Unpacking Hazon Ish: How Do We View the Formerly Observant?
Guest post by R. Gidon Rothstein
Rabbi Dr. Gidon Rothstein is the author of We’re Missing the Point: What’s Wrong with the Orthodox Jewish Community and How to Fix It, Educating a People: An Haftarot Companion as a Source for a Theology of Judaism, and two works of Jewishly-themed fiction, Murderer in the Mikdash and Cassandra Misreads the Book of Samuel.
During a recent discussion of inclusivism, Hazon Ish’s view of the nonobservant was raised as a possible guidepost, as was that of R. Kook. Their views, it was argued, suggest ways to justify treating the nonobservant differently from the harshness the Talmud seems to prescribe.
I have nothing to add to the conversation regarding those born nonobservant, but I continue to be curious about the extension to Jews raised in observant homes (with no known stressors or mitigating factors, such as abuse), who then left. Is there room to treat such Jews the same way as those born without any awareness of the Orthodox view of Hashem, Torah, and its dictates? Wouldn’t we have to treat these formerly Orthodox1 with all the prescribed Talmudic severity?
Both R. Kook and Hazon Ish made relevant comments on the issue. I won’t deal with R. Kook here; interested readers can see a brief discussion (part of a larger analysis) by R. Avraham Wasserman and a lengthier one, more directly focused on the nonobservant, by R. Yoel Bin Nun.
In addition to analyzing R. Kook’s view, R. Bin-Nun builds his own interesting theory, based on a comment of Ramban on Chumash, that instead of referring to the nonobservant as “תינוקות שנשבו, captive children,” a term many experience as paternalistic, we should consider them a community in error. He had the intellectual courage and honesty to post, on his own website, a critical response by Rabbi Dr. Michael Avraham (PDF), and that, too, makes for illuminating reading.
I note that R. Yuval Cherlow, a student of R. Bin-Nun’s who adopts his teachers’s concept of an erring community (R. Bin-Nun, in turn, accepts much of R. Kook’s approach), finds it difficult to apply this view to those who grew up observant.
Here, I want to discuss Hazon Ish, whose ideas are widely quoted without, I think, considering their full ramifications. In the second essay of Yoreh De’ah2, Hazon Ish makes two celebrated comments about contemporary sinners, one in section 16 and the other in section 28.
The Context—Sinners Are Different
These comments appear in the course of a lengthy and detailed analysis of the halachic ramifications of various ways and motives of abandoning observance. One of Hazon Ish’s main points is that there are two kinds of מומר להכעיס, people who abandon observance of a particular commandment for “spite,” for reasons other than yielding to temptation.
In other words, the Talmud and Hazon Ish were aware of the difference between surrender to temptation and malicious sin. Even so complete a surrender that a Jew no longer attempts to avoid a certain sin is seen as a localized problem, and only damages that Jew’s status regarding that area of halachah.
Other sinners, however, are not simply weak; they are unconcerned with observance. Such sinners are categorized as להכעיס, le-hach’is, as violating the Torah to anger God, as it were. One definition of להכעיס is שביק היתירא ואכיל איסורא, shavik hetera ve-achil issura, that the person gravitates to prohibited items or actions even when permitted ones are available. To choose the nonkosher of two fundamentally similar foods (“fundamentally similar” obviously requires further definition, but not here), is to act so as to anger God, in one sense.
Hazon Ish points out a debate about the status of that sinner, and concludes that the majority opinion is that such a person is a mumar, someone whose connection to the religion has been damaged (with certain halachic consequences), but not a min, a Jew who has written him or herself out of the nation almost entirely. One example, which we will come to in a moment, is that a min is someone whom halachah calls for us to be מורידין ולא מעלין, moridin ve-lo ma’alin, to find ways to put them in life-threatening situations, and not to help them out of such situations.
Hazon Ish does think that a person who specifically chooses to sin because it’s a sin—one example is eating prohibited food that no one eats; the only reason to eat it is to sin—would qualify as a min, writing himself out of the religion.
I mention this to note that Hazon Ish does not betray any discomfort with the idea that under some circumstances (even if this is completely theoretical today), Jews would arrange for other Jews’ deaths. Hazon Ish himself notes that where a court could administer punishment, we would not enact this rule. In addition, a functioning rule of law likely also rules out bringing about anyone’s death, since we are required to follow the law of the land. In practice, we aren’t going to be enacting this rule. In theory, however, Hazon Ish has no problem with it.
To accept his view, then, involves accepting the basic validity of acting this way towards some sinners in some eras, although specific technical aspects of these laws rules out applying them in our times. Contrast that with contemporary discussions of the obligation to wipe out Amalek, which also only applies in very different eras than ours, and the angst it nonetheless arouses among many Jews. I find it problematic when people latch on to a detail of Hazon Ish’s view and trumpet it, since his overall theoretical stance would, I suspect, cause them discomfort.
Revising His Earlier View
That leads to the second interesting point about this essay. Hazon Ish notes, at the very end, that he had previously ruled differently. In Even ha-Ezer 118, he had pointed out opinions that said that anyone who was halachically unfit to perform שחיטה, shechitah, ritual slaughter, would also not be relevant to יבום, yibum, levirate marriage. That is, if this sinner were the only living brother of a man who passed away with no children, the widow would not have to seek a חליצה, chalitzah, to be freed of him, since he is so distant from the religion.
In that essay, Hazon Ish had concluded that a sinner who transgresses a particular sin where there’s an available permissible option, would be included in that category, and is now correcting himself. In other words, earlier in his life, Hazon Ish had been at peace with the idea that someone who reaches for the shrimp at a buffet instead of the lox would not count as a Jew in terms of ritual slaughter, yibum and chalitzah. While he ended with a different view, it shows that the question was how and when to apply certain categories, not a discomfort with the categories themselves.
