Q&A: Regarding Women Lecturing at Sheva Berakhot During Wartime
Regarding Women Lecturing at Sheva Berakhot During Wartime
Question
You gave, in the lecture, a kind of summary that condensed your view on many points. I wanted to ask two things:
A. I generally follow the halakhic rulings of Rabbi Ovadia. If I don’t agree with his methodology of ruling Jewish law (second-order ruling, comparing lenient opinions against stringent ones, etc.), am I supposed to continue conducting myself according to his rulings?
B. Formal authority ended after the sealing of the Talmud. So how, exactly, can the people conduct themselves now without formal authority? After all, every people / country / nation needs formal authority in order to legislate new things for itself, and to interpret the old things. Without formal authority, seemingly everyone will do whatever seems right to him, and there will be many Torahs in Israel! If we are obligated to obey only the halakhic decisors of the Talmudic era and earlier, then what do we do with things that are newly arising in every generation?
For example, you said there is not even one source in the formal authority from which it follows that one must pray separately. Okay, so what? Maybe there isn’t, because they couldn’t write everything! And if there were formal authority today, it would legislate that people must pray separately.
So once again, how do you manage without formal authority, when a condition for a people’s existence is that there be someone to set the boundaries, etc.?
Answer
A. You appoint a rabbi for yourself, and therefore you can choose whichever rabbi you want. The same mouth that bound is the mouth that released: if you chose him, you can also choose someone else.
B. Excellent question, and I’ve written about it several times in my discussion of the “historical accident.” But what can you do if there is no such authority? Do you want to invent one out of thin air because otherwise it can’t work? So who would have such authority? Maybe me? Or you? Difficulties of the kind you raise do present a problem, but that does not mean there is a solution.
Beyond that, I also don’t see the great problem. New issues are handled by the halakhic decisors of our time, and whoever has a position should determine his own position. Whoever doesn’t—should ask a rabbi. What exactly is the problem? Isn’t it already the case now that there are many Torahs in Israel? Are there currently no disputes among halakhic decisors? Even those who imagine some formal authority today—each of them gives that authority to a different rabbi or institution. So if the practical problem is what troubles you, what you are proposing is not a solution to it. In the meantime, we’re managing not badly, so apparently formal authority is not a condition for a people’s existence. On the contrary, sometimes it is what destroys that existence (see the rebellion against Rabban Gamliel in Yavneh).
C. If the formal authority that once existed were around today and would legislate this—then that really would be binding. But the assumption that this is indeed what they would have done does not make it a binding law. First, because maybe you’re not right—they would not have established that. And even if you are right, in practice, as long as it was not established, it is not binding. You can say that it is desirable to act that way, but you cannot say that something permitted is forbidden, or that it is an obligation. That is both false and a violation of “do not add.”