Q&A: A Sage Who Forbade
A Sage Who Forbade
Question
I saw that the Ritva wrote that the reason a sage who forbade something cannot have his ruling overturned by another sage is that the sage imposed a status of prohibition on the piece and thereby forbade it. I didn’t understand this—after all, whichever way you look at it, if the piece is actually forbidden, then it wasn’t the sage who imposed the prohibited status on it; he merely discovered that it had been forbidden from the outset. And conversely, if it is permitted, then it shouldn’t matter that the first sage ruled stringently. No?
Answer
Indeed, that does not sound plausible. Especially since, according to most opinions, the rabbis cannot create a legal status in the object itself, so an individual sage certainly could not do so. Maybe the intention is that it is like a status of prohibition.
Discussion on Answer
That there is not actually a real imposed status of prohibition here, but one should relate to it as though such a status was imposed by the sage who forbade it.
If the rabbis cannot impose a legal status on the object itself, how can rabbinic impurity exist?
It could be a law of impurity imposed on the person.
What did the Rabbi mean in the last sentence?