Don’t you think that if a Sanhedrin is established, they’ll be Haredi rabbis, not enlightened at all, and therefore they won’t change the Jewish law?

I don’t know how to answer that question. You should direct it to the Messiah king. He’ll decide who sits there. If you’re asking me whom I would put there, that’s a different question.

If the future Sanhedrin might cancel a commandment because it doesn’t fit the spirit of the times, then apparently the original Sanhedrin also instituted / interpreted / framed a commandment according to the spirit of its time. Today it is uncomfortable to say out loud that the High Priest should marry a little girl. In the past they thought the opposite—that a virgin (preferably a “complete” 12-year-old virgin) was purer and therefore more fitting for the High Priest.

If so, what is the authority of the Torah? If we can interpret it like putty—according to this view, authority is in human hands and decisions are made according to the accepted fashion. People force the Torah’s verses into whatever direction they want (“then you shall cut off her hand”? fine, let her just pay a bit of money).

There is no such thing as “the Torah” stripped bare of interpretations. Torah is always a text that has gone through interpretations throughout the generations, including in our own day. Interpretations also draw from the values of the period and of the interpreter (see, for example, Halbertal’s book, Interpretive Revolutions). That can’t be avoided, and it also need not be avoided.
We don’t interpret it like putty (= according to fashion), but according to how we understand it, where understanding is a combination of considerations of reason and language. What you call “fashion,” I call value conceptions.

Wouldn’t it have been nicer if the Master of the Universe had simply told us what He wants from us, instead of our deciding for Him what He wants from us?

And I don’t understand the difference between the term “value conception” (laundered and respectable) and the term “fashion” (a bit dismissive, but no less accurate).

It would have been much nicer, but it’s not really possible—to give a text that covers all situations and environments and says what to do in each of them. Not for nothing is there no legal system in the world that doesn’t need interpretations that change over time and circumstances.
If you don’t understand this obvious difference, I have no way to explain it to you. If you think moral values are fashion, then I disagree with you.

Why did people once think that a 12-year-old virgin was pure and her father’s property, whereas today they think otherwise (in the Western world; in other places the moral fashion is different, of course, even today)?

And why do you expect the Sanhedrin to subordinate the Torah to the Western moral outlook rather than to the one accepted among the tribes of the Amazon, who after all are much closer in every sense to the lifestyle of our forefather Jacob?

You’re dragging us into the worn-out discussion of moral relativism. Instead of getting into it, I’ll ask you: how is it that from the 17th century onward people thought the world was straight, and now they think it’s curved (general relativity)? And how is it that back then people thought the world was deterministic, and now they think it isn’t (quantum theory)? Moreover, in different scientific communities today there are different conceptions regarding quantum theory. Apparently physics is also a matter of fashion.

Physical theories can be corroborated (I didn’t write “proven”) and, more importantly, they can be falsified. Can a moral outlook be falsified? Your analogy is deeply flawed, and in my opinion you know that.

My analogy is excellent, and I’m indeed aware of that. What I’ve become aware of now is your attempts to dodge.
You claimed that the very existence of disagreements and changes over time is proof that we’re dealing with fashion, and I showed you that it isn’t. Now you’re raising a different claim: science can be falsified or corroborated and faith cannot (that’s the parallel issue here). Indeed, true. But that still doesn’t mean it’s fashion. Mathematics also cannot be falsified, and it isn’t fashion. By the way, the foundation of evolution also cannot be falsified, and that isn’t fashion either.
I assume you’ll now invent a third claim and say I’m dodging and know I’m wrong. I’m waiting eagerly.

I did not claim that the very existence of disagreements and change over time (I couldn’t figure out how to vocalize that word you wrote; it looks like a typo) is proof that it’s fashion.

Actually, in your last message you were the one who raised “different” claims that could be seen as dodging and shifting the subject. I couldn’t understand your point about mathematics—that is, how it connects. Do you think I said something that contradicts the statement “mathematics cannot be falsified and it is not fashion”?

And I’m glad you’re enjoying the exchange with me 🙂

With God’s help, 11th of Omer 5781

To Daniel—greetings,

On the contrary, according to the Torah and the Sages’ interpretation, a 12-year-old girl is an adult in every respect, fully responsible for her actions in the full sense of the term. Likewise a 13-year-old boy, who is an “adult man” in every respect, to the point that his father can bless: “Blessed is He who has exempted me from this one’s punishment.”

