Q&A: The Authority of the Medieval Authorities
The Authority of the Medieval Authorities
Question
Hello Rabbi. Nowadays, when one can say fairly broadly that it has been accepted not to dispute the medieval authorities (Rishonim), is their status like that of the Talmud? I am not talking about deciding between opinions, but about a case where it is clear that someone disagrees with the other medieval authorities.
Answer
I don’t think there is such an absolute acceptance. The words of the medieval authorities certainly carry great weight, and you need to be very confident in order to disagree without relying on some other opinion among the medieval authorities themselves.
One should remember that “the medieval authorities” is a collective label for a huge number of works (some of which, of course, have not come down to us, some were discovered over the years, and some are not known to the broader public at all), so it is also not reasonable that there would be such an acceptance. The Talmud is one defined corpus, and it is relatively easy to understand how it came to be accepted as a binding canon.
Discussion on Answer
Why get to the Reform movement? Already today the secular are the majority. If the majority of those who observe the commandments and see themselves as bound by Jewish law decide that the Talmud is no longer binding, then it will no longer be binding. Obviously. The Reform are not commandment-observant and are not committed to Jewish law, so they are not part of the count.
I assume the majority here is not the product of a head count, though that too is possible. There needs to be a sense that this is the prevailing view.
Hello Rabbi, is the source of the formal authority of the Sages based only on the acceptance of the people?
If so, why exactly is that binding? And who exactly has to accept it? And what is the relation to the medieval authorities and later authorities?
See Beit Yishai, Derashot, section 15. Briefly, a person is bound by a law that was accepted by a collective to which he belongs. About the medieval and later authorities, I wrote above here.
So why shouldn’t I accept the sharia of the Muslims? There are more Muslim believers than Jews, and they are a much bigger majority.
Go ahead. Good luck.
I understand. And do you think it would be possible to turn the wheel back—say, for example, if the Reform movement became the majority of the Jewish people, would the authority of the Talmud be nullified? How does one even measure the majority? Would there need to be some alternative framework proposed, or is the cancellation itself enough?