The Need for Obvious Providence
With that background, we can look at the two crucial comments and ponder their implications. In Paragraph 16, as part of a discussion of מורידין ולא מעלין, bringing about a sinner’s death indirectly, Hazon Ish writes (with my rough translation):
ונראה דאין דין מורידין אלא בזמן שהשגחתו ית’ גלוי’ כמו בזמן שהיו נסים מצויין ומשמש בת קול, וצדיקי הדור תחת השגחה פרטית הנראית לעין כל, והכופרין אז הוא בנליזות מיוחדת בהטיית היצר לתאוות והפקרות, ואז היה ביעור רשעים גדרו של עולם שהכל ידעו כי הדחת הדור מביא פורעניות לעולם ומביא דבר וחרב ורעב בעולם, אבל בזמן ההעלם שנכרתה האמונה מן דלת העם אין במעשה הורדה גדר הפרצה אלא הוספת הפרצה שיהי’ בעיניהם כמעשה השחתה ואלמות ח”ו וכיון שכל עצמנו לתקן אין הדין נוהג בשעה שאין בו תיקון ועלינו להחזירם בעבותות אהבה ולהעמידם בקרן אורה במה שידינו מגעת
It would seem that the rule of “lowering” [into a pit so he’ll die] only applies at a time when God’s Providence is obvious, as in the time when miracles were common, and Divine Voices appeared, and the righteous of the generation were under individual Providence that was clear to all eyes, and the heretics acted with particular malice, diverting their desires to lusts and wantonness. It was in such a time that eliminating the evildoers was the proper way of the world, since all knew that the leading astray of the generation brought punishment to the world, pestilence, sword, and famine. But in a time when all that is hidden, and faith has been cut off from the impoverished of the nation, the “lowering” has no power to close up the breach, but only to add to the breach, because it will seem in their eyes [the spiritually impoverished] like a destructive act and use of coercive force, God forbid. Since all we are seeking is to improve and perfect, this rule does not apply when it wouldn’t produce improvement, and we should bring the sinners back with chains of love, and bring them under the light of Torah to the extent we are capable.
The upshot of the passage is that we would not apply moridin to today’s sinners, since our times are so different from those of the Gemara. As simpatico as we find that conclusion, I think we need to notice its’ underlying assumptions, because we can’t take one without the other.
Is That How It Used to Be?
First, the historical. Hazon Ish views Talmudic times as ones when Providence was obvious, miracles and the Divine Voice were common, the righteous of each generation were under clear individual Providence, and all people understood that the actions of evildoers led to punishments such as plague, war, and famine.
Without even questioning how literally to take the Talmudic stories that feature a bat kol (a Divine Voice) or miracles that happened to individual rabbis (both of which, I suspect, rationalists such as Rambam and Meiri would have read differently than does Hazon Ish), we can note that he is presuming not only that the stories happened, but that they happened often enough that all the Jews of that time recognized them, took them for granted, and learned from there that sinners were the cause of all the evil that came into the world.
Those who accept that rendering of the Talmudic period would have to apply it further as well, since later scholars, into Hazon Ish’s lifetime, discuss moridin without ever implying that the change in the operation and obviousness of Divine Providence might affect its applicability.
In addition, Hazon Ish makes no room for whether we might consider Divine Providence to have reappeared in our times. I have no reason to believe he saw either the Holocaust or the State of Israel as reflections of a more obvious Providence than in generations gone by, and we cannot know how he would have reacted to the Six Day War or the remarkable resurgence of Orthodoxy in recent decades. But I do know some who cite Hazon Ish and yet subscribe to a view of those events that sees in them the open experience of Divine Providence.
One last assumption that adherents of this view have to accept is that moridin is designed to stimulate others positively, by learning from what happens to that sinner. It seems equally possible that moridin was a way to remove evildoers from the world, regardless of how witnesses would experience or learn from it.
I stress that without accepting these perspectives, Hazon Ish’s comments become irrelevant. If we don’t accept his characterization of earlier eras, we can’t see those as the crucial issues regarding applying moridin to today’s sinners. So, too, if moridin wasn’t meant as a deterrent or a way to bring others closer to Hashem’s service, the way people might react is also less important. It’s a linked chain—if you want to accept his view that moridin does not apply to today’s sinners, you have to accept the foundation upon which he built that view.
Rejecting Tochachah
The ins and outs of bringing about the death of evildoers are mostly of academic interest in our times. I introduced it as a warm-up, really, for a second comment, built on equally surprising foundations and yet often quoted without recognizing the corollaries that come with it.
In the last paragraph, after noting and walking back his previous view that even a sinner who chose prohibition over permitted materials would be irrelevant to yibum, Hazon Ish adds several more caveats. The first is Rambam’s well-known claim that the descendants of Karaites are not rebellious sinners, since they were raised in that environment, and are thus somewhat coerced into their position. Hazon Ish makes clear that we accept sacrifices from such Jews, work to keep them alive if they are in danger, violate Shabbat to save them, and so on.
That is well known, and I began this essay by saying I find it and other justifications for seeing those born nonobservant as different.
Hazon Ish then notes the statement of the Hagahot Maimoniyot, in the sixth chapter of Hilchot De’ot, Laws of Character, that one cannot hate a fellow Jew as a rasha, an evildoer, unless he or she rejects תוכחה, rebuke or remonstration. Let me pause to analyze this crucial building block to the next view Hazon Ish cites.