A girl would become betrothed and married already at age 12 and would become a mother running a household and raising children. Boys would marry at age 18, to enable them to fill themselves with Bible, Mishnah, and Talmud and to acquire a profession that could support them. But Rav Chisda, who testified that his colleagues married at age 18, said that he was better off than they were because he married at 16, and best of all would have been had he married at 14!

According to the Torah’s outlook, a 12-year-old girl and a 13-year-old boy are not “minors” whose judgment is not full-fledged judgment and who need parental guardianship. When you place responsibility on a youth and acknowledge that he or she is an adult man/woman, that recognition and responsibility become self-fulfilling. A boy or girl whom society believes has judgment and responsibility will behave like adults, not like “teenage idiots.”

Regards,
Yaron Fishel Ordner

To the commenter Yaron—I don’t know whether you’ve heard of a book called the Shulchan Arukh, written about five hundred years ago. In that book (Even HaEzer, beginning of section 37), it says that a father betroths his daughter when she is a “na'arah,” meaning at age 12. Maybe you haven’t heard of the book, and maybe you don’t accept it. That’s your right. But to claim that this is not the Torah’s position and the Sages’ interpretations—that is not correct. It isn’t even merely incorrect. It’s false.

To tell the truth, I’m not enjoying this all that much, but it’s my practice to answer anyone who asks.
To my disappointment, memory failures are now also surfacing on your side. You wrote:
Why did people once think that a 12-year-old virgin was pure and her father’s property, whereas today they think otherwise (in the Western world; in other places the moral fashion is different, of course, even today)?
Isn’t that an argument for fashionableness that relies on change (that’s how it should be phrased) over the generations? If so, then apparently I have serious reading-comprehension problems.
I’ll leave the rest to the readers’ consideration. Everyone can decide whether there remains any unanswered question here or not. Poor as I am, I can’t manage to identify one. Much success.

As for your last response to Yaron, here too it’s clear that you are dealing with matters you know nothing about. First, Yaron is correct in his descriptions of the Jewish law (including that in the Shulchan Arukh). Second, even in the past Jewish law did not see the girl as her father’s property. The fact that he can betroth her does not indicate ownership of her. That is an ignorant interpretive mistake. That right was given to him because of his responsibility for her fate (in the past a girl or woman could not support herself, and therefore the father saw it as his duty to find his daughter a partner who would support and provide for her), not because he owned her. Even today, parents can give instructions to their children (to go to school, to wear or not wear certain things, and so on). Does that mean the children are their property?

A father betroths his daughter without her consent as long as she is a minor. And likewise when she is a young maiden, her authority is in his hand and her betrothal belongs to her father. And he is also entitled to what she finds, to her earnings, and to her marriage contract. (Even HaEzer, section 37)

Her authority is in his hand.

He can marry her off to a repulsive man afflicted with boils if he feels like it; from here various conclusions are derived relating to monetary / tort law (Kiddushin).

In my wording, she is “her father’s property.” Is that really so different from “her authority is in his hand”?

With God’s help, 26 Nisan 5781

To Daniel—greetings,

Many thanks for the interesting information about Rabbi Yosef Karo and his book Shulchan Arukh. The truth is that I heard of him thirty years ago (in 1991), when Professor Meir Benayahu of blessed memory gave me galley proofs of his book Yosef Bechiri to read, and even brought several comments in my name under the nickname “Shatz Lewinger” 🙂

If you look at the section you cited (Even HaEzer 37), subsection 8, you’ll discover Rabbi Yosef Karo’s instruction: “It is a commandment that a man should not betroth his daughter while she is a minor, until she grows up and says, ‘I want so-and-so,’” and its source is the Talmud in Kiddushin.

Even so, the Torah permitted the father to betroth his daughter even while she is still a minor, and apparently the reason is that sometimes there are constraints, and because of the upheavals of the times people fear that if they do not seize the golden opportunity that exists right now—finding a worthy match under good economic conditions, an opportunity that may not return (as the Rema notes there).

The father is the natural guardian of his children. Parents’ love and devotion to their children are among the strongest forms of love. And it is presumed that a father will find for his daughter the “resting place where it will go well for her” in the optimal way, and will find her a match that will bring her a life of happiness. Even in the case of a minor orphan who has no father, the Sages entrusted the guardianship to her mother and brothers so that they may marry her off (except that in this case, since the betrothal is not valid on the Torah level, she can refuse it when she reaches age 12, which is the age of adulthood). And it is presumed that a loving guardian will not make his daughter miserable, but will consult with her before such a fateful decision.

