Impact of access to seforim on computer/Internet and nature of halacha

Halacha and the Internet by Rabbi Ari Kahn 

Born in Brooklyn NY, moved to Israel in 1984. I teach and write about Torah topics. Author of "Explorations" on the weekly Parsha and "Emanations" on holidays - both published by Targum/Feldheim http://rabbiarikahn.com

While Jews, especially traditional ones, seem to have an aversion to the concept of evolution, halacha itself, the stuff of which Jewish observance is made, may be seen as evolving. We who accept that Torah is the Word of God, and that the Written and Oral Torah were given to us, through Moshe, are aware that, as new situations arise, halacha adapts – has always adapted -  in an evolutionary rather than a revolutionary fashion. 

At times, though, catalysts of more dramatic change present themselves: Cataclysms, especially those that cause massive population shifts, tend to impact halachic thinking and action in more discernable increments. Nonetheless, we may say that halacha is impacted and affected, rather than pointing to blatant, obvious "changes." Part of the impact is due to what and how people learn.[1]

Throughout Jewish history, catastrophe has often given rise to the perceived need to collect data, to preserve what runs the risk of being lost. Thus, after the destruction of the First Beit Hamikdash we find the canonization of Tanach. After the destruction of the Second Beit Hamikdash, the Bar Kochva rebellion and Hadrionic persecution, the Mishna emerged in an edited form. After a major earthquake destroyed the north of Israel, the Talmud Yerushalmi was edited. In the wake of the Spanish Inquisition, the Shulchan Oruch emerged. This reaction, which we may call "preservation as a means of self-preservation," is not always immediate, but the pattern of reactive codification and archiving is unmistakable.. [...]

Orthodoxy & homosexuality: Helping gay men marry lesbian women

Time Magazine

Rav Kook:Superior morality of masses, reporting sexual abuse & Aguda

 Seforim Blog New Writings from Rav Kook part 5. by Dr. Marc Shapiro 

[I wish to thank Dr. Shapiro for drawing my attention to the following]

Let me also return to the issue of the Jewish masses’ natural morality vs. the rabbinically tuned morality of the scholars, and how according to R. Kook the former is superior to that of the latter. I was asked if I can provide some examples of this. I think the most obvious such example is the response to sexual abuse that we have witnessed in the Orthodox world. While the natural impulse of the masses was that abusers must be immediately removed from any contact with children, many of the learned rabbis were able to come up with all sorts of reasons why this was not necessary, and why the police should not be called. Over time the view of the rabbinic class has evolved and many of them now advocate a strong response to sexual abuse. However, what took them a long time to get to was immediately understood by the Jewish masses, and they understood it intuitively. Years from now people will wonder how it was that rabbis refused to protect children. It will be incomprehensible to them how this could have happened. We who lived through this experience know that it was precisely the pressure on the ground, from the Jewish laypeople (and the bloggers and newspapers), that forced changes in this matter.[3] Here I think is a good example where talmudic learning led scholars לטהר את השרץ בק"ן טעמים, while the Jewish masses, with their intuitive natural morality, saw that evil must be exposed and they emerged victorious.[4]

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Footnote 3

A friend insists that there is no difference between Klein's position and that of Agudat Israel. This is not true at all. Whereas Klein states that someone can never be turned in to the police, the Agudah position is that a molester can be turned in, but only after a rabbi gives approval. The Agudah position continues to develop, and I have no doubt that in the end the Agudah will end up holding a position identical to that of the RCA. I also think that it is public pressure that will move Agudah in this direction, as public pressure has been responsible for all the adjustments in the Agudah's position that we have seen until now.

Yet even without public pressure, the current Agudah position is so untenable, that is will have to be updated. For one, it asks people to violate the law. The law is clear that some people are obligated to contact the police when they suspect child abuse. By insisting that a rabbi be consulted before doing so, mandated reporters are being put in the position of being told by a rabbi to refrain from doing something that the law requires. Do the Agudah constituents realize that listening to the rabbi in these circumstances can open them up to both criminal and civil penalties? [...]

Finally, unlike so many of the cynics in our community, I don't think the Agudah position is all about protecting rabbis, guilty or not. I really do believe that the Agudah recognizes that there is a problem. It is convinced that the rabbis it will charge with examining abuse cases will indeed make sure that molesters are turned in. The problem, however, is that we have seen all this before. We have seen over and over again that it is precisely the rabbis who have failed in this matter, often because they are not willing to turn on their own. It was precisely because of this that the community of laypeople rose up and said "No more." One doesn't need to be a prophet to see that by relying on individual rabbis to determine if an accusation of sexual abuse is credible, there will continue to be cover-ups. (Am I wrong in assuming that these cover-ups never would have happened if women were in charge? Would mothers ever have permitted child molesters to continue to prey on the young?)

