debka_notion | Mild Frustration, or On Keeping Your Word

Mild Frustration, or On Keeping Your Word

A bit over a month ago, I asked one of my teachers for source materials on a particular halakhic issue because it is something popularly observed in certain significant parts of the Orthodox world, and by almost no one in the Conservative world, and I realized that I have no particular reasons for not observing it, although I also don't have any particular reasons for observing it. I just don't know so much about it in general, besides how it applies once one assumes that it is obligatory.

The teacher said the sources were primarily late enough that he didn't see reason to follow it, and promised to bring me sources the next week, and maybe to go over them in class (this class doesn't have such a set syllabus).

THe next week, no mention is made of the source materials. The week after that, we find out said teacher's grandfather had passed away recently. Clearly, I'm not going to bother him about some source materials.

But it's been a while, and he's made no mention of anything. So after class, I inquire about the source materials, and he a. didn't remember that he'd said he'd bring me sources, b. said he didn't really know about the topic, and c. said he was too busy to look into it and then referred me to a couple of books that would tell me why it Was required, when part of what I'd been asking him was why he thought that it wasn't. I'm a little miffed.

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What was it?

Yichud.

Interesting. There's obviously lots to say about it, but I've never learned it be-`iyyun. A good first step is to check out the Entziklopedia Talmudit. It inevitably lists a wide range of sources, with good footnotes, and sometimes arranged in a semi-diachronic fashion. If you're really interested, I might be persuaded to clear some space in my schedule.

More broadly, and without knowing the parties involved, I would suggest following Avot 1:6 and עשה/י לך רב, someone whose judgement and erudition you trust on halakhic matters, and moreover, someone upon whom you can rely to respond in a timely fashion to such inquiries. (Unfortunately, this last criteria leaves out a certain גאון from the running. But I can make some other recommendations.)

On a methodological point: "The teacher said the sources were primarily late enough that he didn't see reason to follow it" -- first of all, it's in the gemara, I believe attributed to David haMelekh (I don't remember if it was tannaitic or amoraic). Second of all, mah `inyan "lateness" etzel "not following a halakha"? (By which I mean, what is the logical connection? If that's the criteria, then no one ought follow any CJLS teshuva! And what happened to halakha ke-vatraei? Etc., etc.)

Omein!

There's a great sugyo a bout yihud in the second chapter of Sanhedrin-- around 21a-b, I think-- which mixes aggadto and hilkhetho in a masterfully literary fashion. There are a number of other sugyin about it scattered through sha"s, and I think the relevant simon in שולחן ערוך is Even Ho'ezer 26, or so. (It's somewhere in the 20s.)

Criterion, sweetheart. :)

Well, you know what I've got to say to that . . . ;-)

I have a feeling that learning with me would probably bore you senseless. Should you find some time to sit down and put up with a beginner, I'd enjoy it, but...

I'm not sure I'm quite looking for psak yet, just because I don't know enough about the issue to know whom to ask. I know that sounds like a manipulative way to use the system, but...

Well, this teacher seems to have an idea that since earlier ideas are more authoritative, later strictures can be considered less binding than earlier positions, and he tends to take advantage of this particularly if the earlier positions are more lenient. But then he's also willing to take later (i.e. usually CJLS related) leniencies. It isn't totally consistent, but he does have a point- anything that someone in the last 50 years especially says is halakha that was not considered a big deal prior that seems to be davka focused against "liberal" leniencies- well, I'm suspicious of the halakhic status of those as well... But he takes it much farther than I would.

Let's discuss.

I wasn't referring to finding a posek, but a "halakhic advisor."

I'd love to see his definitions of "authoritative" and "binding". I don't find either term very useful, nor do I think either concept has played a big role, even less a determinative one, in good pesak, to this very day. With regards to understanding at least in part the force behind increased stringency in the last 50 years, I recommend reading Haym Soloveitchik's classic 1994 essay "Rupture and Reconstruction." His thesis is that stringency is a result of a loss of mimetic traditions and an attendent transfer of perceived authority to texts.

My point is that I don't see why a stringency of the last 50 years should be treated any differently than a stringency in the gemara or rishonim -- presumably the stringency is the result of some changed circumstance that led to a reconsideration of the practice, usually justified by some formalist/technical halakhic language. Why such a stringency should be evaluated on the grounds of its temporal provenance is mystifying to me. Moreover, it's not clear that the value of checking liberal leniencies is necessarily a priori a bad one, at least not any worse than the value of finding leniencies for the sake of leniency, or that are davka focused against "conservative" stringencies.