Again, this needs to be understood: in a reality where girls usually married at ages 12–12.5 and boys at ages 14–18 were already establishing independent homes, the preceding years were also not years of “free and magical childhood.” The girl was a full partner with her mother in household work. She did several years of “internship” in cooking and baking, cleaning and laundry, sewing and embroidery, and watching the younger children, and prepared herself for age 12, when she would establish a faithful home in Israel.

And similarly for the boy. By age 5–10 he had already mastered the Bible backwards and forwards, and by age 10–15 he had acquired proficiency in all six orders of the Mishnah, while in parallel learning a trade that would support him honorably. Rabbi Kapach describes in the introduction to his edition of Duties of the Heart, dedicated to Rabbi Ratzon Tzarem (from whom he learned Torah after the death of his grandfather Rabbi Yihye Kapach), and writes that at age eight—the age at which a boy in Yemen plans his future—Rabbi Ratzon chose to learn the profession of silversmithing.

Rabbi Kapach himself married at age 16 to his relative Berakhah, who was 11, and when she was 14 her oldest son was born. And as I said: responsibility brings maturity.

Regards,
Y.F.O.

Since today is Holocaust and Heroism Remembrance Day, I will mention my mother-in-law (Chaya Yakubovitch, of blessed memory, née Volkovitch), who at age five (!) remained a lone child in a Nazi labor camp after her parents were murdered. She was adopted in the camp by a young woman named Hannah Wolbrom (later Wroclawski), who coached her to say that she was 14 and to go to work. When a German officer suspected the child and handed her a doll to play with, Chaya pushed the doll away and said: “I’m not a child. I’m 14 and I want and can work…” And that is how she survived the camp. When there is no choice, one grows up even at age five!

In those days it could happen that the High Priest would be a 17-year-old youth, as was Aristobulus III, whom Herod was forced to appoint High Priest at age 17 instead of his grandfather Hyrcanus, who had been disqualified because of a blemish that Herod inflicted on him. A 17-year-old High Priest marrying a 12-year-old wife is certainly conceivable.

Today, one may assume that the High Priest who would be appointed would be at least in his forties, having married someone his own age long beforehand, when they were both in their twenties. One may assume that the committee for approving senior appointments, before which the appointment would be brought for approval, would insist that the High Priest have extensive Torah and general education and many years of seniority and experience in public positions. A middle-aged High Priest would have no need whatsoever to marry a 12-year-old girl.

Regards,
B./ Office of the Legal Adviser to the Ministry of Religious Services

What you mentioned about “the father’s right to hand over his daughter to a repulsive man afflicted with boils”—such a “right” would never in real life come to be exercised, since no father would want to do that. And even if, God forbid, such a father were found who did want to do it, the religious court would compel the repulsive man afflicted with boils not to consummate the marriage, since a “repulsive man afflicted with boils” is listed in the Mishnah among those whom we compel to divorce, because “a person cannot live with a snake in one basket”; all the more so they would not allow him to marry in the first place.

The Sages explain with irony, to the little fellow who seduces a girl to betroth herself to him without the father’s consent, thereby expressing distrust in the father and in his judgment: if in your eyes the groom whom the father designated for his beloved daughter is so terrible and seems to you like a “repulsive man afflicted with boils,” and you have denied the father his judgment, then at least don’t deny him the financial income—the betrothal money.

Usually it is דווקא the girl’s decision to marry her heart’s choice against the opinion of a loving and experienced father that may cause her to fall into the hands of a “repulsive man afflicted with boils,” whether literally or metaphorically. Love can sometimes blind the vision of a pair of young people in love and infatuated, preventing them from properly seeing the flaws of their partner—flaws that the objective eye of an experienced person would have noticed in time.

The age of the “young maiden” (12–12.5) is a transition period. The girl is an adult, and her actions have full legal force. But just as the Sages instructed the father to consult with his daughter at this fateful decision, so too they instruct the daughter not to treat her father as “transparent,” but to act in consultation with him and not to forgo his experienced perspective.

Regards,
Y.F.O.

The acronym for “repulsive man afflicted with boils” is especially amusing.

In paragraph 4, line 1:
The period of “young maidenhood” (age 12–12.5) is a transition period. The girl is considered an adult, and her actions have full legal force, but at the same time the father also has authority during this period to betroth his daughter. But just as the father…

I just saw now that the law applies only to someone who has already been appointed High Priest and is still unmarried.
So there won’t be any need to change the Jewish law at all.
This is something very far-fetched to happen, and even if they do want to appoint someone unmarried, they’ll simply tell him to marry the woman of his choice first and only afterward appoint him. There’s no problem here at all.

The problem is if, God forbid, his wife died and he cannot remain without a wife. At least not on Yom Kippur.