Avot175

נושא: Avot

BET MIDRASH VIRTUALI

Rabbi Ĥanina ben-Dosa says: The wisdom of him whose fear of sin takes precedence over his wisdom will endure; but the wisdom of him whose wisdom takes precedence over his fear of sin will not endure. He [also] used to say: The wisdom of him whose actions are more than his wisdom will endure; but the wisdom of him whose wisdom is more than his actions will not endure. He [also] used to say: God is pleased with those with whom people are pleased; but God is not pleased with him with whom people are not pleased.

12:
One can think of many examples throughout Jewish halakhic history where fear of sin had to contend with contemporary wisdom. The most obvious example is what happened in Ashkenaz (France and Germany) towards the end of the 10th century. The Torah implicitly permits a man to be married to more than one woman at the same time – just as it expressly forbids a woman to be married to more than one man at the same time. To the sages of the time this difference seemed to be inherently wrong. It matters not whether the opinion of the sages was influenced more by non-Jewish custom or by the inequality of women, though, as we shall see, there is a clear indication that it was the latter.

13:
It was no easy task for Rabbenu Gershom to persuade the menfolk of Ashkenaz to accept a takkanah [institution of the rabbis] whereby no man could be married to more than one woman at the same time. Almost contemporary accounts tell us that this takkanah was accepted at the fair in Frankfurt. However, there were many menfolk who objected to this curtailment of their 'rights': was it not sinful to prohibit what the Torah permits? Was it wrong for Abraham, Jacob, Elkanah, David and Solomon to have more than one wife? Were they saints or sinners? … and so forth. Many men soon found a way to circumvent the takkanah in order to fulfill their lustful desires: when their fancy fell upon a woman other than their wife they would divorce their wife in order to marry the other woman. Under existing halakhah the wife was helpless. So Rabbenu Gershom managed to get yet another takkanah passed: no woman shall be divorced without her expressed consent freely stated before the Bet Din: Rotzah ani – I consent.

14:
Without wishing to sound melodramatic I would suggest that it was similar 'gut feelings' that prompted the Conservative movement to move, against conventional wisdom in many cases, towards egalitarianism. Regardless of what halakhah and custom had seemed to dictate heretofore it seemed to be 'out of step' with our ethical understanding of the standing of men and women before God. In less than one hundred years we have introduced mixed seating in almost every synagogue; we have included women in the minyan [prayer quorum]; we have called women to the Torah; and we have ordained women as rabbis. In all cases we have discovered that despite contemporary 'wisdom' these changes were halakhically permissible; and if they were halakhically permissible they were ethically obligatory.

15:
While it is too soon to tell for certain, I suspect that a similar perception, against vociferous contemporary 'wisdom' from many quarters, has begun to percolate into our corporate understanding of the standing before God of homosexuals and lesbians.

16:
In all the cases cited it was the 'gut feeling' – the fear of sin – which prompted honest, God-fearing people to act contrary to accepted wisdom (and accepted Torah!) and make the changes that they were corporately convinced that love of God and love of justice demanded.

To be continued.

In Avot 173 I responded to a comment and that response has prompted the following thought from Ed Frankel:

Your explanation to Rabbi Chinitz proves that Rambam followed the school of Rabbi Ishmael to interpret Torah. Wonder what Rabbi Akiba would make of Rambam? (tongue in cheek).

My response to Ed is definitely not 'tongue in cheek':

Yeshayahu Leibowitz, in his essay "The Practical Mitzvot", writes what is for me an essential truth:

The medieval philosophers, for whom rationalism was not a method but a weltanshauung, defined the Jewish
religious ideological collective as 'the community of believers' or 'the community of monotheists'. This, of course, is completely erroneous from the historical-empirical point of view. 'Belief' was a bone of severest contention inside this community, and extreme polarizations existed within it as regards the interpretation of 'monotheism'. Nevertheless the community never ceased to be one community. What would actually define Judaism was 'the community of the observers of Torah and its mitzvot'; and this was a community whose identity was never affected by extreme philosophical exchanges. Great and good Jews who came after Rambam and who are crowned by historical Jewish religious consciousness as holy and pure, would have been viewed by Rambam himself as idolators.

Why do I think that Leibowitz was thinking of the Besht?

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