Reply To: Who Should be Giving Tochecho to Whom?

I can’t respond to all your points right now, but consider these thoughts, vochindik.

First, the Sefer Hachinuch is not a majority opinion among Rishonim, and even the Amora Rava said (don’t have the source in front of me at the moment) that it is less of a transgression to be with a sofek eshes ish than to embarrass someone in public. The Rif, Rabeinu Yonah, several of the baalei Tosfos clearly disagree with the Chinuch, and even the Rambam, while he doesn’t include it as yehareg v’al yaavor, sees embarrassing someone in public as shfichas domim. There are a huge number of later sources, and R’ Shlomo Zalman Auerbach says in Shut Minchas Shlomo that with the exception of the Meiri, all Rishonim interpret embarrassment as shfichas domim literally.

As well, Tochecho is clearly mandated to only specific transgressions, not to an entire outlook, perspective, or lifestyle that has Rabbinic sanction. You want to criticize mixed swimming, and you think there is a chance you will be listened to, and it is even broadly in the context of rebbe talmid or talmid rebbe, and you do it in a gentle way, fine, you are within the mandate. Otherwise you are simply touting your “Torah” as superior to someone else’s. That’s not tochecho, its haughtiness. Using your example, if embarrassment and humiliation is OK for chareidim giving tochecho to MO’s, would we call their congregation Anshe Retzicho?

If you ask “What is MO and is it the preferable mode of Judaism?”, you are missing the point. Are the tenets of MO appropriate for you, or your family, or within your Rov’s direction to you? THAT is the question that is appropriate. If it isn’t preferable for you, fine, I won’t argue. But if you are arrogating the right to interpret Torah for others in defiance of their own halachic guidance, you are again falling into the trap of haughtiness.

About compromises – what do you think a pruzbul is? There are several halachic compromises that make up essential elements of Torah law. If you analyze the reasons, even our halachic decision to recognize matrilineal rather than patrilineal descent is a compromise too (and a fundamentally good and necessary one, I might add), as the ideas of chezkas kashrus and dealing with the assaults that can happen in war or persecution influenced the hardening of that halocho.