"To the best of my judgment, there is no prohibition in this" — meaning there is no formal prohibition against adopting this leniency and that leniency.

Why, in another responsum, did you refuse to issue a license for such a practice? There, a central point was that perhaps the leniencies contradict one another to some extent under the surface. And even if that concern is only a minority possibility, “they were stringent not to rely on the majority in your overall conduct in Jewish law.” By the way, I poked around a bit and didn’t find a discussion that really grabs this bull by the horns.

https://mikyab.net/%D7%A9%D7%95%D7%AA/%d7%a7%d7%95%d7%9c%d7%99-%d7%96%d7%94-%d7%95%d7%a7%d7%95%d7%9C%d7%99-%d7%96%d7%94-%d7%a8%d7%a9%d7%a2

Thank you very much, Rabbi,
And when I formulate a position for myself, can I constantly try to be lenient/stringent?

Ro, how can you even try to do such a thing? If you study a Talmudic passage and reach a conclusion, then in your eyes that’s the truth. It has nothing to do with stringency or leniency (unless that is itself an embedded consideration, and there are such cases).

I am arguing that there is no halakhic prohibition here, but it is not proper to act that way. Did I write something different somewhere?

RO, Avi answered you well.

In the above responsum I thought your statement, “they were stringent not to rely on the majority in your overall conduct in Jewish law,” was a halakhic claim (even though I didn’t find anyone who explicitly got into the whole issue. Only from the silences can one infer). I don’t know what “proper” and “improper” mean in halakhic considerations. Do we recite the blessings over Torah study on hair-splitting analyses of this “proper”?

“Proper” is what is included in “and you shall do what is right and good” and “you shall be holy.” I think one does recite the blessing over that, though it is open to discussion.

And even where we are dealing with two leniencies that contradict one another, I am not sure that this is a halakhic prohibition.

Two leniencies that contradict one another? The Talmud says “wicked,” and in your view “wicked” means against God’s will without there being an explicit commandment (that is how I understand the “proper” that you wrote about).

For example, Rabbeinu Tam’s view regarding the time of the Sabbath. If someone brings in the Sabbath on Friday evening like Rabbeinu Tam and ends it on Saturday night like the Geonim, is there no halakhic problem, only a matter of what is proper?

Maybe this follows from the reasoning you once raised that there is no prohibition against causing yourself to have committed a transgression retroactively. Like: “This is your bill of divorce from now if you dance.” A woman received betrothal from a certain man according to Jewish law, and the next day she was with her husband and gave birth to a baby boy. Now, if she dances, then retroactively she was the wife of the first man, and her husband is an adulterer and the child is a mamzer. You raised the reasoning that she is permitted to dance. [And I wrote there under the name G that I had once seen someone bring proof that indeed there is no problem in causing a transgression retroactively, etc. Since then I looked and found it was the Turei Even, but I no longer remember where. But seemingly that proof can easily be rejected, as explained there; and if I find that Turei Even I’ll check inside. https://mikyab.net/posts/66093#comment-33006].

But what if it is in one act?
Suppose there is a question whether the “pig” that the Torah speaks of is actually our modern cow, or whether “pig” is actually a deer. And as in the dispute over ordination in every generation, there is one camp of rabbis who say, based on deep reasoning, that “pig” means cow, and another equally weighty camp of rabbis who also say, based on deep reasoning, that “pig” means deer. In such a way that if cow is forbidden then deer is certainly permitted, and vice versa. Now I want, in one bite, to eat cow and deer. I certainly ate pig, but on each question — whether cow is forbidden or deer is forbidden — I rule leniently. And I chew with pleasure. It doesn’t seem plausible.

Something like the manipulative view in the case of setting one’s dog upon someone, which you attributed to Pnei Yehoshua (based on Ayelet HaShachar, who understood his view that way. In my opinion, Pnei Yehoshua absolutely does not write that if you look inside) and which you rejected.

Correction to the link, though there’s really no point in looking there.

האם יש הלכות הצהרתיות? (טור 293)

Correct. For example, one who raises his hand against his fellow is called wicked, even though there is no halakhic prohibition against raising a hand.
As for the prohibition against turning an act into a transgression, I once brought proof for this from a dispute among Amoraim in the Talmud in Nedarim 14a: “I will not sleep today if I sleep tomorrow.”
The cow-and-pig case is the case of the two paths, no?

