Q&A: "Rebellion" in the Talmud
"Rebellion" in the Talmud
Question
I recently got drawn into a discussion about music during the Omer, and from there to the prohibition on music in general after the destruction of the Temple.
The familiar justifications regarding recorded music are well known, but nowadays it seems that everyone is lenient even with live instruments, and also with drinking wine and the like.
In the discussion, views were raised from various halakhic decisors who qualify the prohibition and limit it to certain circumstances, and the idea also came up of a “decree that the community cannot abide by.”
One of the participants pointed to Maimonides’ words in the Laws of Rebels, that a decree which the community cannot abide by is not automatically nullified; rather, the Sanhedrin must permit it, and until then, anyone who does not observe it is still a transgressor (or, in another formulation: if someone asks, they would be told it is forbidden).
Then he argued that if we are being honest, we are simply doing the opposite of what is written in the Talmud. And we have no formal permission for this. Do you agree with that? It is a bit different from the “passt nisht” arguments that you hold by, because here, on the face of it, there is no social-essential reason to cancel the prohibition.
Answer
That is בהחלט possible. But you are not right in your distinction from “passt nisht” arguments. There are cultural situations in which it is simply out of the question to prevent people from a certain type of activity, and therefore it is “passt nisht.” The place music occupies in our world today is apparently such a case. This is no different from a “passt nisht” argument that nowadays it is simply out of the question to destroy churches or burn Christian books. As I understand it, this is not an argument of coercion or danger, because that would not require “passt nisht” arguments; rather, it is a cultural argument. In our culture today, such behavior is simply out of the question. We are all deeply shocked by acts like burning synagogues or Torah scrolls, or harassing people who wear distinctly Jewish clothing. But in principle we too are supposed to do exactly the same thing to others. That only illustrates why such behavior is “passt nisht” today.
[It is also possible that the passage of time has had its effect. The destruction happened already two thousand years ago, and perhaps there is a feeling that one cannot go on with this forever. I don’t know.]
As for the rules for annulling enactments, Jewish law does not operate exactly according to the rules. It has its own ways. Sometimes people stop acting in accordance with some halakha without its having been formally annulled by a vote, simply because the public collectively understood that it no longer belongs. One can justify this by saying that public consent (even if only implicit) is considered like a ruling of the Great Court (Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook, Beit Yishai, and others raised such arguments). But it seems to me that the nullification came before these explanations. You can find many examples of this in my article here on the site about the annulment of enactments in our time.
In my estimation, the halakhic decisors who found grounds for leniency also relied on the permission that the people had already adopted “from below,” and only afterward proposed some kind of halakhic anchor for it (usually not very convincing). They do not want to leave the public—and probably themselves as well—with the feeling that one may act outside the bounds of formal Jewish law. But in truth, the basis of the permission is not a halakhic consideration. In my above-mentioned article, various lines of reasoning are presented, and it is clear that they too were all created after the fact.