Hazon Ish doesn’t say which gloss he was referencing, but the most obvious one seems to be the first in the chapter, where Rambam says Jews are obligated to love each other, and Hagahot Maimoniyot says that’s only for a Jew who shares our observance. We are commanded, however, to hate an evildoer who rejects remonstration. In the third gloss of the chapter, by the way, Hagahot Maimoniyot assumes that if it is perfectly clear that a sinner will reject any efforts we make to encourage him to change, the commandment to remonstrate is suspended.
From that gloss, Hazon Ish seems to conclude that Hagahot Maimoniyot meant we cannot categorize a sinner as an evildoer until and unless he or she rejects remonstration. But that bears questioning: Did Hagahot Maimoniyot say we can’t categorize a rasha until tochachah was rejected, or did Hagahot Maimoniyot say we are supposed to hate an evildoer who rejects remonstration?
The latter seems to me more likely, especially considering Hagahot Maimoniyot’s allowing refraining from remonstrating with those we know will reject it anyway. It is true that we are not supposed to hate a sinner before we remonstrate, but that is only because we hope to have some impact. If we know we cannot or will not, Hagahot Maimoniyot seems to say, we would already be required to hate them, or at least view them as evildoers.
Implications of the Impossibility of Remonstration
Hazon Ish then notes a passage in an addendum to Ahavat Chessed labeled Marganita Tava.3 In paragraph 17, the author notes that we cannot hate sinners until they’ve rejected remonstration, as we discussed above. He then cites Maharam of Lublin as holding that that obligates us to love all sinners, since we no longer know how to administer proper תוכחה, remonstration. That turns those sinners into אנוסים, coerced sinners.
This passage takes for granted that without remonstration, a person is considered a coerced rather than willful sinner. It is true that Jewish courts do not punish unless witnesses warned the sinner ahead of time, but that warning is assumed to differentiate between willful and unintentional sins, not coerced.4
That might have made room, in other words, to say that in the absence of proper remonstration, we have to treat all sinners as שוגגין, shogegin, acting without full intention. Even that, though, makes an unprecedented assumption; that תוכחה is not only an obligation Jews bear to each other, not only a prerequisite before rejecting a sinner as having placed himself outside the community, but is necessary even to consider sins willful!
There’s more. The idea that we have lost the ability to effectively remonstrate—which led to the Marganita Tava’s claim that all sinners today have to be considered pre-tochachah, not fully liable for their sins– stems from a statement by R. Elazar b. Azaryah in Arachin 16b. To accept this view, then, is to believe that ever since the time of the Mishnah, all sinners have been halachically considered coerced, since they were pre-tochachah, a fact we might have expected to see mentioned before the nineteenth century.
The Complications of Generosity
Hazon Ish’s thrust was that sinners today are not like sinners of old, in two ways. First, the historical context, the lack of obvious Divine Providence, makes their sins less of a rebellion than it would have been back then. Second, the lack of skilled remonstration makes the sinners less liable for their actions than they would have been in times gone by.
What I have tried to show here is that the temptation to accept that view because of the room it allows for refraining from the difficult process of rejecting or hating fellow Jews brings with it other commitments– to a particular view of the nature of Divine Providence in Talmudic and medieval times, a particular view of the goals of bringing about certain sinners’ death, and the view that not just remonstration but effective remonstration is necessary before a sinner can be considered responsible for his or her actions. None of those are well-established.
The challenge here, the reasons I felt this topic worth considering at some length, is that my experience is that many people are happy to accept results they like without grappling with whether those results reflect a convincing construction of how tradition viewed those same ideas. If a considered contemplation of Jewish tradition tells you that Hazon Ish is right about these various claims, then his view of the formerly observant is right for you.
But those who see those assumptions as problematic or overstated need to search elsewhere for guidance on how to react to the formerly observant. There may be other convincing opinions on the question that allow for the same kind of gentle approach Hazon Ish recommends. But they have to be found, and found convincing for their representation of what Jewish tradition says on this issue, before we can rely upon them.
[1] In modern Hebrew, datlashim—the acronym for datiyim she-le-avar, Orthodox in the past—or chozrim bi-she’elah, those who have returned to question, an ironic or sarcastic twist on the term for those who become observant, chozrim bi-teshuvah.
[2] For sticklers: the current 7 volume Hazon Ish has been collected and re-ordered from the original, more piecemeal publication.
[3] This is a small work Chafetz Chayim appended to his own, by R. Yehonatan Volinar; a brief biography appears here. Chafetz Chayyim reports that he secured the manuscript from one of R. Yehonatan’s students.
[4] Sanhedrin 8b.
- In modern Hebrew, datlashim—the acronym for datiyim she-le-avar, Orthodox in the past—or chozrim bi-she’elah, those who have returned to question, an ironic or sarcastic twist on the term for those who become observant, chozrim bi-teshuvah. ↩
- For sticklers: the current 7 volume Hazon Ish has been collected and re-ordered from the original, more piecemeal publication. ↩
- This is a small work Chafetz Chayim appended to his own, by R. Yehonatan Volinar; a brief biography appears here. Chafetz Chayyim reports that he secured the manuscript from one of R. Yehonatan’s students. ↩
- Sanhedrin 8b. ↩
R. Rothstein — I will re-read this tomorrow with fresher eyes, but can you help me with your assumptions. Would it not be the case that many non-observant Jews in Eretz Israel at the time the Chazon Ish (and R. Kook) were using R. Ettlinger’s Tinok Shenishba concept had, in fact, some Orthodox education?
