Instead of adding my voice to the WIY-bashers, I’ll propose something worse (not): that the essence of halakhot and minhagim is, in fact, the reconciliation of different demands with each other and with external situations. This is why the Shulhan Arukh fills many volumes instead of a ten-page pamphlet and why hilkhot sefira fill a ten-page pamphlet instead of a single sheet. Shaving during sefira to keep one’s job reconciles clashing values — mourning the death of R. Akiva’s talmidim vs. supporting oneself as Hashem told us to in Bereshit — by allowing it only for that purpose. It isn’t a violation of minhag but part of it.
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