Rabbi Dovid Greenblatt - Hesped for his father R Nota

Transcription of the words of Rabbi Dovid Greenblatt by Rabbi Spira

http://daattorah.blogspot.com/2021/05/daas-torah-and-legacy-of-rabbi-joshua-h.html

 My father was matir a woman a year or two ago. He was only matir two women in 60 years. The rest of them, for the other thirty thousand, he travelled on buses and planes, and spent the night, and went to South America, all on his own cheshbon, everything, for thirty thousand. But there were two women he was matir. The last time he was matir a woman, he got tremendous flack. Big Jews criticized him. What happens to us when we get criticized? What happens to a person who’s not a gadol? ‘Ah, you’re criticizing me. You don’t know me. You don’t know why I did it. You should have called me. Do you know who I am? You didn’t let me explain it to you.’ We’re all… We’re all defending… We’re all defending our negi’os. It makes us defend ourselves. ‘What an insult to me.’ But my father said to me, literally in my ear, he said ‘Dovid,’ he said, ‘you understand the problem.’ He said: ‘Now, if a woman needs a heter, a Rav is not going to give her a heter no matter what, because he’s not going to want to take the flack. We’ve now made it hard for a woman who deserves a heter to get a heter.’ He didn’t think one second about himself. This was only about what is this going to do to nebach to the woman that deserves a heter and has a gadol who’s going to say ‘I don’t want to end up with that flack.’ I think it’s a small story but I think it’s the difference between gadlus and… and… and… and… and… and being one of… and being me… being the rest of us. 

The bottom line is that he erred in not retracting the mistaken heter. Contrary to what is claimed above greatness is not stubbornly hanging on to a widely criticized mistake but rather acknowledging the obvious truth and trying to correct the damage. The damage was not caused by the widespread outrage to the mistaken heter but by the heter itself!