Beyond the sub-section spanning pp. 125-128 of Rabbi Sacks’ book (http://tinyurl.com/nnpqtq8) — which I think is the starting off point of this post — on p. 131 R. Sacks summarizes:
IH,
First, I said clearly that I wasn’t dealing with R. Kook, who did, indeed, extend his idea to even those with an Orthodox education. Hazon Ish doesn’t differentiate on the basis of education, so he might have applied to both as well; my point in this post was that to accept his ideas is to make some far-reaching assumptions. I laid out those assumptions here, from the original source material, for readers to see.
R. Sacks’ book is absolutely not the starting off point of this post, but once you raised it, I note that by R. Kook’s and Hazon Ish’s time, it was certainly not true that the Sabbath violator wanted to be part of the Sabbath community. R. Ettlinger did not speak of Jewish identity. Even if he did, my point here was only about Hazon Ish and how he found his way to an inclusivist position. The “culturally conditioned error” reference in R. Sacks is, I think, closer to what R. Kook wrote than to what Hazon Ish wrote.
“I find it problematic when people latch on to a detail of Hazon Ish’s view and trumpet it, since his overall theoretical stance would, I suspect, cause them discomfort….”
I suggested the Chazon Ish as a possibility on a previous thread regarding capital punishment, Amaleik etc. However, I agree that the answer must make sense. As R. Shimon Schwab wrote in his later clarification/revision of his original chronology essay, ” I would rather leave a good question open than risk giving a wrong answer”, so if it’s not without causing discomfort because of his other stances, so be it–it’s a suggestion.
On another note, the Chazon Ish wasn’t the first to use “cords of love”. Tanya Likutie Amorim 32 uses it צריך למשכן בחבלי עבותות אהבה , although not for מינים והאפיקורסים :
מ”ש בגמ’ שמי שרואה בחבירו שחטא מצוה לשנאותו וגם לומר לרבו שישנאהו. היינו בחבירו בתורה ומצות וכבר קיים בו מצות הוכח תוכיח את עמיתך עם שאתך בתורה ובמצות ואעפ”כ לא שב מחטאו כמ”ש בס’ חרדים
אבל מי שאינו חבירו ואינו מקורב אצלו הנה ע”ז אמר הלל הזקן הוי מתלמידיו של אהרן אוהב שלום וכו’ אוהב את הבריות ומקרבן לתורה. לומר שאף הרחוקים מתורת ה’ ועבודתו ולכן נקראי’ בשם בריות בעלמא צריך למשכן בחבלי עבותו’ אהבה וכולי האי ואולי יוכל לקרבן לתורה ועבודת ה’ והן לא לא הפסיד שכר מצות אהבת ריעים
וגם המקורבים אליו והוכיחם ולא שבו מעונותיהם שמצוה לשנאותם מצוה לאהבם ג”כ ושתיהן הן אמת שנאה מצד הרע שבהם ואהבה מצד בחי’ הטוב הגנוז שבהם שהוא ניצוץ אלקות שבתוכם המחיה נפשם האלקית וגם לעורר רחמים בלבו עליה כי היא בבחי’ גלות בתוך הרע מס”א הגובר עליה ברשעי’ והרחמנות מבטלת השנאה ומעוררת האהבה כנודע ממ”ש ליעקב אשר פדה את אברהם [ולא אמר דה"עה תכלית שנאה שנאתים וגו' אלא על המינים והאפיקורסים שאין להם חלק באל-הי ישראל כדאיתא בגמרא ר"פ ט"ז דשבת]:
Contrary to R. Rothstein, it seems to me that the main point of the Chazon Ish is precisely his conclusion, and not the reasoning that got him there. The Chazon Ish is hardly the only authority in modern times to argue that the “strict din” does not apply in our day (when a majority of the Jewish people are not longer observant. The Poskim who made this judgment share the recognition that in a time like ours, for whatever reasons, pursuing “heretics” doesn’t make for good public policy. The Chazon Ish gave this general inclination a particular explanation, which has become the most popular, though it is not without its problems. But pointing to those problems doesn’t delegitimize the idea, which exists independently of the particular rationalization.
Similar to concept of “cords of love” used by both Chazon Ish and Tanya, R. Wolbe uses the term “makal noam” based on Zechariah 11:7
וָאֶקַּח-לִי שְׁנֵי מַקְלוֹת, לְאַחַד קָרָאתִי נֹעַם וּלְאַחַד קָרָאתִי חֹבְלִים,
See pgs 81-82 of Shvelie Harefuah Medical Journal of Laniado Hospital(linked below by R. Daniel Eidensohn) where R. Wolbe says in our generation gentleness its more effective. Obviously, he is talking about chinuch in this paragraph regarding חוֹשֵׂךְ שִׁבְטוֹ, שׂוֹנֵא בְנוֹ and not apikorsim.
(Parenthetically, further on pg 82 he talks about teen sexuality and contemporary chinuch; Dr. Benzion Sorotzkin quotes this in his essays on his website)
http://daattorah.blogspot.com/2012/11/rav-wolbe-psychiatry-and-religion.html
It also occurs to me that this question is similar to the debate between Ephraim Urbach and Jacob Katz over whether the Meiri’s theory about Christianity was revolutionary. Urbach argued that the Meiri was not a revolutionary, because his theory only provided an overarching explanation for the halakhah as it was already being practiced. Likewise, it is not as if before the Chazon Ish wrote this famous piece, מורידין ולא מעלין was being widely practiced. The Chazon Ish just provided a theory to go along with the existing practice.
“There may be other convincing opinions on the question that allow for the same kind of gentle approach Hazon Ish recommends.”
A simple rationale is effectiveness, for two reasons.
