Q&A: Between a Reform Jew and an Observer of Jewish Law
Between a Reform Jew and an Observer of Jewish Law
Question
Hello to our master, may he live long and well.
I thought that in order to settle once and for all the well-known dispute over what counts as a Reform Jew, perhaps it would be worth saying that anyone who determines his halakhic conclusion on the basis of halakhic sources and reasoning that emerges from within Jewish law—no matter how far-reaching his position may be—is not Reform. Maybe one may not rely on his rulings or eat food under his kosher supervision, but all in all he is simply mistaken. By contrast, a person who determines whatever he feels like on the basis of nothing and calls himself a Jewish denomination is indeed Reform. (By the way, most Reform Jews in the social sense draw their conclusions from nothing, and some of them are even atheists. The Reform community today is nothing more than a Jewish identity for secular Jews abroad.)
But after my brilliant solution to this tangled topic, I am left with one question: what, in your opinion, is the status of a person who argues for changing Jewish law on the basis of reason alone (for example, that the Sages were mistaken in legal reasoning, all the more so in physical reality), or more than that, someone who wants to change or abolish parts of Jewish law on the basis of social norms—for example, allowing a woman to testify, or stopping circumcision altogether (maybe I got carried away there)—and the like?
Answer
Greetings from the holy mountain.
This is more or less the definition I suggested in my articles (if it is brilliant, I take that as a compliment).
Discussion on Answer
It seems there is a difference between convenience and values (even though the mechanism of the midrash is similar).
Moshe,
In addition to what has already been written—
A. (Rabbi Kook does not say there that the exposition of “for your acceptance” depends on whether we interpret the reason for the verse.)
B. Note that Rabbi Kook there is speaking only about Torah interpretation by the Great Sanhedrin in the Chamber of Hewn Stone, which is a binding condition for expositions of this kind; see there.
C. “So that he may rest” and prohibited labor are two different things. This is what we received in the tradition from the Sages: even labor that involves no exertion at all is forbidden. So what has changed?
Besides, it does not say “for his acceptance” (at least not with all sacrifices, and certainly not with obligatory sacrifices).
There is a difference between convenience and values, of course. But many times it is not only about convenience. For example, the claim that a real “so that he may rest” includes turning on an air conditioner.
If that is the correct interpretation, then yes, it would be possible to change it. But a Sanhedrin would be required for that. By the way, as has already been noted, this is not connected to changing the law through interpreting the reason for the verse.
Why is a Sanhedrin required for expositions using the thirteen hermeneutical principles? It seems to me the Rabbi wrote otherwise somewhere else.
Obviously it is not required. But a Sanhedrin is required in order to change existing Jewish law, whether by means of an exposition or in any other way. Of course, even if a religious court or some sage makes an exposition that creates Jewish law rather than changing existing Jewish law, it is still binding only on him and not on the public.
Rabbi Kook wrote in “Perplexed of the Generation” that in the future there presumably will not be animal sacrifices, and they will rely on this by ruling that we interpret the reason for the verse, and the Torah says “for his acceptance,” and that is not what the average person wants. Is this different from interpreting “so that he may rest” and permitting driving that does not involve exertion?