Q&A: Are conservatives frauds? They keep changing all the time, only toward stringency…
Are conservatives frauds? They keep changing all the time, only toward stringency…
Question
One of the great conservative rabbis, and one of the more extreme among them, does not accept the leniency for a stain smaller than a gris, (apparently a minority opinion) — and why?
Today people are much cleaner than they used to be (women certainly), and there aren’t tiny creatures there that get crushed and create bloodstains…
The Sages’ leniency has no factual basis to rely on nowadays.
Factually, he is probably right…
Bottom line, he’s a conservative who changes Jewish law… (in the stringent direction)
Or a conservative and zealous rabbi who forbids going to work in order to earn one’s bread honestly. (As long as the Zionists fund them willingly or unwillingly.)
Why?
Because there is concern that someone who goes out to work will be spiritually corrupted.
But what was the case throughout all the generations? People worked. So why change?
Because today whoever goes out to work becomes corrupted…
Without getting into the argument over whether he is right or just talking nonsense, he changes things because he claims you have to update according to a changing reality…
And likewise he recites kiddush over wine but in a large quantity. Why? The Sages wrote a measure. Measure it and you’ll discover it’s much less.
No. Because he claims that human nature has changed (factually, probably nonsense dressed up nicely). Bottom line, he changes Jewish law.
It says the size of an egg, and he adds to it because he claims a liberal argument: there have been changes, and Jewish law must be adapted to ongoing changes.
I’d be willing to agree with him, except that I suspect his sincerity, because it (almost) always somehow comes out in the stringent direction for them (that is, whatever seems right to them =)
Maybe we should move away from the categories of conservatives and liberals?
Here’s the wonder of it:
When they want to be stringent, they’ll make piles of arguments that the situation has changed and therefore we must be more stringent…
What does the Rabbi think about this?
(Among liberals too, is there conservatism hiding when convenient, and liberalism when convenient?)
Answer
Indeed, I’ve written that in practice even Haredim are midrashic conservatives (their plain-sense approach is only an ethos). And of course stringency is easier, because all in all there is no transgression here even if you changed things. But I don’t know of a halakhic decisor — certainly not a Haredi one — who forbids killing a louse on the Sabbath. And of course it is not always clear which side is the stringent one (usually this can be seen both ways).
Some of the examples are similar to the presumption that a person does not repay a debt before its due date, in my column. There it’s not even midrash but something found in the text itself. For example, changing the measures. According to them, that was the egg, and there is no change here.
In any case, they will usually present it as an enactment or a temporary ruling, and not as a new interpretation of the sources. Which is of course absurd, since today there is no one authorized to establish enactments or temporary rulings, but interpretation is possible for anyone.
Discussion on Answer
A nice argument, but I’m not sure it’s correct. You brought a few examples, but there are also conservatives who win. Beyond that, some conservatives want to slow the pace of change, so that changes will be weighed more carefully. And beyond that, even if they lose in the end, if they are right then one should join them. Practical victory does not prove justice. Like the argument with the Haredim regarding Zionism.
If he changes things, how is he a conservative? A conservative tries to preserve the existing situation. Conservatism always loses. The conservative is like an army that is losing on the battlefield and tries to hold on to one more piece of territory, which in the end it also loses.
Two hundred years ago conservatives supported slavery. Today I don’t know a single conservative who wants to bring slavery back. About a hundred years ago and less, they opposed women’s suffrage. Today I don’t know a conservative who opposes that.
In everything, the conservative loses in the end. So why would anyone adopt an ideology that in the end loses? It’s impossible to preserve the existing situation over time, because the world changes.