Torat Chaim

Five Towns Jewish Times columnist and pulpit Rabbi Aryeh Ginzberg, caused local controversy, when, in a column aptly self-described as "painful", he asserted that a synagogue's invitation to Sara Hurwitz as a scholar in residence was cause for crying on Tisha b'Av.

Responding to similarly foolish comments by YU Rosh Yeshiva Hershel Schachter, Rabbi Shai Held made the following argument:

One can... be grateful to him for drawing an absolute line in the sand. The world of Jews committed to serving God through a life of Torah and mitzvot is divided between those who believe that gender roles are eternally fixed and immutable, and those who believe that new faces of Torah and halacha are revealed in every generation—as they must, if Torah is to remain a Torat Chaim, a Torah of life, dynamic and alive in every generation... I wish to make one very fundamental point: the time is long past for Jews to assume that the forces of reaction are somehow “more authentic” or “more religious” than the forces of dynamism, responsiveness, and creativity.

This dichotomy ignores the historical reality -- the mantra of "Hadash Assur Min haTorah" notwithstanding -- of a radically evolving American Orthodox Jewish community and the social reality of the Modern Orthodox Jewish community, which, while resistant to Rabbi Held's views on Halachic innovation, is inching slowly but decisively towards an egalitarian Rabbinate.

More fundamentally, the re-interpretation of Torat Chaim, to me, mirrors the manner in which Rabbi Held undercuts himself. Traditionally, "Torat Chaim" refers to Torah as the relationship between the Jewish People and their Living G-d. Something meaningful is lost in this de-sanctification/re-imagining along lines we more familiarly describe our constitution. It is only in the shadow of, in opposition to, "Hadash Assur Min haTorah" -- itself an (a-halachic and) a-historical re-interpretation -- that this new conception achieves richness and power.

[To be sure, the traditional meaning of Torat Chaim is difficult to uphold in our secular, scientistic, world. But de-sanctifying Judaism as a response to modernity is a cheap trick played by mediocre Rabbis. Rabbi Held can do better.]

In the end, the authoritative traditional teaching on Halachic innovation stands opposed -- and is, to my mind, superior -- to both these dueling modern concepts ("Torat Chaim" and "Hadash Assur Min haTorah"):

Rab Judah said in the name of Rab, When Moses ascended on high he found [G-d]... affixing coronets to the letters. Said Moses, ‘Lord of the Universe, Who stays Thy hand?’ He answered, ‘There will arise a man, at the end of many generations, Akiba b. Joseph... who will expound upon each tittle heaps... of laws’. ‘Lord of the Universe’, said Moses; ‘permit me to see him’. He replied, ‘Turn thee round’. Moses went and sat down behind eight rows. Not being able to follow their arguments he was ill at ease, but when they came to a certain subject and the disciples said to the master ‘Whence do you know it?’ and the latter replied ‘It is a law given unto Moses at Sinai’ he was comforted.

In reading this text, one can be certain that what discomforted, and then comforted, our Law-Giver, was not personal embarrassment, and then pride.

Myths

This blog is not in the habit of agreeing, even mildly, with Krugman, however, he opens a recent column with an insight similar to one of the underlying themes here:

When I was young and naïve, I believed that important people took positions based on careful consideration of the options. Now I know better. Much of what Serious People believe rests on prejudices, not analysis. And these prejudices are subject to fads and fashions.

The column illustrates this by arguing that the fear of "bond vigilantes" attacking the US sovereign debt that is currently driving policymakers is the fundamentally irrational product of prejudice, not analysis.

A different analysis -- one that better understood that the quantitative risk of an event is the probability of occurrence times the cost, and one one which still remembered the previous unthinkable-ness of the "bond vigilante" attack on Wall Street -- might view Krugman as providing a self-referential representation of a Serious Person whose beliefs rest on prejudices (or [in this case] material interests), not analysis.

Of deeper interest is the consequence of the -- agreed upon -- insight. Krugman advises his readers to be on guard for the "foundation of fantasy" in-, and therefore not be fooled by-, opposing arguments. This is likely be a rhetorical ploy: Krugman surely recognizes that if Princeton professors can rise above the natural prejudice that otherwise ensnares Serious People, his readership largely cannot. He is, then, intentionally strengthening their own prejudices by discouraging them from taking seriously -- analyzing -- opposing political arguments.

Properly analyzed, Krugman's column provides illustration that the true distinction is not between people/arguments guided by rational analysis vs those grounded in prejudice, rather between those which recognize the intrinsic limit/locality of rationality vs those which do-, or can-, not: There is, in the end, always a "foundation of fantasy" to be found beneath most any rational analysis; the question is what one does with it.