YWN Coffee Room

YWN Coffee Room » Decaffeinated Coffee

1. popa_bar_abba
   Incorrigible; semi-retarded; eccentric; perhaps a woman; not Mod 80. Sometimes a bit over the top.

   Ok, this thread is to discuss the following anthropological question. We are absolutely not going to make judgments based on it.

   There is currently a dynamic in the frum community, where we are "sliding to the right." Children keep more chumros than their parents, and people keep more chumros than they themselves did 20 years ago. This is indisputable (although, by all means feel free to dispute it- just don't judge it in this thread.)

   My question is, whether this dynamic is a new phenomenon. It seems to me, that we have always been doing that, throughout Jewish History.

   I think that learning gemerah, rishonim, and poskim, you will see a general slide to the right there as well. You will see practices which are halachicly acceptable in the rishonim, become assur in the acharonim.

   I have a few concrete examples.

   1. All the places where the rishonim were willing to rely on certain physical tests to find out something, by the time you get to the rema we don't rely on it. eg. Tasting food to see if it tastes like issur. And that we don't know בין כחוש לשמן. Or that we consider every maliach to be roseach.

   2. Minhagim that we have picked up to be machmir and create black line rules instead of deciding things case by case. For example, that we consider every niddah to be a zava gedolah.

   3. Another example I have is in shechita, where the rema basically makes everything assur unless the whole shechita happened in the best way possible, even though the actual halacha is to allow many things.

   4. Random chumros like the bizarre treatment of a pot that a tipah falls on from outside in 92:5-6.

   5. I think we can also see a general trend in the poskim, to take the chumros of both shittos rishonim. An example of that is the treatment of maliach that we are machmir to consider it roseiach both immediately, and after shiur melicha, according to rema 91:5.

   So, what d'you all think? Am I correct about this? I had this out with an academic historian who studies judaism, last night.

   Please don't discuss here whether you like chumros or not. Discuss that in this thread http://www.theyeshivaworld.com/coffeeroom/topic/the-judgmental-thread-by-popa

   Posted 3 months ago #

2. ItcheSrulik
   Resident College "Shaigetz"

   You are empirically correct.

   edited to remove suggestion of how judgment analysis should look. that is also prohibited in this thread. by order of my boich.

   Posted 3 months ago #

3. littleapple
   Member

   The slide is ameliorated by the fact we can still rely on the makil shita at times, for instance in kashrus b'hefsed mrubah it is often seen that a rishon that we don't usually rely on will be. Also in hilchos Shabbos, but this can be taken too far as well; I once heard a Rav matir borar of non-food items based on an Ohr Someach that is seemed (at least to me) to be speaking theoretical and not l'halacha.

   Posted 3 months ago #

4. popa_bar_abba
   Incorrigible; semi-retarded; eccentric; perhaps a woman; not Mod 80. Sometimes a bit over the top.

   Buzzer sounds. Take that judgment and put it in the other thread.

   My point is only that the historian is wrong, and I am right. I found out his name. It is Jay Harris, from Harvard. I met him at some function last night, and this was the topic of conversation. I wonder if he'll google his name some time and find this.

   Posted 3 months ago #

5. HaLeiVi
   HaLeiVi is Supposedly not Joseph

   Hey popa, you got moderator privileges? So why don't you fix up your subtitle?

   Not trusting yourself is not quite the same thing as 'moving toward the right'. Also, if every generation adds only one Gezeira - which is not quite the same as adding a Chumra - then obviously they will pile up.

   I don't know why you brought up Nida. That is in the Gemara, along with many other Gezeiros.

   As far as finding a trend, I don't think it is consistent. You can find things in old Tshuvos that really make you wonder what was going on.

   Posted 3 months ago #

6. yitayningwut
   Bruno Michel Iksil

   1) There is a basic difference between the current slide to the right, and the one which has been going since the times of the amoraim. They were being machmir – generally – because of a weakness; an inability to determine something that once was easy to determine, an unwillingness to be machri’a in a machlokes of people greater than them, a fear of relying on their own personal judgment, and so on. While this concept exists nowadays as well, there is something else which I think is unique to our generation, and that is to be machmir more than our parents because we have more information than them. We know that the halacha is that a woman is expected to cover her head, while they didn’t. We know that mixed dancing is improper, while they didn’t. We know swordfish isn’t kosher, while they didn’t (I am not saying that these things are necessarily true, I am only saying that this is the perspective of the “machmir” generation with these things, as opposed to being machmir because of a weakness).

   2) Another difference, and here is where I actually believe that this historian might have a point, is that it used to be that you had a kehila with set minhagim and a rabbi, and now (by-and-large) we don’t. While a posek trying to figure out a halacha without an established minhag would be in the same boat then as now, in those days it was possible to say במקומו של ר"א היו כורתין עצים לעשות פחמין לעשות ברזל בשבת במקומו של ר' יוסי הגלילי היו אוכלין בשר עוף בחלב. You didn’t have to worry about the fifty other shitos, because you had an established מנהג ותיקין. Nowadays, where we don’t have this, everyone is stuck with five hundred shitos about everything. Everyone is choshesh for every chumra the Mishna Berura brings down, even the ones he himself was not noheig, because what else are we to do? We don’t have the guts to be machri’a, and we have no strong minhag to hang our hat on. And it proliferates, for since there is no minhag and lots of poskim are afraid to be machri’a, new shitos keep sprouting up, and everybody keeps being choshesh for all of them. In the olden days, you don’t find, for example, the Rema, generally imposing new chumras on people against the minhag. You had the power of minhag to stop this process in its tracks. The concept of being machmir like both shitos etc. was limited to cases where there was no clear-cut minhag. Nowadays, we don’t have that luxury, which is why every likut sefer out there is machmir on every shitah in the book.