A) Open attack on kofrim can result in an open war with Orthodoxy. Rabbi Avi Shafran wrote in 2001 “The Conservative Lie”(a title chosen by the editors, not him). Is Orthodoxy prepared for an article titled “The Orthodox Lie”, where a group of maskilim would punch holes because of problems they see(it’s actually been tried)? Open warfare could lead to open counter-attacks.
B) R. Moshe Weinberger has a shiur on YU Torah titled “The Avodah of Rosh Hashanah for Our Generation” where he says, IIRC, that generally speaking, the language of our generation is “ahavah”(the context is not apikorsim, who presumably don’t attend his Elul shiur :) )
–Netziv in the preface to Bereishis regarding Avroham and Sedom(he says that Avroham hated them, but still was concerned about them)
– R. Chaim Shmulevitz(5731, 26) speaks at length of how Amaleik and the student of R Yehoshua ben Perachia were caused by inappropriate distancing. He says “chas me’lharchik adam im lo metoch lev malie ahavah elav”–it is forbidden to distance a person unless one has a heart full of love towards him; and that one should emulate Hashem when punishing someone and do it from “ahavah gedolah l’ein shiur”–unlimited love.
I remember the Noverminsker Rebbe saying at the Agudah Convention about five years ago, something to the effect that ” we can not always engage in y’min mekareves, but neither do we want to be too busy with smol docheh because ultimately it is not very effective”
(see as well “Rabbi Frand in Print”, where he quotes the Noverminsker Rebbe at an earlier Agudah Convention calling for more gentleness among the Torah world when criticizing)
wfb – I am inclined to agree with your reading of the Chazon Ish. It appears that R. Yehuda Amital read it in same way too. To quote his essay on this topic,
“It follows from what the Chazon Ish says that the law of “thrusting down and not rescuing” is not only an expression of our negative attitude towards the non-believer, but it is primarily a defense mechanism directed against the negative influence that the heretic is likely to exercise. Hence, in a generation when this approach will not prevent such influences, it should not be activated, but instead a different approach should be adopted.”
On a broader note, and I intend no disrespect with this, but is anyone else disturbed by the fact that the underlying theme of every single post we’ve seen from R. Rothstein is “why are we not more intolerant”?
A few years back, I think in an article in Akdamot, R. Yehuda Brandes suggested “Am Ha’aertz” in the Talmudic and not colloquial sense as a better halakhic category for making sense of many, many less than fully observant Jews.
Surprised that it didn’t get much attention.
R Rothstein:
1. Although the Hazon Ish posits that the nature of divine providence has changed, that assertion is not necessary to his view about מורידין.
The Hazon Ish’s argument can be made just as well based on the assertion that the popular perception of providence has changed.
2. I think you missed a nuance of the Hazon Ish’s argument about providence.
The absence of obvious providence, in addition to making the sinner less rebellious, also makes him less of an obvious public hazard.
The sinner is a danger to the physical well-being of the community, as his actions put the Jewish people in danger of “punishment, pestilence, sword, and famine”. Removal of the sinner is, in addition to just punishment and and public education,
an act of communal self-defense.
A community that does not believe this (as strongly as in the past, even though it remains true) does not have the same justification for
מורידין.
3. It is plausible to experience providence in modern Jewish history, without the type of providence that the Hazon Ish describes. A guiding hand in history is a very different kind of providence than earthly reward an punishment.
wfb, I think you put your finger precisely on the difference between us. I, in fact, think it’s impossible to reach a Jewishly valid conclusion without valid argumentation to get you there, and I am personally convinced that Chazon Ish would agree with me on that point. While you may be right that a posek sometimes has an intuition on a topic, I maintain that posek does not have the right to rule that way until he finds valid reasoning that ratifies his intuition. And, again, I claim Chazon Ish would agree; so if the logic doesn’t work, the conclusion can’t be valid until other logic is found that does work, from an halachic perspective.
Chazon Ish wasn’t providing a theory to go along with practice, either, because there was no practice not to do moridin, it was impossible for other reasons. So I don’t think that claim works either. By the way, the debates among historians about halachic issues are often enlightening, but aren’t always halachically meaningful.
J., it feels like a foul to me for you to claim I’m always writing for less tolerance, despite your disclaimer that you mean no disrespect. This post, in fact, isn’t about tolerance– I noted that I have no problem with the rationales given for how we treat those raised nonobservant, I noted other rationales I wasn’t dealing with here, I noted that there may be other rationales that work, etc. This post, as I stressed a few times, was about our jumping to take a conclusion without considering whether we’re convinced by the arguments backing up that conclusion. That’s a problem wherever it appears; this was just the example that offered me the opportunity to raise it– and I was careful to note that if you are convinced by Chazon Ish’s reasoning, that’s your choice.
Rabbi Finkelman, I haven’t seen the article, but I’m curious: How would we classify those raised in an observant home, given a full Jewish education, as amei ha-aretz?
ironi burgani, I am not sure that popular perception has changed that much either, unless you argue that divine providence was absolutely clear to Jews into the 1500s. Certainly the behavior of such Jews doesn’t suggest that it was clear to them, since many of them converted out when persecuted.
For your argument number 2, Chazon Ish says none of that, so I didn’t “miss a nuance,” I just didn’t add in to the Chazon Ish reasoning that might appeal to me. You seem clear that moridin is to avoid a public hazard, but Chazon Ish clearly didn’t think that– he thought it was to make a point to the sinner, and for others to learn from.
As for 3., you might be right, but if we experience that divine providence as you say, does that mean moridin becomes relevant again?
R. Rothstein – I think the topics you’ve written about so far speak for themselves. You may be right in all your claims; I was just noting that you seem to have a preoccupation with (what you deem to be) the theoretical lacunae in Modern Orthodoxy’s tolerance towards others, be they homosexuals, those who are not prepared to admit the plausibility of divine intervention in their day to day lives, or those who have left the community. I’m not making an argument, I’m just wondering out loud.