A1. Do you really say that bringing in the Sabbath like Rabbeinu Tam and ending it like the Geonim is not a halakhic prohibition? Or what case did you have in mind when you said that contradictory leniencies may not be a halakhic prohibition?
A2. I thought the case of the two paths was a matter of factual reality and not something where one can choose sides; but in the dispute among halakhic decisors whether one may adopt this and then that, why shouldn’t he adopt them together, each piece according to its own rule? Does the act combine them? (Regarding nullification by majority, the well-known Rosh in Hullin ch. 7, sec. 37 says that since it is permitted one after the other, it is also permitted simultaneously. Of course one can debate this at great length, etc., but in my humble opinion it really is similar.)
Is a doubt of impurity in the public domain permitted even for one person if there is a definite “either way”? For example, he walked on one path and entered the Temple and became purified, then walked on the second path and entered the Temple. I recall that Rabbi Shimon cites the view of the Pri Hadash that he is indeed judged as having entered in impurity and agrees with him. Rabbi Shimon raises there exactly the distinction between reality and law, but it’s hard for me to search now in Sha'arei Yosher.
A3. Maybe today you’ll merit to help me understand the difference between the will of the Holy One, blessed be He, and a command of the Holy One, blessed be He. Is the command an indication of the intensity of God’s will? Does it create a normative entity? Does it produce in people a stronger sense of obligation? Does it cause more severe spiritual consequences? This whole distinction strikes me as astonishing.

B. Retroactive prohibition. It seems from Nedarim that you prove that it is indeed forbidden to create something retroactively. “He ate the prohibited item and then ate the condition-producing item — he is flogged,” if a doubtful warning counts as a warning. Or maybe I didn’t understand. But it seems to me there is some difference between “he shall not profane his word,” where his word itself was precisely to prevent such a situation, and therefore the order does not matter, as opposed to other prohibitions dependent on a condition — in a case like the divorce maybe in those cases there is no prohibition against creating it retroactively. [If he ate the prohibited item and then it became a case of saving life and he ate the condition-producing item, perhaps one could discuss whether he is not flogged. Presumably they discuss this.]
The Turei Even on Rosh Hashanah 28b (I once saw someone cite it, apparently in some sort of collection of articles; I don’t remember who, where, or in what context) suggests that one may seek annulment for a sacrifice after slaughter, even though retroactively he brought unconsecrated animals into the Temple courtyard, “since at the time of slaughter he slaughtered lawfully, for it then had the status of a consecrated offering; and even though through the annulment it becomes unconsecrated in the courtyard, we are not concerned, for unconsecrated status in the courtyard came about automatically.” I did not find a good basis to distinguish between annulment and condition.

A1. When halakhic decisors say, “one who acts like this master acts validly, and one who acts like that master acts validly,” there are views that this can be done even where they are contradictory leniencies. The claim is that both opinions are true, and therefore the contradiction has no significance. If that is the situation here too — then it is possible.
In my opinion this is less plausible, since at least in places where they did not establish the rule “one who acts like this master acts validly,” there is one halakhic truth and each person must decide what it is. But the problem is not following two contradictory opinions; it is violating the law of praying at the proper time. When I said there is no halakhic prohibition in this, I meant that there is no prohibition in the very act of following contradictory opinions. But according to my monistic view (that there is one halakhic truth), there is a transgression here as above.
A2. I don’t see a difference between a halakhic question and a factual one. Again, that is said according to my monistic view.
A3. What makes this different from that?! Why should I succeed today where I failed in the past?! It is not necessarily the intensity of the will (sometimes it is), but its type. There are things that are a required standard for everyone. There are things that are below the standard (and then it is a matter of intensity of will), and there are times when there is a point in not commanding, so that things will be done from an awakening from below (voluntarily). Such as character refinement, Torah study beyond two chapters in the morning and evening, separating terumah beyond the minimum, being stringent beyond the letter of the law (sanctify yourself in what is permitted to you — which may also be a lesser degree of will, but there is also no possibility of commanding it because of the paradox of the degenerate person), and so on.

