Q&A: Halakhic Rulings in Our Time
Halakhic Rulings in Our Time
Question
Hello Rabbi,
Today there are endless divisions in Jewish law among rabbis, and there are several things I don’t understand:
1) From what I understand, the disputes apparently arose because in the Talmud there are many cases where they don’t say what the halakhic ruling is. So I’d like to ask: why didn’t they simply write at the end of each discussion what the practical ruling is, and then there wouldn’t be problems in halakhic decision-making? And if I misunderstood, I’d appreciate it if you would explain.
2) Today most rabbis say, “Make for yourself a rabbi,” or that you should follow what your father/mother practices. But there are a few problems with that: it basically creates the same problem as Hillel and Shammai, where Jewish law is split into different forms and different opinions and disputes, and it doesn’t become something uniform for everyone. So what do we do today? And let’s say my father/mother don’t follow a particular rabbi—what do I do?
3) When people say that something was “determined as the halakhic ruling,” what does that mean? If in the Talmud it remained disputed, how can you say that this is the halakhah? (For example: whether commandments require intention—in the Talmud there is a dispute between Rabbi Zeira and Rabbah and they don’t rule there, but the Shulchan Arukh says, “Commandments require intention, and so too the halakhic ruling is”)?
Thank you.
Answer
Hello,
These are three important questions, and it’s hard to do them justice in a responsum like this. I’ll try to answer briefly.
- See Tur 482. In principle, the purpose of the Talmud is not to instruct us in practical Jewish law, but to establish the form of discourse and discussion and their framework. Within that, there is room for different opinions, and nobody is alarmed by that. On the contrary, there is value in people acting as they understand, and not necessarily in a uniform way—except in cases where uniformity is required, because otherwise problems arise.
- In the previous section I explained that there is no problem with having different approaches. What is shared is the framework, not the bottom lines. If your parents don’t have a rabbi, choose one. Even if they do have a rabbi, you are entitled to choose one for yourself. Of course, it is proper to study so that you reach a point where you yourself will be your own rabbi and won’t need a rabbi anymore (except perhaps for consultation).
- That depends whom you ask (which is fitting, given the different approaches within Jewish law—there are different approaches on this too). It is commonly thought that well-known halakhic decisors have binding authority, and when people say that something was decided as the halakhic ruling, they mean Maimonides and the Shulchan Arukh. In my personal opinion, they do not have binding authority, and indeed in the period after the Talmud one cannot say that something was definitively ruled as binding Jewish law. There are concepts such as “the prevailing practice,” which give status to what is commonly ruled. But this is not the place to go into more detail.
In paragraph 2 it should say: in the bottom lines.