Reply To: Ladies First – Is it respectful or not?

Joseph: “If a couple of poseks use a methodology that is very atypical in psak halacha and goes against the grain, it doesn’t prove anything other than their methodology was a daas yochid that lacks widespread acceptance among the poskim. So it in no way proves we care what the goyim do in this sense. You can find non-accepted psaks through out history (from choshuve poskim), even some that go completely the opposite of what is the near universal accepted psakim, that were never accepted among the consensus of poskim.”

1. The fact that they used this methodology shows that it can be okay to make these types of decisions based on what the goyim do which was the point I was making, so I don’t think it’s relevant if it’s a daas yachid or not.

2. I’m not sure that the psak was so unaccepted. You may not have heard of it because it only came out a year or 2 ago and you’re not in Lakewood, but I think the psak was very widely accepted in Lakewood. It was widely publicized – I’m pretty sure that I heard that there were signs up in BMG- and Rav Forchsheimer is one of the main poskim in Lakewood. Even if the majority doesn’t hold this way, there are a significant number of people who do, and there will probably be more as time goes on, since it’s still a very new psak. But there’s not too much point in arguing about it, since neither of us can prove one way or the other.