Reply To: A Lack Of Sensitivity

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#795188
RSRH
Member

For some people you may be right, for others, I think, you are dead wrong.

Some people like to just be told what they need to do, when and how they need to do it. They are happy to comply, and do not want (or are mentally unable) to be bothered with the details of how the “Daas Torah” determined what should and should not be done according to the halacha. For these kinds of people, too much information surely deadens the senses and ruins the uplifting feeling they get from performing the ratzon Hashem.

Others NEED to understand the mechanics of how the halacha works. This doesn’t mean that if they don’t understand the logic of it they don’t do it; it simply means that whereas some people crave the spiritual high of Torah observance, they need the intellectual high of understanding WHY the halacha demands X and not Y. For these people, the avodah is only enhanced by knowing the WHY of the halacha (not so much the reason God commanded certain things but the logic of why a particular psak says X and not Y).

Merely discussing something does not give it legitimacy – and even if it does, perhaps that is a necessary risk in order to find the TRUTH. If we can’t discuss various halachic options in a reasonable way in the context of halachic debate (provided that in the end, we ACT based on the proper consensus of our own poskim), then the debate will never ocure, and we won’t really know what the Torah wants of us.

The din of a zaken mamreh is instructive: Even after the Sanhedrin paskins a certain way on a particular issue, someone may go and verbally disagree with them – and even publicly teach that the halacha is not as the Sanhedrin paskined. He is not a zaken mamreh until he ACTS contrary to the Sanhedrin’s psak or directs others to do so. — We can always talk and discuss, that’s how we learn and that’s how we grow; it is our ultimate actions that count in the end.