The Agudah position is thus both a public relations and legal disaster in the making. The Church tried such an approach already and it doesn't work. I don't understand why such smart people in the Agudah don't see how their new position is doomed to failure.

Whose side is R Shafran taking? R J Rosenblum vs R A Shafran

Cross Currents

Do We Really Need Another Round of Shafran v. Rosenblum?

By Jonathan Rosenblum, on January 13th, 2011

One of my wittier friends commented that my recent exchange with Avi Shafran on President Obama’s Israel policy struck him as a mental health issue. “I mean its not like you and Avi are major players in the American foreign policy establishment, whose views are likely to have any impact of the Obama adminstration’s Israel policy,” he remarked.

I will confess I did not find any of the points made by defenders of the president’s foreign policy to be compelling or even very interesting — the defenders seemed far more eager to attribute low motivations to the president’s critics than to offer their own substantive defense. And I’m genuinely surprised that there were those who learned something new from Avi that they did not already know about Obama’s stance towards Israel. But I’m nevertheless delighted to find that the president has his defenders and that Orthodox Jews are not the victims of thought control or quite the automatons that we are caricacturized as being. Hopefully some of that independence of thought and multiplicity of viewpoints will reflect itself in communal debates, and not just in areas where our voices are not likely to have a major impact. In the meantime, it is always good to be reminded that no political party or politician embodies the Torah viewpoint or its opposite.

I do take to heart Avi’s admonitions about the difficulty of shaking oneself from settled views or even exposing oneself to counter viewpoints. All of us have a problem changing our minds once we have formed an opinion. That’s why we so badly need a chavrusah who is ever ready to contest our words and understandings with whom to learn Gemara. Similarly, any issue worth debating inevitably encompasses a number of perspectives. I’m therefore grateful that Avi has allowed himself to be pressed into service as my chavrusah on the Obama administration’s Mideast policy.

Avi now claims to have had a very modest goal in mind in his first piece on the subject: to provide readers with a few facts they may not have known about the actions of the Obama administration towards Israel. Had he done nothing other than point out some good things President Obama has done for Israel no one would have or could have disagreed, certainly not I. But his goal was larger than that. In his first piece, he only conceded that opprobrium towards the administration might be justified on fiscal issues, about which he professes to understand little. He did not concede any basis of criticism with respect to Middle East policy, about which, by contrast, he apparently considers himself to be sufficiently knowledgeable. I would respectfully submit it is Avi who has now gone far beyond his original “did you know these six things about President Obama and Israel” who is digging in his heals and putting forward a series of weak “terutzim” in response to my treatment of the major issues of the administration’s foreign policy, which found no place in his original piece.a

What Happened to Obama? Absolutely Nothing. He is still the same anti-American leftist he was before becoming our president.

Wall Street Journal by Norman Podhoretz

It's open season on President Obama. Which is to say that the usual suspects on the right (among whom I include myself) are increasingly being joined in attacking him by erstwhile worshipers on the left. Even before the S&P downgrade, there were reports of Democrats lamenting that Hillary Clinton had lost to him in 2008. Some were comparing him not, as most of them originally had, to Lincoln and Roosevelt but to the hapless Jimmy Carter. There was even talk of finding a candidate to stage a primary run against him. But since the downgrade, more and more liberal pundits have been deserting what they clearly fear is a sinking ship.

Here, for example, from the Washington Post, is Richard Cohen: "He is the very personification of cognitive dissonance—the gap between what we (especially liberals) expected of the first serious African American presidential candidate and the man he in fact is." More amazingly yet Mr. Cohen goes on to say of Mr. Obama, who not long ago was almost universally hailed as the greatest orator since Pericles, that he lacks even "the rhetorical qualities of the old-time black politicians." And to compound the amazement, Mr. Cohen tells us that he cannot even "recall a soaring passage from a speech." [...]

Who is Rabbi Avi Shafran? : An interview with Baruch Pelta

 On the Mainline

Wednesday, October 20, 2010

An interview with Rabbi Avi Shafran about Moses Mendelssohn, Torah im Derech Eretz, Da'as Torah, Science and Torah and the Slifkin affair.

Here's a guest post consisting of a very interesting interview with Rabbi Avi Shafran conducted by Baruch Pelta. Below is the interview transcript. I will post another post shortly which will give some of the background info regarding the Mendelssohn article published in the Jewish Observer nearly 25 years ago, which may or may not be known to readers (update: see this post for some of that background, as well as links to the relevant articles).

