This claim explains why, in order to create the aforementioned corpus of military ethics, Rabbi Goren utilized a broader and significantly different variety of sources than generally used in Jewish legal literature. He turned directly to the narrative portions of the Bible, an approach that is not accepted in rabbinic literature, which views the Mishnah and Talmud as the essence of the canon. Similarly, Goren was wont to quote and rely on apocryphal pre-rabbinic literature from the Second Temple period, such as The Books of the Maccabees and Megillat Ta’anit, works that are not recognized as normative sources by the Rabbinical Sages and are perhaps even considered illegitimate as sources for rabbinic decisions. He also referred to the works of the Jewish-Roman historian Josephus Flavius to derive information on the conduct of war during the Second Temple period. There is a logic behind Goren’s use of these sources. First of all, as mentioned, the legitimization of the use of force, its purposes, and its limitations lies at the heart of the Biblical experience. In addition, these are sources from politically active periods in Jewish history — the First Temple and Second Temple periods — and therefore relate to the issues that arose with the renewal of Jewish sovereignty, discussions of which are lacking from the Mishnaic and Talmudic periods and certainly from the later rabbinic period.38 It seems,
The choices were to either discard halacha in wartime, due to lack of relevant data, or to say we cannot fight wars so let's give up. This was his solution.
ReplyDelete279
ReplyDelete"In the laws of the Torah it states: "And you shall live by them." The
Torah was given for life. There is a place for research, for revealing
creative ideas, and for innovative interpretation. I believe and am
convinced that it is possible to solve the problems of the generations
according to the Torah. For our Torah is not frozen in its context. The
Written Torah and the Oral Torah are eternal, and have the strength to
stand up to the difficulties of the generations ... . There is a saying in
the Jerusalem Talmud (Sanhedrin 4:2): "If the Torah had been given in
a clear and explicit fashion, we could not live by it. Why was it not? So
that it could be interpreted either as the forty-nine aspects of impurity
or the forty-nine aspects of purity." In other words, if the Torah had
been given as a set code — this you can do and this you can’t do — we
would not be able to live by it. But it was given in a flexible fashion
... . In this generation, we need the great scholars of Torah and Jewish
law to take a "state approach" to issues and a positive relationship to
the historical turning point for the Jewish People represented by the
establishment of the state "
This was from a speech given in 1969 - presumably this was the turning point in how he was perceived by the Hareidim. (he also said in 1968 that the State and the IDF are part of the geula which is taking place now)
More false dichotomies!
ReplyDeletemaybe there were more options - maybe not
ReplyDeletethe other poskim who wrote teshuvos did so from the comfort of their Ivory yeshivas, not setting foot on a batltefield, and not ever being shot at or having to deal with dead soldiers.
The thing to remember is that Chazal underemphasized or actively played down military themes in their work. In the entire Talmud we have a handful of discussions on Channukah and there are no long aggados about the battles the Maccabees fought and details about their great victories. After all, we were living under other peoples' rule and glorifying our military history wouldn't look good.
ReplyDeleteSo perhaps Rav Goren, zt"l, was simply returning to the older model now that we have sovereignty again and could speak about i t.