Q&A: "Do Not Form Factions" Nowadays
"Do Not Form Factions" Nowadays
Question
What, in the Rabbi’s view, is the practical meaning today of “do not form factions”? After all, the situation is as “factions upon factions” as it could possibly be—these people won’t eat food under those people’s kosher supervision, those people won’t count these people for a minyan, and in matters of custom everyone follows the customs of their ancestors who happened to live in this particular town and not the neighboring one… total chaos, and these are just random examples.
I was thinking—maybe today the meaning is that one should not do this bluntly. Say, if you don’t eat from a certain supervision, you can decline politely—you don’t have to announce the reason—and in general avoid doing things in a provocative way in front of others who follow differently. In short: manners, respect for other people’s customs, and common sense. Maybe that’s not exactly the original idea of “do not form factions,” but it seems to me the closest practical thing given the current state of affairs.
What does the Rabbi think?
Answer
I think manners are always good, but that won’t solve the issue of the prohibition. We are now in a completely different situation, where place has been replaced by ethnic origin / communal background, and therefore two synagogues in one city are not forbidden today (at least for different ethnic backgrounds). The whole issue has evaporated, and to me this is a wonderful example of the dynamism of Jewish law, where here even the rationale is unclear and for some reason hardly anyone is bothered by any of this. It seems completely natural. Reality is stronger than any principle.
Discussion on Answer
What does the Rabbi think about the possibility that, just as the Torah scroll in the ark depends on luck, so too Torah prohibitions depend on luck? Maybe the prohibition of “do not form factions” has had less luck than the testament of Rabbi Yehuda HaHasid, whose prohibitions are observed zealously by much of the public?
The point is not that the Torah should not appear as two Torahs, but that one should not create different customs within the same group. If these are two different groups, there is no problem. So the question is what defines a group: place or ethnic origin. Today, because place is so fluid, it is ethnic origin.
One Little Goat, what do you want me to say? I’m not an expert in luck.
So what does the Rabbi think about things that the people have simply treated as forbidden even though most halakhic decisors actually permit them, like bicycles on the Sabbath—is there a problem of “do not form factions” there?
Most halakhic decisors permit riding bicycles on the Sabbath? I’ve never heard that. And if most halakhic decisors permit it, what does that have to do with “do not form factions”?
If a halakhic decisor permits something but the people have adopted it as forbidden, and even the halakhic decisors who forbid it—Rabbi Ovadia and the Ben Ish Hai—say that because of the custom it is forbidden, then is the decisor allowed to permit it or not?
If you think a certain way, then you should act accordingly. And in general, there is no “do not form factions” in Jewish law.
In Jewish law, a person is supposed to do what is correct.
Two synagogues are one aspect, but the prohibition is much broader—it is forbidden to create a situation that looks as though there are “two Torahs” among the Jewish people, and the feeling today is that there is a different “Torah” for every group and subgroup.
In addition, it is also not really appropriate to compare “place” with “ethnic origin,” because when Jews lived in some geographic location, that was, for them, “the world” (at any rate in the past, when Jewish law was formed). So in their “small world,” there was “one Torah” for everyone (like the idea of one synagogue and not two, in the example you gave), and someone who came from far away had to integrate so as not to undermine the communal order.
But nowadays, when everyone is mixed in with everyone else (whether because of a melting pot, a global village, or just ordinary neighborly relations)—clinging to the customs of the various ethnic communities, which each developed in their own place and were brought along from the separate towns of the exile, and the phenomenon of “for these it’s permitted, for those it’s forbidden,” are exactly the prohibited factionalization, the “becoming factions upon factions.”