   Posted 3 months ago #

7. yitayningwut
   Bruno Michel Iksil

   HaLeiVi -

   I don't know why you brought up Nida. That is in the Gemara, along with many other Gezeiros.

   Because it isn't a gezeira, it's an example of what he is saying - people accepting upon themselves to be machmir because it's too complicated to be meikil (the fact that it occured during the times of the Gemara doesn't change that).

   Posted 3 months ago #

8. popa_bar_abba
   Incorrigible; semi-retarded; eccentric; perhaps a woman; not Mod 80. Sometimes a bit over the top.

   Haleivi:

   Not trusting yourself is not quite the same thing as 'moving toward the right'.

   It is true some of the chumros were in that genre, but since many aren't, I think we can see a trend together.

   I don't know why you brought up Nida. That is in the Gemara

   Yes, you are correct it is in the gemara nidda 66a. However, that shows that the trend goes back even that far. However, you are correct that I was mistaken in my original post and thought it was more recent.

   Yitay:

   Yes, I don't doubt that the sociological factors causing this may be different now than before. Specifically, as you note the idea that the communities got mixed together.

   And also that to an extent, there is a realignment of custom back to halacha. For an example of that in the past, see Rema 89:1 that the custom in Ashkenazi communities was to wait only 1 hour, but that he says we should nevertheless wait 6 hours- and this was apparently adopted by most Ashkenazi communities, with exceptions.

   Posted 3 months ago #

9. yichusdik
   Member

   It strikes me that we have a situation that is unique. Today, Everyone from Gedolim to the most casual learner has access to the entire corpus of Torah shebichsav and Torah Shebealpeh, and almost every sefer written since the gemara was concluded is either extant or referenced in another sefer. At times, there were communities where even a shas was an impossibility to have or see (for example in France in the late 13th century, after almost every shas was burned) and the conduit for halachic knowledge narrowed to one or two Rabbonim in each city. And now, more than ever in history, there are growing numbers of talmidei chachomim or at least competent learners who can access all of those texts. In my opinion this poses both a danger and an opportunity, as seen from a halachic viewpoint. The opportunity is to have a more halachicly literate am yisroel, who have the capacity to find relevant halachos and teshuvos as well as the capacity to ask a Rov for guidance. The danger is that not only are those sources available to bnei Torah, they are available to everyone, and those without a vested interest in a halachic life may view and use that corpus of halacha in ways foreign to frum communities. There is also the danger (perceived or real, I don't know), that frum Jews will make more recourse to the corpus of halachic material they have access to, and will perhaps do so when they might or should be seeking further guidance from a Rov.

   How does this relate to the initial post? Well, again, in my opinion, the natural, and I think the intuitive response to these dangers from what we could call "halachic leadership" is to raise more gedarim, create stricter community standards, and generally engage in what the OP described as a slide to the right. It would serve the purpose of "protecting" the community from transgression and it would also remind the community that Jewish communities have a structure and that structure relies on the guidance of the Rabbinic leadership.

   Now, there may be questions raised as to if the intuitive response is the best or the only response to the challenge I presented above, but I think that is beyond the scope of this thread.

   Notice how this post observes, but is not judging.

   Posted 3 months ago #

10. ItcheSrulik
    Resident College "Shaigetz"

    How do you know every sefer written is either "extant or referenced in other texts" if it wasn't, you'd never know about it would you?

    Posted 3 months ago #

11. HaLeiVi
    HaLeiVi is Supposedly not Joseph

    Yichusdik, very interesting point. The Maharal, and I think, the Drisha, write that the reason Torah Shebaal Peh was not meant to be written was so that people should not develope their own understandings. It is definitely great that so many people have access to Torah now, but we can surely see the effect of openning it up and drawing your own conclusions. Eis Laasos Lashem Hefeiru Torasecha.

    Posted 3 months ago #

12. squeak
    Makes smalltalk with the 2 most intellegent beings on Earth

    Looks like non judgmental isn't that popular a topic.
    (Observation)

    Probably because we're all such a judgmental group.
    (That was me playing my get off-topic free card)

    Posted 3 months ago #

13. popa_bar_abba
    Incorrigible; semi-retarded; eccentric; perhaps a woman; not Mod 80. Sometimes a bit over the top.

    Well, my judgmental thread got even less bites.

    Posted 3 months ago #

14. Toi
    Shruikin

    being judgemental is more fun. popa is just mental.

    Posted 3 months ago #

15. ItcheSrulik
    Resident College "Shaigetz"

    pba: THat's because it's hard to be judgmental in an approved format. BTW, you're question is sociological not anthropological. Go to haskala school.

    Posted 3 months ago #

16. Toi
    Shruikin

    itch-LOL

    Posted 3 months ago #

17. longarekel
    Member

    perhaps the tendency to chumros reflects an overall tendency to always get things 'just right'. people are anxious about everything and perfectionistic in general(just an observation-i could be wrong and i'm not judging anyone-not now anyway) so those who are into halacha focus this approach on halacha. Rabbosai, chill out! Dracheha darchei noam!

    Posted 3 months ago #

18. ItcheSrulik
    Resident College "Shaigetz"

    *your

    Posted 3 months ago #

RSS feed for this topic

Reply

You must log in to post.