B. Indeed, that is what I meant. From there there is seemingly proof that in Jewish law there is a prohibition. Still, one can debate what exactly the prohibition is (in the present act or the earlier one). I wrote about this in the fourth book in the Talmudic Logic series. There I brought more examples, such as one who made a blessing and now does not want to eat anymore (Ritva in Hullin and also a long responsum of Rabbi Kook and other halakhic decisors). One who brought a sacrifice and now obtained a better sacrifice, and similarly regarding etrogs in Rabbi Chaim of Brisk. Apropos of the Turei Even, in Sha'agat Aryeh he discusses this at length, both regarding etrogs and regarding sacrifices.
By the way, the Raavad wrote that if a man betrothed a woman through an agent, he should go back and betroth her himself, because a commandment is better performed by oneself than through an agent. One can analyze all this at great length, but this is not the place.

A1-2. Understood.
A3. In terms of intensity of will, I don’t see the basis for assuming that all human beings map intensities of will in the same way to obligation/propriety. It could be that I map all of God’s wills to “proper,” while you map them all to “obligatory.”
The “awakening from below” does not make sense to me and seems like a gimmick. If God does not “command” only so that there won’t be a command, but from His standpoint it is exactly the same thing, then from my standpoint too it is exactly the same thing, and His attempt at camouflage does not succeed. Divine refraining from commanding is not like legislators in parliament refraining from legislation.
[Until today I thought that in your view the command itself generates some normative something-or-other (unclear), and therefore there is a difference between command and will, but I’m no longer sure of that, so I asked.]

B. I’ll get the book, God willing. I didn’t understand why the cases of sacrifice, etrogs, and betrothal (where the possibility arises of performing the command in an enhanced way after one has already fulfilled one’s obligation — as for the idea itself, with God’s help I’ll look in the book) are similar to creating a transgression retroactively.
As for unconsecrated animals in the Temple courtyard, the Turei Even leans toward saying that one may seek annulment for a sacrifice after slaughter even though it is uprooted retroactively and becomes unconsecrated in the courtyard. How does that actually fit with the datum that “he ate the prohibited item and then ate the condition-producing item — he is flogged”?

A3. Who says the mapping is agreed upon? My claim is that the Holy One, blessed be He, decided what to put into Jewish law by means of those criteria. What we think, and whether we understand it or agree with it — that is another discussion. Indeed, in my view the command itself generates something normative for us, but God has a reason to define one thing as a command and another as a will that is not a command.
B. This is a retroactive nullification of a commandment. Of course it requires discussion; I was only noting it.

As for the difficulty from Nedarim, perhaps a prohibition that a person himself created is different from ordinary prohibitions. After all, the obligation is to stand by his word, and not an essential prohibition (even though a vow is the clearest example of an object-based prohibition), and therefore there, if he himself intervened, that would not change his obligation.

You assume that you know what is strict and what is lenient. But it can actually be the exact opposite.

"…They argued against him that he was lenient in the laws of fasts. He said that he was stringent in the laws of saving life…"

It is known from the Torah about the Nazirite, who seemingly was exacting, meticulous, and very stringent with himself. But he is considered a sinner, because he abstained from wine.

Why, from our standpoint (from your standpoint), is there a difference whether something is “inside Jewish law” or not? If Jewish law reflects an intensity of will of 80-100 and the proper reflects an intensity of will of 60-80, then the expectation that a person’s behavior should split exactly according to the difference between above or below 80 is strange. A person can think that for him everything above 70 is completely binding, and what is below 70 depends on circumstances and context, etc. Except that the command itself generates something additional beyond reflecting intensities of will, as you wrote. What is that additional something?

By the way, regarding refraining from commanding so that there will be an awakening from below, apropos of what I wrote elsewhere about a judge whose view is clear to him but says “I do not know” in order to influence the result manipulatively — it seems clear that if he says explicitly, “My opinion is to rule A, but I declare ‘I do not know’ so that they will add judges,” then that is a ruling in every respect and we follow the majority as usual, and his declaration means nothing.

First, I wrote that it is not only a difference in intensity of will. Second, the Holy One, blessed be He, decided that this is the line, not us. At most we interpret His will.
The command generates an obligation upon us, as distinct from what is merely desirable. One who refrains from doing what is obligatory has a claim against him. One who refrains from doing what is desirable is just not okay. Maybe there are different wings in Gehinnom for those two.