Just received a disturbing email from a lawyer.
He claims that a godol asked him to do legal work and promised to pay him. There was no written contract
The godol refuses to respond to requests for payment.
This brings up the issue of whether you are allowed to question the trustworthiness of a godol?
This applies to many fields.
A woman goes to a rav for marriage advice. He does inappropriate things in the name of Torah. Should she submit?
The same applies when a parent or rebbe molests a child
We had the case of Rabbi Greenblatt giving a heter based on claims said in the name of a godol - without checking whether they were true
Bottom line a godol should not be given leniencies such as an oral contract or allowed to do disgusting things in the name of Torah
I encountered this decades ago.
ReplyDeleteA guy with a very black hat and long beard came to my small community and hired one of the locals to work for him for a few months. He seemed quite legit. Came to shul every morning, 2 pairs of tefillin of course and a great reputation. Told us so himself.
So the local worked for him, worked hard and was told that he would be pain at the completion of the job.
The day after the completion of the job, for the first time since arriving, the guy didn't show up for davening. And we never did seem him again. We did hear about him - he became famous for buying a failing Chrisian evangelical TV empire - but the local guy never did get paid.
Why do we conflate godlus in Torah with godlus in ethics?
big gadol he must have been if he bought an evangelical empire!
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