This interview was conducted in Rabbi Shafran’s office at Agudath Israel of America’s Rabbi Moshe Sherer Headquarters on August 28, 2009. Rabbi Avi Shafran is the director of public affairs for Agudath Israel of America. At the time of this interview, Baruch Pelta was an undergraduate student in Judaic Studies at Touro College. He is currently a graduate student in the same subject at Brandeis University. He blogs at Baruch's Thoughts.

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'NY Times' slammed for refusal to acknowledge Black anti-Semitic attacks in Crown Heights 20 years ago

JPost reporting on Jewish Week Article

A former New York Times religion reporter has written a blistering attack on the newspaper’s failure to attribute a riot in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, 20 years ago to anti-Semitism. The violence resulted in the murder of Australian Yankel Rosenbaum, a Lubavitch hassid, on August 19, 1991.

Ari L. Goldman, who covered the story for the Times in 1991, wrote in the current issue of New York Jewish Week: “Over those three days I also saw journalism go terribly wrong. The city’s newspapers, so dedicated to telling both sides of the story in the name of objectivity and balance, often missed what was really going on. Journalists initially framed the story as a ‘racial’ conflict and failed to see the anti-Semitism inherent in the riots.”

Philadelphia Mayor strongly criticizes black teenage violence

Flash mobs in American cities - organized by internet

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

R' S. Z. Auerbach:Embarrassing others viewed as rodef/murder in halacha

UK violence raises questions about American unrest

AP

A black man killed by police. Mobs of looters. Cities charred and shaken. The riots in London mirror some of the worst uprisings in modern U.S. history.

And there are more parallels: Stubborn poverty and high unemployment, services slashed due to recessionary budget cuts, a breakdown of social values, social media that bring people together for good or bad at the speed of the Internet. And finally, there are a handful of actual attacks, isolated and hard to explain, by bands of youths in U.S. cities.

As Americans look across the Atlantic, a natural question arises: Could the flames and violence that erupted in Britain scar this country, too?

Police, elected officials, activists and regular citizens offer varied answers, reflecting the unsettled mix of race, class, lawlessness, and the chasm between haves and have-nots that may lie behind the unrest. [...]

Autistic spectrum kids & their love of trains

NYTimes

Like many children with autism spectrum disorders, Ravi is fascinated by trains and buses, entranced by their motion and predictability. And for years, these children crowded the exhibitions of the modest New York Transit Museum, chattering about schedules and engine components and old subway maps.

“This is really their element,” said Ravi’s mother, Juliana Boehm, who brings Ravi and Oliver, his 8-year-old brother, who is also on the autism spectrum, to the museum almost weekly. “If I suggested another activity,” she added, “it may have provoked anxiety.”

Now, the museum, and others like it, are moving beyond accommodating the enthusiasm for trains and buses among children with autism and trying to use it to teach them how to connect with other people — and the world. [...]

Rabbinic leadership lives in constant fear of being labeled too lenient

The Sifi (Devarim 17) says on Devarim (1:16) Don't be afraid of any man. Perhaps a judge will say I am afraid that the defendant will kill my son or burn down my barn...Therefore the Torah says not to be afraid of any man because judgment is for G-d.

This is cited by Chinuch #415, Rambam(Sanhedrin 22:1). Aruch HaShulchan (C.M 12) cites the Rema that today the practice is that if a ruling might cause danger to a judge he can withraw from the case even if has already poskened. But if there is no danger just verbal abuse he can not withdraw.

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I recently had a conversation with a rabbi who is a major talmid chachom and involved in the community i.e he fully knows  reality. He also has strong connection to many of the gedolim. He is widely respected and is viewed as an establishment figure. He never rocks the boat in public but follows the standard chareidi viewpoint.

Someone had just given him a copy of my book on child abuse.He had called me to express gratitude for my book to let me know  that he felt it was necessary and that it was well done.

We talked a while  about the issue of child abuse. I mentioned to him the Aguda position and the nasty editorial in Ami magazine. I said that I felt that their requirement that rabbis had to moderate going to police - even at the expense of the welfare of the children - has no justification in halacha. He agreed without any hesitation. He added that he did not think abuse was being handled properly by the rabbis.

I was surprised at his candor on the issue, so I asked the obvious question - so why aren't the rabbinic leaders following halacha. Why are they taking positions which are against the halacha? 

His answer was simply and blunt- they were afraid.  they were worried about being labeled a shaygetz - a liberal who is lenient regarding mesira - by other rabbis

Then he added - it is necessary for the rabbinic leadership to be pressured by the masses to do the right thing. They are not going to do it on their own and but they would welcome being pressured to do the right thing.

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Thus despite the denunciation of bloggers, advocates and the press - it seems there is some recognition not only of the good that they do but also the indispensable role they play in necessary change.