Shedding Light on Burning Issues #3: Mesorah (Tradition) and the Halakhic Process

Rabbi Dr. Eliyahu Safran, Cross-Currents, 11/27/2015

Mesorah. Tradition.

I close my eyes and try to imagine the Open Orthodox leaders meeting face to face with the Rav and Rav Dovid. I can hear the voice of our teacher as he asks, “Vos tu’tzech? What’s doing?”

“Oh, Rebbe, better in Hebrew.”

“Ma asisa im kol ma shelamadnu? What have you done with all that we learned?”

“Ata noisen semicha l’nashim.” “You grant semicha (rabbinic ordination, ed.) to women?”

I can see the look of astonishment in Rav Dovid’s kind eyes. “They gave semicha to women?” He looks lost. In a whisper, he utters the names of nearly all the Torah Sages, G’dolei Yisroel, of past generations and shakes his head. “They gave semicha to women?” He forcefully and lovingly holds the hand of the OO founder and asks, “Rav Chaim Ozer gave semicha to women?” He looks at his students. “And you, you have such audacity to give? Ma im kol ha’mesorah? “What’s with all of Mesorah?”

I cannot speak for those who founded OO but if Rav Dovid was confronting me in such a vision, I would fall to my knees in fear and trembling.

For Rav Dovid would be focusing on the core issue – it is not just halakha, it is mesorah.

Mesorah is an equal partner to halakha. Without mesorah, we have no recognizable identity; it is the core of Jewish life and continuity. "Moshe kibel torah miSinai, u’mesarah…" - Moses received the Torah from Sinai and handed it down.. Rambam lists shalshelet ha’mesorah – the chain of tradition, one generation after the next – in his Introduction to the Yad. So too in the Igeret (Manuscript) of Rav Sherira Gaon. Mesorah is the essential ingredient that makes Jewish, Jewish.

A great historian once asserted that the uniqueness of Judaism is that, were our ancestors of old to join us at the table, or the beis midrash or in shul, they would feel right at home. Same Torah. Same tefillin. Same shechita. Mesorah! This is the gift and responsibility we receive from those who came before us, from father, mother, zeide, bubbe… this is what they have handed down to us.

Rabbi Avi Weiss

But that’s only half of the equation. It is a mistake to think that mesorah only means that everything we do today is cemented in the past. Rather mesorah conveys the idea that, within proper parameters, we should innovate to address the issues of our time. This innovation is not straying from mesorah; it is rather demanded by it.

Rabbi Ari Zivitovsky

What does turkey have to do with women rabbis? It is a question that would have never occurred to me until last week when my almost 20 year old, popular article about the kashrut of turkey was invoked in the name of women rabbis. I was honored to be cited, but bemused at the application. It seems that women rabbis is THE topic. Are women rabbis good for the Jews or bad? Are women rabbis a fait accompli or will their opponents yet prevail? The discussion goes round and round and is discussed in every possible context. So, come Thanksgiving, there was an article... attempting to connect women and turkeys. I do not consider myself an expert on the topic of ordination and do not intend to address the broader issue of women rabbis, but I do know something about bird mesorah and feel obligated to point out that what was written in this widely circulated article does not actually contribute to a better understanding of whether women should be ordained or whether turkey is kosher.

The proposed argument is rather straightforward. In the distant past, Jews knew which birds were kosher by a process of exclusion – if they are not among the 24 types explicitly banned in the Torah they were kosher. In the mishnaic period, when it became difficult to identify these 24 types, the rabbis offered signs to distinguish kosher from non-kosher fowl. One of these signs is that a predatory bird, a “doress”, is not kosher. Owing to the concern that a new species may unknowingly actually be a predator, both the Shulchan Aruch and the Rema ruled, thus obligating both Sephardim and Ashkenazim, that only birds for which there exists a tradition (mesorah) may be treated as kosher. Turkey is a New World bird (hence its place of honor at the Thanksgiving table) and thus was unknown to Jews until 500 years ago. Today all major kashrut agencies certify the turkey as kosher raising the question: From whence the mesorah? There are many and varied answers offered by 19^th century rabbinic scholars to explain the acceptability of turkey despite its seeming lack of a mesorah. Now, here comes that article’s leap of confusion. Recent statements by opponents of women’s ordination have described it as violating “mesorah.” So, goes this misguided argument: if the turkey can get around its lack of mesorah so can women rabbis. The problem is that women are not turkeys, ordination is not a predatory state, and the use of the same word in these two contexts has quite different meaning.