Incidentally, there’s an excellent article by Eli Putterman which appeared in Kol Hamevaser a couple of years ago on Orthopraxy. He provides an alternative conceptual framework to that of the Chazon Ish (in part based on Rav Kook), which, to my mind at least, succeeds in elucidating the distinction between the contemporary context and the era in which these halachos were originally formulated:
http://admin2.collegepublisher.com/preview/mobile/2.2469/2.2486/1.863560
R. Rothstein, You can read the article. Have not learned the whole sugya, but Am Ha’aretz has to do with whether they are trustworthy to have fulfilled various mitzvah. Does it matter where the lack of observance from? Are there sugyot that talk about this? It’s an intriguing idea, becase AH is not a compliment and retains some of the dissatisfaction with the lack of observance without writing people out of a relationship with mitzvot. Many so-called hilonim or secular Jews or whatever do have a serious relationship with at least some mitzvot at least some of the time.
Article appears at: http://www.bmj.org.il/files/1531292367752.pdf
BTW, I’m not a Rabbi.
That’s what I thought. But Beit Hillel and Midreshet Lindenbaum have different opinions.
http://beithillel.org.il/about.asp?id=51663
http://www.midreshet-lindenbaum.org.il/faculty.asp?PageId=10
R. Rothstein — Two further points on R. Sacks’ view in http://www.amazon.com/One-People-Tradition-Modernity-Civilization/dp/1874774013:
On p. 120 he references “Chazon ish on Yoreh de’ah (Bnei Brak: Greineman, 1973), 2:16” as the reference for the Chazon Ish (like Rav Kook) ruling that “the category of heretic was inapplicable today”.
On p. 218 he uses the same reference to assert “Rabbi Abraham Karelitz argued that at the present time coercive punishments would be seen by a secular population as unwarranted. They would therefore not improve but worsen the religious environment”.
Barring misreading by either yourself or R. Sacks, it seems you choose to find different meanings in the same text by the Chazon Ish.
Here is the Chazon Ish, Yoreh Deah 2:!6 http://www.hebrewbooks.org/pdfpager.aspx?req=14334&st=&pgnum=21
I joke that I have semichah from the Midreshet Lindenbaum website. Beit Hillel said that if female midrasha teachers without semichah an be on the list, so can male ones. I figure if I point it out every so often, I’ve done my hishtadlus.
Gil — yes. And R. Rothstein’s takeaway from the final paragraph, contra R. Sacks, is (emphasis mine): “The upshot of the passage is that we would not apply moridin to today’s sinners, since our times are so different from those of the Gemara. As simpatico as we find that conclusion, I think we need to notice its’ underlying assumptions, because we can’t take one without the other.”
Hence my point that they derive different meanings from the same text. I see little room for debate: R. Rothstein le’shitato is looking for justification for intolerance, whereas R. Sacks (long before the current zeitgeist) is looking for justification for tolerance. Both find it in the same text.
In R. Sacks’ favor, though, the contemporaneous Rav Kook’s views tip the scales toward the tolerance reading.
“The upshot of the passage is that we would not apply moridin to today’s sinners, since our times are so different from those of the Gemara. As simpatico as we find that conclusion, I think we need to notice its’ underlying assumptions, because we can’t take one without the other. ”
I am not sure this is right. I would instead place the hazon ish’s explanation in the tradition of ukimta. I agree with wfb that it was clear to him that moridin should not apply today. The question is how to reconcile that with the fact that the gemara thought it should apply, at least in their time. The answer is some distinction between our time and the gemara that allows the “same” rule to generate two different outcomes.
This is exactly what chazal did with ukimtas all the time. Do you think that one who learns gemara is required to believe that a tana who said “X is permitted” actually meant “X is permitted if the person doing it has met a long list of implausible conditions i have not specified, as set out by amoraim generations later”? Or do we accept that whether or not the ukimta is actually what the tana historically meant, as long as it is at least plausible we use it to harmonize rulings that are not actually the same?
Emma – Your understanding of how ‘ukimtos’ function is stated explicitly by R. Shlomo Fisher (who in turn bases himself on the Gra) in Drashos Beis Yishai. See page 32 here:
http://www.thebeis.co.uk/journal.pdf
thanks!
R’ Rothstein:
Why does someone need to agree with a posek’s assumptions or arguments in order to follow that psak? In a sense that is the point of psak –I follow what the posek says whether I agree with it or not because of his greater expertise. I am reminded of the story about R’ Chaim needing a psak on a crucial issue and asking the posek to write nothing more than mutar or assur (or similar –I forgot what the question was in the story), so that he wouldn’t argue one way or the other with the psak. For a regular person, when he asks his rabbi a halachic question he doesn’t necessarily get a one word answer, but whether he agrees with the reasoning or not, he defers to the rabbi (I’m not saying you couldn’t come up with exceptions). Those who are involved in learning have all kinds of svarot that make great sense when learning, and are even validated by being expressed by a rishon or acharon, but we don’t necessarily act on them l’ma’aseh, even if what it says in the shulchan aruch makes less sense to us.
In this case, since we’re dealing with a very severe issue of possibly hating or mistreating others if you get the psak wrong, there is all the more reason to put one’s actions in the hands of an impeccable posek and follow what he says l’ma’aseh, no matter what we think.
Shmuel,
Excellent question. The R. Chaim story was based on the fact that R. Chaim would find holes in the posek’s logic either way, but needed a psak. In R. Chaim’s case, the worry was that his desire for a certain result would lead him to question the posek’s reasoning in order to get the result he wanted (or, simply, because he was so prone to see both sides of an issue that he would see the holes in either side).
