[Be-Ahavah U-Be-Emunah –
Vayakel-Pekudei 5773 – translated by R. Blumberg]
Ha-Gaon Ha-Rav
Yosef Dov Soloveitchik zt”l related to "creative Halachah",
"flexible Halachah", "new Halachah" and "meaningful
Halachah", in his two lectures, “Zeh Sinai”, and “Sichah Le-Parashat
Korach”, and it is as though they were just written today.
Here are a
few of his comments:
“Our underlying
foundation must be humility before the Master-of-the-Universe. A haughty person
will never be able to become a great Torah scholar. We must accept G-d's will,
without restraint, and not replace it with our own mundane, very utilitarian
logic.”
“Our Sages
use the expression ‘accepting the yoke of the Kingdom of Heaven’. What does the
word ‘yoke’ add? “One who accepts the Kingdom of Heaven without its yoke can be
doing so for convenience, or because it suits his own wishes. Undertaking the
yoke of the Kingdom of Heaven can sometimes be very inconvenient and
burdensome.”
“In order
to join the ranks of the Sages of our tradition, one must avoid trying to explain
Torah law via external rationales. One must not judge or assess Torah laws according
to a secular yardstick. Such an attempt, whether based on an historical or psychological
interpretation, or deriving from a utilitarian approach, undermines the very foundation
of Torah and tradition, and ultimately begets the most tragic results.”
“We must
not surrender emotionally. We must not feel inferior. We must not develop an
inferiority complex. Anyone suffering from such a complex is surrendering to
the transient charm of modern, political or ideological slogans. I say that not
only must we not compromise – certainly not that – but twe mustn’t even
surrender emotionally or feel inferior. It is forbidden for anyone who
undertakes the yoke of Heaven to ever think it is important to collaborate to
the slightest degree with the modern, secular, philosophical trend. I believe that Judaism has no need to
apologize either before the modern woman or before the modern representatives
of religious subjectivism (which argues for a ‘personal truth’).” We mustn’t try to adapt the eternal halachic
norm to the transient values of a neurotic society.”
“Undertaking
the yoke of Heaven requires us to attain the traits of respect and love, and to
admire the words of the Sages of our tradition, be they from the Mishnah, the
Talmud or medieval times. In every case, they are the ultimate authorities.
Irresponsible expressions against our Sages verge on heresy.”
“I bear
witness to the fact that modern life is very complex. I know your problems…We
are facing terrifying social, cultural, political and economic problems;
problems within the family, the community; and problems of society in general.
We sometimes feel as though we are swimming against the current, and that it is
moving swiftly via an external force, in the opposite direction from our own…
The vast majority have abandoned us. We face an enormous challenge, but if you
think the solution lies in a reformist philosophy, or in an external
interpretation of Halachah, you are making a heinous error.”
“Obviously,
many problems cannot be solved… If we say to dissident Jews, ‘This is our
position,’ they won’t like it. They will say that we are inflexible, that we
are cruel. Yet they will admire us.”
“The Torah
calls upon the Jew to lead a life of great valor, a life of self-sacrifice.”
“Yet to
say that the Torah is inflexible regarding problems, that it does not respond
to people’s needs, is absolutely false. Halachah is indeed responsive both to
the needs of the community and to those of the individual, but proceeds along
its own route…with its own criteria and principles.”
“Believe
me, [my grandfather] Rav Chaim Soloveitchik used to do his utmost to be lenient.
Yet there are limits even to the leniencies of Rav Chaim. When you reach the
limit, all you can say is, ‘I surrender to the supreme will of Eternal G-d.’”
“To talk
about Halachah as if it were fossilized, G-d forbid, is ridiculous… We are against
changes, but novel thinking is certain the very backbone of Jewish law. Novel thinking
is endemic to the system, not external to it.”
“Korach
rebelled against the authority of Halachah. He said, ‘All Jews are equal! Therefore, every Jew has the right to
interpret Jewish law.’
“What
Korach wanted, and what many Jews want now… is that the Torah’s exegetical tool
should be common sense, the empirical knowledge of daily living, man’s normal intellect.”
“The Oral
Law cannot be identified with common sense…. It has its own methodology… Anyone
who knows what the Oral Law is knows this.
Are you familiar with the Women’s Liberation Movement? With complaints
against the Oral Torah, against our Halachah, claiming that it deprives the
woman, that the woman is unequal to the man in Jewish law? There are rabbis who
are willing to surrender in order to appease several female knights of Women’s
Liberation. Basically, anyone who has studied Torah as a child, and knows the
Pentateuch well, anyone who has studied the Talmud, knows that this accusation
constitutes slander, since the Torah states in Bereshit that G-d created man in
G-d’s image, that He created man male and female. Thus, equality is a given."
"Let
me explain the approach of those who advocate ‘common sense Halachah’. It doesn’t
matter what they call it. Whether they call it ‘meaningful Halachah’, or
‘creative Halachah’, or ‘the new Halachah’… they are errantly being led by a
simplistic philosophical doctrine that includes half-truths and false clichés.
They are enlisting…a theory about subjective religiosity. When I hear people talking about ‘meaningful
Halachah’, about “ending halachic stagnation’, about ‘empirical Halachah’, I
know what they mean… precisely what Korach and his followers had in mind.”
“Obviously,
Moshe won…Korach’s congregation admitted in the end, “Moshe is the truth and
his Torah is the truth’.”