Okey...

Meaning what? I think I know what you mean, and that would be exactly what I need, but really am not quite sure to whom to turn around here yet.

I haven't yet read the essay, but the thesis thereof has certainly been conveyed in other reading I've done and to some extent in some of my coursework as well.

I think the background of this is the general concept that the older something is, the more force it has and the less one is allowed to contradict it- provided that it isn't some opinion that hasn't been followed since. I think people tend to focus on one side of that equation or the other and not on the balance or something- by which I mean that I know that there are other factors besides when a ruling first happened, but I'm not entirely sure what they Actually are. The whole idea of being strict or lenient for the sake of being strict or being lenient is an interesting one that I don't quite understand even when I fall into taking it (which is plenty often).

Meaning, that since the classic notion of a posek is fairly foreign to contemporary autonomous practitioners of halakha, a halakhic advisor would be someone knowledgeable enough to command the full range of halakhic possibilities _and_ capable of articulating why some subset of those possibilities would be suitable for a particular individual, given his or her circumstances, inclinations, and community/ies.

I'm aware of the concept you're espousing, although it is contradicted (or modified) by halakha ke-vatraei. In practice, however, this "force" is a psychological/sociological one; the legal language of halakha is flexible enough to articulate whatever conclusion is necessary for the circumstances, it's just that in practice the aforementioned force attained by certain older rulings may make it impractical to abandon it, and occasionally even to modify it significantly. The question of "rediscovery" of abandoned practices is the flip side of that; it has lots of potential force but little practical force, and probably would not be invoked unless doing so filled some communal need (e.g., a need for consistency with a shitah that posited pure textual authority, or a need for the particular practice to be revived/enacted).

Define "halakha ke-vatraei" for me? Either I don't know the phrase at all, or I'm totally misreading something, and I'm betting it's the former.

Halakha is like the latter authorities. (Batra as in Bava Batra, "the last/latter gate".)

Well, this teacher seems to have an idea that since earlier ideas are more authoritative, later strictures can be considered less binding than earlier positions....

Yeah, isn't that how virtually everybody views the way the Halakhic Process as working? Everyone, that is, except the so-called "Talmudic Karaites", who believe that after חתימת הגמרא (a term much vaguer than it sounds), everything has merely been interpretation of the Bavli, and the playing field is level between the Rashbo and Rabbi Shmiggeggie from Queens, such that the Talmudic Karaites feel free to ignore anything that either of these people (lehavdil) ever said.

Ahem...

(I'm not denying that the doctrine of "Talmudic Karaism" is attractive, or even comforting. It's just that it's only accepted by a miniscule amount of people-- I estimate about 20 alive today-- and, in my opinion, is wrong, because the halokhic system never worked that way.)

To be fair to those 20 people (and I think that's a generous estimate -- and I met their rebbe recently totally by chance), the Rambam implies some form of Talmudic karaism in his introduction to the Mishneh Torah, but obviously even Talmudic karaites (like Biblical karaites) need a system of interpretation to deal with the ambiguities.

(screened comment)

Do we really need to talk this way about random people on my blog?

Fair point. Feel free to remove my comment.

No, I think that hotshot2000 will enjoy lerning with you, despite (or perhaps because of) the difference in background and textual skills. When I worked with you on those piyyutim about Roheil and Lei'o, it was a lot of fun, because I had the satisfaction of teaching, while still getting a lot of input from you about the concepts. If hotshot2000 has the time, I encourage him to lern the mekôrôs about yihud with you.

I think observing yihud makes a good deal of sense when alone with strangers, on the whole. In various jobs, teaching specifically, rules of yihud apply in the secular world also - never ever be alone with a student, etc, including bat mitzvah students and so on.

On the other hand, carrying the formalism over to one's friends seems rather unhelpful. When MG comes round to our place and W is out and MG insists on propping the door open, I tolerate it because I'm nice like that, but it's a terrible message from MG - either "I don't trust myself not to rape you" or "I don't trust you not to rape me" - neither of which is particularly cheering. One wants to trust one's friends to a greater degree than one would strangers. On the other hand, if two people are determined to behave badly they can still do it whilst being fully yihud-compliant - if we wanted to make out on the couch (chas veshalom) no-one would notice even with the door propped open, since there is rarely anyone in the hallway and they wouldn't come in even if they were. Ergo, propping open the door in such a situation is of little use. If I didn't trust MG I would not let him go so far as to come to the flat in the first place. On the other hand, I understand that most rapes happen between people who have prior acquaintance. It's about where one places one's social boundaries and default expectations, and how one goes about expressing that in halakhic language.