That doesn’t change the fact that psak is only valid if it’s built on valid reasoning, and it’s repeatedly surprising to me that people don’t realize that. We can’t know what the proper result of an halachic discussion should be unless we follow the reasoning through. We may feel like one conclusion is uncomfortable and therefore search for other possibilities, but we can’t just take a conclusion, because how do we know it’s legitimate? Particularly if we reject the building blocks of an idea, what makes us think this is a Jewishly valid idea?
I won’t get into a discussion of ukimta or of the right reading of Chazon Ish– it’s there for anyone to read. I can only say that it’s tempting to misread sources, particularly when we want to reach a certain conclusion.
the ukimta discussion is particularly interesting given the SCOTUS decisions. How do we differentiate our process from their’s?
She-nir’eh et nehamat Yerushalayim u-binyanah bi-mherah ve-yamenu,
Although I was not clear about this at first, I think it is not unlikely that we can read something as an “ukimta” even if the original proponent of the distinction saw it as historically true. I don’t know whether amoraim thought the tanaim actually meant their statements to apply only to circumscribed facts (Though i have my doubts), but what matters is that we later readers can follow the amoraim even if we think of the ukimta less literally. Particularly in this case, where his description of our time as one where God’s providence is not obvious to all seems accurate, and it is the historical description that is questionable, I think following the chazon ish, while holding in abeyance the question of whether bat kols were really frequent in antiquity, is ok. (I agree that for those who think God’s hand is “obvious” to the point of totally compelling today it would be a problem to rely on this hazon ish.)
The core of the Chazon Ish’s statements would certainly withstand a ‘rationalist’ critique. The idea that in the faith-suffused past “heretics acted with particular malice”, can be sustained regardless of whether the change in climate occurred for intellectual reasons (i.e. the rise of modernity) or the withdrawal of miracles. Similarly, a rationalist would certainly agree that “the “lowering” has no power to close up the breach, but only to add to the breach, because it will seem in their eyes [the spiritually impoverished] like a destructive act and use of coercive force”. And finally, I don’t see how the adoption of a rationalist perspective is likely to make the Chazon Ish’s claim that “since all we are seeking is to improve and perfect, this rule does not apply when it wouldn’t produce improvement” seem any less cogent; if anything the reverse would be the case.
J.
You say that my articles have been about “the theoretical lacunae in Modern Orthodoxy’s tolerance towards others, be they homosexuals, those who are not prepared to admit the plausibility of divine intervention in their day to day lives, or those who have left the community.” But that’s not quite true. First, I didn’t write about tolerance of homosexuals, I wrote about whether we shade over into thinking that homosexuality is acceptable.
More important, I didn’t speak of how we look at others on the question of divine intervention, I suggested that it’s something we ourselves are doing– that wasn’t a tolerance question, it was a maybe-we’re-unwittingly-violating-the-Torah question. And the issue of those who’ve left the community, this article, wasn’t about how to treat them, it was about whether Chazon Ish makes sense to the people who quote him. That’s not about tolerance, it’s about right and wrong halachic process. You also missed my recent Zionism article which was, again, not about tolerance, it was about how a community is coming to lose sight of an important ideal.
By the way, R. Fisher’s comments about taking the conclusion but not the reasoning were specifically about Tannaim and amoraim, who aren’t reasoning their ways to conclusions, they are recording a longstanding mesorah. When we know the right halachah, because of a tradition going back to Sinai, it’s possible to argue about reasoning. But Chazon Ish is advancing a new idea, which he would see as a logical and proper application of tradition to new circumstances. For us to accept that, we have to accept the logical underpinnings of his argument.
Emma, let me say again: it is impossible for it to “be clear” that something is inapplicable today, unless they have halachic validation for it. I do concede that people at the level of Chazon Ish have a much better developed intuition for halachah than you and I, so that he may have “sensed” that moridin couldn’t apply today, and then searched for the reasoning that explained (not justified) it. But if he didn’t find valid reasoning, it may be his intuition led him astray (or that he didn’t find the other valid reasonings that are out there).
Either way, we can’t just take his conclusion if we know the reasoning on which he based himself and find that reasoning problematic.
What if the Chazon Ish had said, e.g., that since college is so problematic, and no Jew should go to college, that’s the reason that we can’t blame sinners for their sins today? I can agree or disagree, but I can’t continue to go to college, or recommend that others do so, and still rely on Chazon Ish for why we don’t blame sinners for their sins.
The Chazon Ish could also be very well (re)phrased in terms of Weber’s “disenchantment.” Before the Enlightenment, being religious was the default, and rejecting religion was an act of rebellion. Post-enlightenment, religion is viewed as a choice. This is a fact that remains true regardless of whether the pre-enlightenment world was literally enchanted.
That might relate to R. Kook’s view, but I don’t see how it relates to Chazon Ish’s. It’s important to distinguish between ideas we find convincing and those that Chazon Ish was saying– as I said in my piece, there may be tons of reasons to treat sinners as we’d like, but we can’t cite Chazon Ish as an authority for those, unless we accept his reasoning. By that standard, no, I don’ think Chazon Ish could also be very well phrased or rephrased as you suggest.
“What if the Chazon Ish had said, e.g., that since college is so problematic, and no Jew should go to college, that’s the reason that we can’t blame sinners for their sins today? I can agree or disagree, but I can’t continue to go to college, or recommend that others do so, and still rely on Chazon Ish for why we don’t blame sinners for their sins.”
