Where Do People Get Off Paskening for One Another?

mdoif

Tue, Aug 26 2014, 2:51 am

OP,

You mentioned 3 problems with this guest's actions:

1. He's not a rav
2. No question was asked
3. He was wrong

I'm curious which of the 3 it is that really bugs you - it is it all three? What if only one or two of these points had been relevant, would it have still annoyed you like this?

Ps. I don't think it's so terrible for a host to leave adult guests alone for a few minutes, unless perhaps if one of them is criminally insane.

tigerwife

Tue, Aug 26 2014, 5:18 am

mdoif wrote:

To me it seems like the main problem was him embarrassing someone in public. Even if this girl herself would have been in a forbidden relationship and he would have been totally correct in all of his accusations, he is STILL not allowed to give her mussar in public like this.

Dolly Welsh

Tue, Aug 26 2014, 1:01 pm

Mdoif, the basic crime here was the indifference to the hurt experienced by someone else.

His using Torah to hurt her makes it even worse. It is like dipping an arrowhead in poison. In addition to the physical wound, you also get the poison.

If he had said "those earrings are ugly and you really should see a dermatologist about your awful complexion, and it's possible, with today's techniques, that those teeth of yours could be made a little more presentable" it would have been bad enough.

But he went even further and didn't just try to make her hate herself, but also hate Torah, and her membership in the Jewish nation. Outside of the Jewish nation, she's not a bastard because her parents were married. Inside, she has been made to think that she is a bastard because her father was a Kohain and married her mother. So to remove her bastardy, all she has to do is leave the Jewish nation. With it's mean old Torah that defines nice ladies as bad people.

So he used Torah against her; he used it as a weapon. That would be bad enough against a non-Jew, but this was against someone who is therefore being tempted to hate her own people and identity. And her heritage of Torah.

So Mdoif you aren't looking deeply enough into what went wrong and what is bothering OP.

Avos condemns using Torah as a spade to dig. Even Avos couldn't anticipate using the shovel to deck a fellow Jew, and in this case, a woman.

OP has asked us to find a barrier against non-rabbis practicing without a license as rabbis and poskening. All we have been able to find against that is basic manners. That may have to do. We do indeed share insights, and we do indeed regard ourselves as a nation of priests. We are. So, we have to exhibit the intelligence of priests, and this man didn't.

Last edited by Dolly Welsh on Tue, Aug 26 2014, 1:09 pm; edited 1 time in total