Using your own common sense

chani8

Sun, Jun 09 2013, 3:06 pm

tissues wrote:

chani8 wrote:

Maybe we need a spinoff on the halachos of squeezing? Bathing? We could go on and on, but the bottom line is that not all people take even hilchos shobbos quite the way others do. Can we accept our differences or do we let a wall get between us?

You're right, it's silly to get into the technical differences in how we each keep Shabbas. The question is are you doing so based on your own common sense or based on a rav who teaches you the halacha this way? Back to the op, are you trying to say that you are different than Korach? How?

Interestingly, I was taught hilchos shobbos from a common sense perspective, actually. I was taught the melachos and then expected to apply my understanding to present day situations (with guidance, of course).

freidasima

Mon, Jun 10 2013, 3:55 am

Big difference between Korach and between the Besht. Right? But hey, the Besht "innovated" things which he claimed were the REAL basis of yiddishkeit and he took it from mekorot, right? But yet he and chassidut were villified for more than one generation by the Gedolim.

We live in a generation where people are afraid to sneeze instead of using their brains that logically say sneeze, wipe, end of story.

What about all those generations with no communication with gedolim because there was no real communication and Jews used their learning and their commonsense in everything they did? Were they all sinners?

Of course not.

What we have today is a situation predicated on instant communication or rather modern means of communication. Before that everyone acted as some posters here wrote. Doing for themselves what they had figured out from their learning and what made sense to them.

Are people here trying to say that all those people were "sinners" in front of the beisdin shel maalo?

I think that people here have forgotten that Jews have brains. And they have also forgotten how a lot of "lavim" developed. And that certain things which are miderabbonon and not mideorayso are really social constructs.

How many people here when chas vesholom in ovel wrap their heads in a shawl that they let fall down over their eyes? It is a mefairush in the SA. One HAS to do this in ovel.

How many people do this today? Huh?

Social construct.

Same goes for a heck of a lot of other things.
Jews are taught to use their brains in general although all religion is predicated on total obedience. That's the nature of the breed. And people always used their brains in spite of the demand for total obedience because those demanding total obedience were humans themselves and people aren't stupid and realize that other humans make up rules to protect their own authority.

Hence take a lot of it with a grain of salt. Particularly if someone tells you just to "obey everything" (not chukim) and not use their brains at all other they to obey.

yogabird

Mon, Jun 10 2013, 9:23 am

freidasima wrote:

Just a couple of points in response, in no particular order.

Most of everyday life does not require the input of gedolim, or even rabbonim. A basic jewish education suffices. In fact, a person can pretty much live their entire life without ever needing a personal psak from a Rav on a specific matter. The types of questions that engender input from gedolim do not come up all that often for most people.

It is not up to us to judge whether someone who was forced to rely on their "common sense" and came to the wrong conclusion, for lack of other option is a sinner or not. But I'm pretty certain that would fall into one of the following categories: shogeig, misaseik, or oneis.

Judaism always encouraged living in a community with other jews and a rav, for precisely this reason, so that people should not be left in a situation where they are not learned enough and have to make their own halachic decisions.

Judaism has always placed a huge emphasis on literacy, and on scholarship, so that people should have enough knowledge, or at least the capacity to find the knowledge that will lead them to a correct halachic conclusion.

It's interesting that you mention the Besht. And no, I am NOT interested in entering in a discussion regarding his supposed innovations and how they are the same or different from Korach, but I just figured I'd mention that one of the things he himself did, and sent his talmidim to do, is to reach out to jews who lived isolated from other jews and educate them on basic jewish matters, to battle the supreme ignorance that was so rampant at the time.

Bottom line: Ignorance is not an option inJudaism. Either become an expert on every topic in halacha, or ask someone who knows better when questions come up in an area that is not your expertise.

ora_43

Mon, Jun 10 2013, 9:59 am

bamamama wrote:

I don't get how Korach could have staged a rebellion in the midst of the midbar while Hashem was so near and Moshe/Aharon were clearly following Hashem's directives. It defies logic that Korach would rebel. It's such a bizarre story.