This attempt at using a Trojan turkey to sneak women’s ordination past the gates of tradition is flawed in both the specifics and the general points. The general point is quite simple. The word “mesorah” in these two contexts has completely different meanings. In the context of bird kashrut it has the narrow, context-specific meaning of a tradition that the bird at hand is not a doress. Nothing more and nothing less. It is a technical requirement to ensure its kosher status. In the context as used by those opposed to women rabbis, mesorah refers to the gestalt of Jewish tradition and the intent is that this is a break from Jewish norms. It is being used in the sense similar to that of Tevyah the milkman when he sang “Tradition.” It is the mesorah mentioned in the first mishna in Pirkei Avot. “Mesorah” in this context is a more amorphous term whose parameters are difficult to define, but usually a person thoroughly seeped in Torah knows it when they see it. It is hard to argue against the statement that historically rabbis have been men and that such is the de facto tradition. Can it change? Should it change? That is a different topic, but it is clearly a change, a breach of tradition. But trying to transfer principles from mesorah in the bird context to mesorah in the women rabbi context is nonsensical; they simply have nothing to do with each other.

Rabbi Hershel Schachter

Mesorah is not primarily a corpus of knowledge to master but a process of accessing a chain of student-teacher relationships that reaches back to Sinai. Moshe received the Torah and transmitted it to his student, Yehoshua, who in turn taught it to his students and so on, continuing through today. The nature of transmission of the mesorah is instruction from a rebbe to his student. We connect to the mesorah, to the sacred structure of laws, beliefs and attitudes, through our teachers...

5. Acharonim have ruled extremely strictly about synagogue customs. Just like we are forbidden to enact a change in the Beit HaMikdash, a prohibition the Gemara (Sukkah 51b) derived from the Bible (I Divrei HaYamim 28:19), we are similarly forbidden to change a synagogue practice because that verse applies equally to a mikdash me’at, a synagogue. The Imrei Yosher states that we also learn from this verse an obligation to preserve the synagogue’s customs.

Dr. Moshe Koppel, Yiddoshkeit Without Ideology: A Letter to My Son

I am not telling you all this to make the point that your great-grandparents were exceptional (though they certainly were - each in their own way). Rather, I am concerned here with precisely those qualities of their Yiddishkeit that were typical of their generation - it was learned, nuanced, human, and authentic. That is the ki d of Yiddishkeit I would lie to pass down to you. You won't get it in an institution. You can - and, under current conditions, you must - learn Shas and poskim in an institution. But Jewish attitudes must be learned through immersion in family or community, internalized, and lived instinctively. Internalized values lived instinctively don't ever form a neat consistent package. On the contrary, they are always full of tension between conflicting poles: between loyalty to Jews and loyalty to the values they embody, between the letter of halakha and its spirit, between conformIty and individuality, and so on. This tension is a wonderful, healthy thing - it is the source of a person's intellectual vitality and creativity. Living a life of Torah means living with tension: Yiddishkeit is not meant to consist of instant solutions to personal problems, canned shallow theology, shlock aesthetics or narrow-minded provincialism. It is meant to encourage the kind of depth and tension that - forgive me for this odd example but I know you'll know what I mean - distinguishes Carlebach from Boro Park rock. It is precisely this creative tension that distinguishes Yiddishkeit from other cultures and which has allowed it to survive under impossible circumstances.

What is required is a terrific loyalty to tradition down to the most trivial detail, and humility in the face of the accumulated weight of this tradition. This loyalty and humility must be balanced by a creative restlessness that forever challenges spiritual complacency by testing tradition against the very values with which it imbues those who are truly loyal to it. The enemy of this creative tension is ideology. Ideologues of the "right" fear the fluidity of Torah Shebe'al Peh (or are deaf and blind to it) and would reduce it all to Torah Shebikhtav. In doing so, they reduce a living tradition to ideology. Ideologues of the "left" fear an "outdated" halakha and would round its edges to render it palatable. In doing so, they too reduce a living tradition to ideology.

Rabbi Michael Rosensweig, Mesorah as Source and Sensibility

This perspective on the role and impact of mesorah, particularly as it relates to the cultivation of a halachic personality who is more than the sum of his actual knowledge, has significant implications regarding the status of halachic conviction or even intuition that cannot be analytically demonstrated. There are surely significant differences between rigorous halachic rulings grounded in the examination and analysis of specific sources, and conclusions that invoke broader halachic considerations and values, or that rely primarily upon strong halachic convictions in issues for which halachic precedent is insufficiently compelling. Yet, the history of halachic thought demonstrates that each of these models constitutes an important element in halachah’s encounter with new realities and challenges. Moreover, Rav Soloveitchik developed the idea that mesorah incorporates the Torah sensibilities of great men, as well their more analytical halachic conclusions (Iggerot haGrid 87-88). Indeed, he argues that the Rambam’s heresy category of “machish magidehah” (Hilchot Teshuvah 3:8) refers to the improper rejection of precisely this group of values and sensibilities.

