughout the site, the comments are currently displayed from latest to earliest (in the responsa section. In posts it’s like that only in the comments on the post, but replies to comments are ordered correctly).

Hello Rabbi.

I figured that with logical failures this would be the Rabbi’s answer. And yet I still have some vague intuition that makes it hard for me to accept this. Let us imagine someone who worked hard for fifty years and toiled over writing a halakhic responsum. What can be done—there are logical failures in it, which he did not notice. Does that have no value at all as the commandment of Torah study? Or perhaps one should distinguish between the commandment of Torah study—which is absent, since in the end there is no study here at all (?)—and reward for his religious effort?

Indeed, that is exactly the distinction. The heart says this has value, and that is indeed true. He will receive reward like one who reads the Torah. But the definition of Torah study is study.
However, in the responsum “Sod Yesharim” by the author of Ben Ish Hai (the part dealing with esoteric matters at the end of his responsa), and also in another responsum in his responsa, he discusses a similar situation. He tells of an incident that happened to his grandfather, who was the rabbi of Baghdad. An Ashkenazi emissary from the Land of Israel arrived there and stayed with them for several weeks. Within a few days, he noticed that the tefillin of the entire community were not sufficiently square as required by law, and were actually invalid. One should know that this is how they had been making tefillin for generations. The rabbi (the Ben Ish Hai’s grandfather) sat down and analyzed the issue with the emissary, and became convinced that indeed all the tefillin of the people of the city—Baghdad, a great mother-city in Israel—were invalid. Unbelievable. The Ben Ish Hai asks/wonders whether these people have the status of “a skull that never wore tefillin,” and explains that not only are they not in that category (that seems obvious to me, since this is not a halakhic category but an essential kind of divine evaluation), but that they did fulfill the commandment of tefillin, even though he agrees that the tefillin were invalid. Quite amazing, in my opinion. According to his view, you may be right, but I find that hard to accept. If we were to say that on the very day they discovered the mistake, kosher tefillin had come into their hands (for example, those of the emissary), would the Ben Ish Hai have ruled that they were exempt from putting them on because they had already fulfilled their obligation? I wonder.

Quite amazing—and that answer is surprising. Could the Rabbi please give a source reference, so I can see his reasoning?

(And if this were a halakhic category, would it be different in your opinion? Is a concept like compulsion beyond one’s control relevant here?)

Rav Pe’alim, vol. 4, Sod Yesharim, no. 5. And the story is in the body of the responsa there, no. 2.

Thank you very much, for this and in general.

I have now read the responsum itself (in the body of the book).

And interestingly, in the course of the discussion he cites Kaf HaChayim, who cites the Chida, who explicitly wrote that there is reward for tefillin, implying that there is no fulfillment of the commandment of tefillin. And that is the distinction above.

And he himself, the Ben Ish Hai, raises a contradiction to this from what is stated in Sukkah, “you have never fulfilled the commandment of sukkah in your life,” and also from the words of Tosafot, and he strains quite a bit. It seems that he did not distinguish at all between reward and commandment (in which case everything works out just fine). And that is a bit puzzling to me.

In my opinion, the time has already come for the Rabbi to publish a real halakhic work. Maybe some responsa, or at least novellae on the Talmud.

Aside from the fact that the Rabbi is certainly qualified for this, and it is certainly important to the Rabbi, and it would increase Torah and so on, it would also help the acceptance of the Rabbi’s other ideas in the Haredi world, in my humble opinion.

I’ve already written quite a bit. Rest assured, it won’t be accepted in the Haredi public one way or the other.