Two thoughts:

1. I think to some extent this is one of those clear-in-retrospect things. Even those of us who weren't raised frum grew up knowing that Moses is the "star" of the first part of the Bible. It seems obvious. But if we were there in the desert with one man (even a great prophet) declaring a certain group of people the priestly class, would it really be so clear that this was what G-d wanted? I'm not sure.

2. The masoret is that Korach had alternative motives. When a person really, really wants something, they can often find a way to justify it to themselves, and they honestly believe their justification even when it sounds absurd to outside observers.

Quote:

And, for me, it calls into question the whole idea of unbroken mesorah. If Jews couldn't keep it together while Hashem was *with* them, how on Earth did they once they got to EY? The answer is that they didn't - many went back to worshipping idols.

Is the bolded supposed to come as a surprise? It's explicitly stated in Tanach!

I don't think it rules out unbroken mesora, though. Look at the Jewish world today. There are something like 12-13 million Jews. A few million of those barely identify as Jewish, and AFAIK under half are religiously observant in any way. Maybe 20% would describe themselves as "religious" and of those a huge number, probably the majority, have a high school-level Jewish education at best.

And yet, if all written material disappeared from the face of the earth tomorrow, I think we could reconstruct many major Jewish works - the Torah definitely, and Nach as well to about 99% accuracy. We would remember how to keep Shabbat and Kashrut and could have books on kashrut and davening and Rashi's commentary and the Medrash, etc, back within a year or two (this is assuming the printing presses did not disappear).

And that's today, when most of us rely on books and the internet to store important information for us, rather than memorizing.

So if we could manage not to break the mesoret in a reality where relatively few Jews are attempting to keep halacha, there's no reason to think that people 3,000 years ago couldn't manage the same. IMO.

Quote:

I'm open to hearing answers on the Korach front. I'm also pretty angry at having to explain to my 6yo why Hashem killed people for erring in both this parsha and last weeks parsha. I don't want him to do mitzvot based on fear. I want him to do mitzvot to come closer to Hashem. /rant.

Because you don't think that Hashem should kill people who do evil, or because you don't think defying Hashem in that situation was evil, or because you understand it but you're afraid your child won't get the difference between then and now?

I don't think it's really a long-term problem. Nobody gets to bar/bat mitzva age without having realized that these days it's possible to not observe mitzvot without getting an immediate smiting. Not that that negates the need for a good explanation today, but I don't think you need to worry that this will affect your child's motives in the long term. JMHO.

freidasima

Mon, Jun 10 2013, 1:31 pm

Ignorance is certainly not an option but what makes you think that people were usually ignorant? There were a few generations where we know that people were pretty ignorant in certain geographical areas, but not in others. And the business about live where there is a rov? For generations and generations that wasn't even an option in a good part of the Jewish world.

What do you know about where the rabbonim - as opposed to the Jewish population per se - was living between let's say 800 - 1500? The vast majority of rabbonim in Europe from 800-1100 were living in Italy, northern Italy and much later, southern Ashkenaz. The Jews, however were living all over ashkenaz without rabbonim. And they weren't ignorant from what we know as when the rabbonim moved there we have no outcry of how ignorant the Jews there were before the rabbonim arrived.

Same goes in eastern europe from 1100-1400. There were no rabbonim that we know of who lived there, and when they did appear (think: the Remo, etc.) we did not hear - and we have a lot of written sources - about how ignorant the Jews of Poland were for 300 years without rabbonim.

So let's not jump to conclusions. Maybe today people are or were ignorant without Jewish education. At that time, in a non-textual society, mesorah was really passed down from parent to child and as Yoga wrote correctly, most Jews did not need an individual psak at all during their lifetime. They weren't shogeg or inus, they just lived like Jews lived in most places in the world at that time. and they usually used their common sense.

Just BTW there are halochic discussions all over the place about how people were doing things which were even AGAINST halocho in some places...and yet rabbonim were exhorted NOT to change what people did and in the long run? THAT became the halocho, even though it was against basic halocho. You can read about it in Rav Sperbers many volumed "minhogei yisroel" where he explains and describes examples of it and the halochic reasoning behind how it happened and why the ultimate '"psak" may have been against what the original halocho had been, but local custom won out...because people had used their common sense to reach that psak and in the long run, common sense wins out.