I'm procrastinating a bit. Back to the Torah.

It's funny, I never thought about it in terms of davka rape- more in terms of seduction/other inappopriate sexual behavior. Maybe strengthening the image that bit more makes the situation clearer. But well- something about what you wrote was very helpful. I don't find yichud compelling: I feel like it, rather like shmirat negiah, teaches the opposite of what it's trying to enforce: that without artificial and external boundaries set up in unusually stringent and difficult ways, we have no self-control. This feels like the opposite of what halakha generally teaches: that we have to have self-control and we need to make the right choices. So instead, in the area of sexuality, which is an area that generally freaks the rabbis out some, we have these rules that tell us that we don't have the capacity for self-control and therefore we need to avoid all situations where we might need to have any at all. And yet we're trusted to be alone in a room filled with pork, pork and more pork, as far as I can tell (ok, outside of issues of ma'arit ayin, which yes, I know is a serious concern).

So- I guess I have an investment in finding a way to look at this and see it as something not so intrinsic to the halakhic system, because it feels like a perversion of the system to me in some ways. (Sorry that sounds so strong- I just don't have a nicer way to say it right now. I don't mean to be offensive to anyone reading this.) And if I were then to go to a posek and say "do I have to do this" and they said yes, I'd be in a pretty awkward position... I mean, that's how the system works, but well- I'm not ready to set that scene up at this point. This has turned into a response not only to what you wrote but to other stuff as well, that I couldn't quite respond to on its own... Oh well.

Sexuality seems to be a pretty tricky thing, and is probably in a different category of human experience than eating pork. (The recent CJLS teshuvot had to grapple with this fundamental difference, otherwise kevod haberiot would allow any issur as soon as it became psychologically painful.) So while I share your intuitive understanding of what at least some of halakha is at least partly about, namely, learning to control one's yetzer, I think this needed and needs to be balanced against the reality that not all yezters are created equal, and that perhaps there was an assumption/realization/fear that all the self-control rhetoric in the world can't stand up to this particular yezter. (Which was also viewed as absolutely crucial to human existence -- see Yoma 69b.)

All that being said, I do basically agree with hatam_soferet about yihud, although I would add that in addition to the fear of sexual violence (which women were presumed to be unable to stop, hence the halakha about being `over on yihud with 2 women + 1 man), there seems to be a component of regulating relationships in general between the genders, i.e., issur yihud will prevent the development of even close platonic friendships between men and women (something I keep meaning to research is whether Haza"l and/or their contemporaries even had the concept). To put this in halakhic language, perhaps one could compare the heterim of ba`alah ba-`ir to create a category of heter in a situation in which one is confident to a reasonable degree that the sorts of things one wants to prevent (sexual violence, sexuality impinging on a platonic friendship) will in fact not occur. (I.e., if yihud is permitted when the woman's husband knows where she is, then obviously we're afraid of something other than spontaneous sexual violence, since that could still occur whether or not her husband knows where she is; if we can figure out what that "something else" is, perhaps we could create this other category that I'm suggesting.)

Sexuality seems to be a pretty tricky thing....

Oh, is it?

But seriously-- for a good discussion of the prevention-of-rape aspect of yihud (which seems to be the primary one, at least if we focus on the sugyo in Sanhedrin, about Amnôn and Tomor), read the relevant chapter in Prof. Judith Hauptmann's book Re-Reading the Rabbis.

Is it that her husband knows where she is, or that he could bop by to check in any time, and therefore both she and her visitor will behave appropriately out of the knowledge that he could show up at any point? The latter is how it was explained in what I was reading...

I think I remember seeing a more wide-ranging heter either in Halikhot Beitah or Entz. Talmudit that as long as the husband can contact her at any time, it was as if ba`alah ba-`ir. But you're right, that's still a less far-ranging heter than simply knowing where she is, about which I might be misremembering.

This feels like the opposite of what halakha generally teaches: that we have to have self-control and we need to make the right choices.

Yes, spot on. Nicely put.

I think it's one of those things which is very heavily affected by social contexts, like negia, so there's probably a basis for removing some of the stringencies based on societal expectations of self-control - in which case it's easier to stomach. But I haven't learned the sources - better persuade W to free up some time :)

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Mild Frustration, or On Keeping Your Word

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