> If someone (for example) doesn’t go to the army because his Rebbe holds that is not good for him,
…
> That isn’t a חיסרון in the Chafetz Chaim ח״ו, but the initiative had to come from the one who was zocheh to it.
I do understand, of course, that yeshiva bochrim may be sincere in their actions and may indeed be correct provided their Rebbe’s position is halachikaly sound as it might be.
But do you see a stirah here between your 2 statements? If the rebbe is not infallible, then there is a place for non-rebbes to come up with solutions.
Somehow, learning how to divide a talit that two people are holding is worthy learning, but a contemporary issue is relegated to “let the Rebbe tell us”. The way I understand halocha develops is that multiple people try to resolve the issue and it propagates to the senior rabonim. Told here before: My Rebbe was teaching that Polish responsa at some century stopped being about business ethics (ehrliche) and only about kashrus (frum) [coincided with overall decline of Poland]. I asked: “so it is _your_ fault”? [Rabbis not writing teshuvos]. He responded: “no, it is _your_ fault” [people not asking right shailos].
BTW, Chofetz Chaim was not oblivious, he knew and and tried to resolve the problem. His solution: an article in a Yiddishe paper summarizing halochos of mikva on one page, asking women who know how to read – to read this article to those who women who do not. No suggestion to teach them reading, he did not think it is possible, I guess. Not that nothing was done at the time – R Shapiro Lublin yeshiva that fed students, daf yomi; R Moshe Soloveitchik was involved with some “modern” “kosher” schools, don’t know details; Ponevezh Rav opened a school for girls that has good enough secular education that he out-competed a non-religious school [as the biographer writes bashfully – a school that satisfied rich parents].