Q&A: Prohibition and Permission — To What Extent?
Prohibition and Permission — To What Extent?
Question
Hello Rabbi, personally I don’t like being strict where there’s no need, and nowadays there are many people like that; we no longer live in a world of just the four cubits of Jewish law. I’ve seen that the Rabbi has halakhic rulings in which he is not strict (I’m not saying lenient, because there are rulings in which one should not be strict). Can the Rabbi give a general overview of the issue of prohibitions written in the halakhic literature that are less suitable to prohibit nowadays? Or of things like the statement, for example, that one should keep away from women… which is apparently advice and not a prohibition—and how I can know that myself? Maybe the Rabbi has a book or article he recommends? If you’ve addressed this in the past, then sorry that I didn’t check thoroughly enough. Thanks in advance.
Answer
This is not a question of stringency versus leniency. Being stringent about avoiding women is lenient with regard to their dignity.
There is also nothing nowadays that is different from the past in this respect: we never lived only within the four cubits of Jewish law, and commitment to Jewish law always was, and still is, the core of Judaism.
As for any particular ruling or practice, each one has to be discussed separately. I’ve already written about many things on the site and elsewhere, including about the sources you cited. More generally, in my book Walking Among the Standing.
I don’t have a general criterion. The context hints at the character of the norm—whether it is guidance or a prohibition. I have written a great deal, scattered across the site and in that book, about the authority of practices, about post-Talmudic rulings, and about dependence on time and the possibility of change.