Masechet Avot, which primarily records the general aphorisms and wider wisdom of the chachamim, begins by recounting the history of mesorah. Both the need for a mesorah to justify these particular values and sensibilities, as well as its application to these broader and more universal themes is noteworthy. Moreover, some of the mefarshim note that the verb “masar” is utilized twice in this rendition of the links in the chain of mesorah, perhaps implying particularly noteworthy, even innovative methodological contributions within the unfolding mesorah itself, notwithstanding the very concept of mesorah as a mechanism that primarily preserves and insures continuity. We may now appreciate that mesorah constitutes a broad and ambitious approach to Torah study and observance that includes but is not limited to specific content. Long after Chazal neutralized the injunction against recording the detailed content of the Oral Law as a concession to human frailty on the basis of “It is time for the Lord to work; they have made void Your law” (Gittin 60a; Temurah 14b; see Rambam, Hilchot Mamrim 2:4), the concept and impact of mesorah continues to prevail. As always, it is manifest in the more subtle questions of deeper conceptual comprehension and perspective, of the interplay between and priority of different halachic principles and in the translation of halachic law into values. The need for and relevance of mesorah particularly resonates precisely when halachic values address more universal concerns and motifs, as previously noted. The failure of relativistic secular ethics affirms the halachah’s approach that ethics and general wisdom must be grounded in the experience and sensibilities of the Revelation at Sinai. The introduction to Masechet Avot reflects that asserting the authentic and authoritative voice of mesorah is equally if not more urgent in matters of wider perspective. The varied substantial contributions of different chachmei mesorah and their halachic schools of thought represent an important dimension in this process and underscore this aspect of the significance of mesorah...

Life is always in flux. The challenges of our era are particularly acute. The capacity to halachically navigate the ambiguities of modern life and to assess halachic status or determine halachic policy regarding various new phenomena—cultural and technological—requires immersion in all facets of the halachic system. If rabbinic authorities are to effectively confront and constructively address contemporary issues, it will only be on the basis of an abiding commitment not only to the received information but also to the methodology and sensibility of mesorah. Building a thriving halachic community in any and every geographic and historic setting requires not only rigorous analysis of explicit halachic sources and precedents, but also the ability to cultivate halachic values that are anchored in but also extend beyond the details of the norm. The leadership of master halachic diagnosticians whose stature and experience determine when halachic analysis should not be reduced merely to the examination of texts is crucial. The intuitions and deeply held convictions of such chachmei hamesorah that necessarily augment more concrete halachic texts are an indispensable part of the mesorah itself. The two-tiered Torah remains fully accessible “in your mouth and your heart that you may do it.”

Rupture and Reconstruction:

The Transformation of Contemporary Orthodoxy

Dr. Haym Soloveitchik

If I were asked to characterize in a phrase the change that religious Jewry has undergone in the past generation, I would say that it was the new and controlling role that texts now play in contemporary religious life. And in saying that, I open myself to an obvious question: What is new in this role? Has not traditional Jewish society always been regulated by the normative written word, the Halakhah? Have not scholars, for well over a millennium, pored over the Talmud and its codes to provide Jews with guidance in their daily round of observances? Is not Jewish religiosity proudly legalistic and isn't exegesis its classic mode of expression? Was not "their portable homeland," their indwelling in their sacred texts, what sustained the Jewish people throughout its long exile?

The answer is, of course, yes. However, as the Halakhah is a sweepingly comprehensive regula of daily life-covering not only prayer and divine service, but equally food, drink, dress, sexual relations between man and wife, the rhythms of work and patterns of rest-it constitutes a way of life. And a way of life is not learned but rather absorbed. Its transmission is mimetic, imbibed from parents and friends, and patterned on conduct regularly observed in home and street, synagogue and school.

Did these mimetic norms—the culturally prescriptive--conform with the legal ones? The answer is, at times, yes; at times, no. And the significance of the no may best be brought home by an example with which all are familiar—the kosher kitchen, with its rigid separation of milk and meat—separate dishes, sinks, dish racks, towels, tablecloths, even separate cupboards. Actually little of this has a basis in Halakhah. Strictly speaking, there is no need for separate sinks, for separate dishtowels or cupboards. In fact, if the food is served cold, there is no need for separate dishware altogether. The simple fact is that the traditional Jewish kitchen, transmitted from mother to daughter over generations, has been immeasurably and unrecognizably amplified beyond all halakhic requirements. Its classic contours are the product not of legal exegesis, but of the housewife's religious intuition imparted in kitchen apprenticeship.