This concerns questions about the empirical correctness of his statement about _our_ world. It is analogous to those who believe that this is not, in fact, a time where “all that is hidden, and faith has been cut off from the impoverished of the nation.” As I said, one cannot rely on reasoning that assumes things about our times when one actually believes the opposite about our times. I don’t think that logically means one can’t rely on an implausible but technically possible assumption about prior times, especially when that assumption does seem to reflect a certain reality, as wfb points out, about the difference in religious experience between those times and now.
“In other words, earlier in his life, Hazon Ish had been at peace with the idea that someone who reaches for the shrimp at a buffet instead of the lox would not count as a Jew in terms of ritual slaughter, yibum and chalitzah. While he ended with a different view, it shows that the question was how and when to apply certain categories, not a discomfort with the categories themselves.”
I don’t see how it shows what you say. It shows, rather, that the chazon ish “held” a particualr view, whether or not he was “at peace” with it or uncomfortable. Further, I don’t think discomfort with categories and decisions about when they apply can be so easily separated. In short, the fact that he previously held a different opinion does not demonstrate that he arrived at either opinion through mechanistic reasoning uninfluenced by overarching concerns.
Sorry if I may have missed parts of your article, but you seem to be treating “moridin” as a regular halacha like shechitah. However, it isn’t a regular din or punishment of beis din, but an extra-judicial ‘public-policy’ action to prevent further harm. It obviously wouldn’t apply in a time when it would backfire. As the Hazon Ish says:
אין במעשה הורדה גדר הפרצה אלא הוספת הפרצה שיהי’ בעיניהם כמעשה השחתה ואלמות ח”ו
See also the end of Gil Student’s article:
http://torahmusings.com/2005/12/religious-zionism-debate-xvi/
However, for halachik issues like shechitah and stam yayin, one would need to find a real basis to be meikel, which is why people are generally more careful there.
To accept this view, then, is to believe that ever since the time of the Mishnah, all sinners have been halachically considered coerced, since they were pre-tochachah, a fact we might have expected to see mentioned before the nineteenth century.
I don’t think that our religious history is necessarily so one-directional. It is possible that in one generation Jews are “coerced”, and in a later generation they are not. The story about King Menasheh saying to Rav Ashi “If you lived in my generation, you too would have run to do idolatry” is one example straight from the gemara.
Personally, I find it easy to imagine that in the Hellenistic period (possibly up to the mishna, or later in the Roman Empire) the pressures to leave Torah observance were very strong, in medieval Ashkenaz or Poland they were rather weak, and in the modern era they have become strong again. Whatever the reasons for this fluctuation (and it’s not the same reason every time, and the threats include not just non-belief but belief in a different religious system), in some generations, the sinner’s feeling that there is nobody worth taking tochecha from is understandable.
Re “Before the Enlightenment, being religious was the default, and rejecting religion was an act of rebellion. Post-enlightenment, religion is viewed as a choice.” – true, but that was not the time in history in which views and worldviews have changed.
I realize it is suspicious to assume just the exactly level of belief in each generation that would harmonize every rabbi’s comments to one principle without any tension, but to a first order approximation, my feeling is the data does support that.
Re. “Am Haaretz”, I asked a rosh yeshivah a number of years ago how he understands the Gemara in Pesachim that “one is permitted to kill an Am ha’Aretz even on Yom Kippur that falls on Shabbos”; true, Maharsha says that killing is a metaphor for embarrassing, but what does this mean?
He explained, as I recall, that the “Am Haaretzim” Chazal were discussing were more like an organized anti-Torah force, and that it was not only dependent on being knowledgeable vs. unlettered.
I suppose one needs to review the different useages of Am Haaretz in Chazal to support the above (one can see online Kolel Iyun Hadaf Pesachim 49, for the different explanations of the Gemara I quoted)
Shlomo, I didn’t mean they were coerced, I meant that the lack of tochachah hasn’t been any different since then. Since it was that lack of tochachah that led to Hazon Ish’s statement, it means that in every generation since then, it’s been true.
Arikrak, whatever moridin is, it has halachic rules for when it can be applied. Hazon Ish was making a claim about its applicability based on certain criteria, and I thought it useful to lay those out clearly.
Since it was that lack of tochachah that led to Hazon Ish’s statement, it means that in every generation since then, it’s been true.
I believe the same applies to tochacha. Our situation could be like that of the mishna, and unlike that of the middle ages.
Apropos, some lessons from the world around us: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/jun/27/syria-descent-into-sectarianism/print
לא עלינו
How Marxist.
Shades, if that’s the case, there *have* to be two definitions of “Am Ha’aretz.”
has anyone suggested the chazon ish was using the accepted practice in legislating law of assuming what the fair and proper law should be and then finding a way to interpret that into the preexisting legal framework and if his formulation is dis-proven the fact that his outcome should be the same arrived through a different formulation is still his position modern day halachists are a strange high-breed of legislator (creators of law) and judicial (interpreters of law) rolled into one black hat and when you are dealing with an undisputed halachist “gadol hador” such as the chazon ish you can add the executive branch into his hat
J Netcodes,
While I disagree with you in general that poskim operate the way you suggest, in this case, I can prove it, because Chazon Ish was writing to retract an earlier conclusion. So I guess, at least in this instance, he was clearly not conclusion driven.
“Chazon Ish was writing to retract an earlier conclusion. So I guess, at least in this instance, he was clearly not conclusion driven.”
again, i don’t see how this follows. perhaps he changed his mind on the “meta” issue of what outcome made sense? or perhaps he disliked his initial conclusion but only figured out a logical way around it later?
Nachum,
I don’t remember his explanation clearly.
I just opened the above-linked article by R. Brandes , so as not to be an Am Haretz on the topic :)