Q&A: Ruling According to the Majority of Wisdom
Ruling According to the Majority of Wisdom
Question
Hello, honorable Rabbi,
I have a question:
On the one hand, the Rabbi criticized the approach of autonomous halakhic ruling, etc. …
But on the other hand, we find in the Talmud all kinds of rules of halakhic decision-making, such as: “The Jewish law follows Rabbi over his colleague,” and “The Mishnah of Rabbi Eliezer ben Yaakov is concise and clean,” meaning that they identified certain sages and saw that they were greater in wisdom, and that Jewish law should therefore be ruled in accordance with them.
How is this contradiction to be reconciled?
Answer
As I understand it, these rules are intended for someone who has no position of his own and wants to rely on a formal rule of decision-making. Someone who does have his own position has no need to resort to such rules. And there is quite a bit of evidence for this. For example, Maimonides rules in several places like Abaye against Rava, beyond the YaAL KGaM cases. For example, in the case of “do not form separate factions,” and in the rule that if one acted, it is ineffective (according to some of his commentators). Likewise, there are passages in which the ruling follows Beit Shammai against Beit Hillel.
And for someone who has no position of his own,
how should he rule?
By the majority of feet?
By the majority of headcount?