Just Plain Incoherency

Mishpacha attacks those who diverge from Daas Torah

Well, this is disappointing. Mishpacha magazine has evidently decided to go all-out against charedim joining the IDF. Previously, they printed Rav Yitzchak Berkovits’ interview in which he claimed that the Jewish People cannot exist without the (entirely recent) phenomenon of 150,000 charedim in yeshivah, and further said that we should rely on miracles rather than do normative hishtadlus. Now, they published an article by Rabbi Chaim Aryeh Zev Ginzberg, titled “Just Plain Chutzpah,” which adopts a different style of argument.

The background to his article is that after October 7th, when it became evident that far more human resources need to be invested in Israel’s defense, there have been some moderate figures in the charedi world who have observed that it’s time for charedim to figure out how to contribute in a practical manner and share in the national responsibility for this. This goes against the “Gedolim” of the charedi world, who maintain that charedim must only learn Torah and must absolutely not contribute in any practical way.

Rabbi Ginzberg fumes against these voices in the charedi world that call for change. He does not provide any reasons as to why they are actually wrong. Instead, he rages against them for having the chutzpah to disagree with the Daas Torah of the Gedolim.

Now, we’ve been through this topic at length over the last 18 years. We’ve noted that the Litvishe concept of Daas Torah was created 110 years ago. We’ve shown how the Torah itself points out that better community guidance is sometimes found with non-Torah sources than with the greatest Torah scholars. We’ve quoted Rav Lichtenstein, quoting Rav Hutner, who quoted Chazal themselves as saying that there is no necessary correlation of Torah knowledge with wisdom. We’ve shown that in the absence of a Beis Din HaGadol, there is no obligation to defer to any particular rabbinic authority. We’ve shown how the modern idea that Daas Torah is found only with those who are most insulated and isolated runs contrary to traditional approaches to rabbinic authority, which considered worldly knowledge as an important asset to wisdom. We’ve quoted Rav Eliezer Melamed who states that Torah leadership “necessitates an all-embracing, fully accountable handling of serious issues facing the generation, including: the attitude towards Am Yisrael in all its diversity and various levels – both religious, and non-religious; the attitude towards mitzvoth of yishuv haaretz and the ongoing war which has surrounded it for over a century; the
attitude towards science and work, and the contemporary social and economic questions.”

Clearly, Rabbi Ginzberg doesn’t accept any of this. But what I want to point out is that his very own approach to Daas Torah in this very context is simply hypocritical.

The warning bells start at the very beginning of his article. He begins by quoting stories about situations where Rav Steinman, along with the Brisker Rav, and his own rebbe Rav Henoch Leibowitz, were against responding to provocations. Rabbi Ginzberg laments that they are no longer alive to tell him what to do, and proceeds to say that he’s decided to respond to these provocations! True, they didn’t tell him never to respond, but it’s a bit odd, in an article all about deferring to rabbinic authority, to begin by saying that he’s acting contrary to the sort of thing that he heard from his own rabbinic authorities.

Then he gets to the thrust of his article, which is based on a single argument: The Chazon Ish said that charedim should be in yeshivah and kollel for many years rather than go to the army or get a secular education.

The problem is as follow. When the Chazon Ish said this, he was referring to 400 people, not 150,000! And as Rabbi Ginzberg explicitly notes, the Chazon Ish did not state this is what always was and what always must be. He knew that this was not the norm in pre-Holocaust Europe, and he did not say that this should forever be the norm. Rather than make an eternal dictate, he said this approach should apply for fifty years (according to other reports, he specified two generations) in order to rebuild what was destroyed in the Holocaust.

But more than fifty years and two generations have since passed. What was destroyed in the Holocaust has been rebuilt a hundred times over. There are vastly more people in full-time learning than at any point in recent history. And charedim are a rapidly growing huge sector of the population. And the military requirements of the country are growing. And so presumably, it’s now time to rescind the temporary measure of mass kollel?

Rabbi Ginzberg says that he himself asked Rav Shach this very question. And Rav Shach reportedly replied that nobody today is great enough to overturn something instituted by the Chazon Ish. Rabbi Ginzberg then relays that many years later he asked Rav Steinman the same question, and Rav Steinman replied that Rav Shach could have overturned it, but he himself could not. Rabbi Ginzberg concludes that for people to go against the Gedolim of today, who are following the Chazon Ish, is “just plain chutzpah,” and they are guilty of being mevazeh talmidei chachamim. There is “no greater kefirah,” he says, than claiming that the Gedolim of today, no matter how much smaller in stature than those of previous generations, are unable to resolve the difficult issues of today.

Do you see the problems here?

The first problem is that the quoted Gedolim said that that nobody is great enough to go against the Chazon Ish. For the sake of argument, let’s accept the charedi approach to yeridas hadoros and rabbinic authority and take this as true. The problem is that they are going against the Chazon Ish!

The Chazon Ish was ruling in very specific historic circumstances. And he was explicit about kollel being an abnormal measure that was required specifically in order to rebuild what was lost in the Holocaust and that this emergency measure should be in place for a limited duration of fifty years. This means that after fifty years, this measure should be rescinded or, at the very least, re-evaluated (in light of whether the losses of the Holocaust were since recovered, and whatever other pertinent changes have taken place). Making this into a permanent measure that nobody can ever revoke under any circumstances because nobody is ever allowed to re-evalaute things is directly going against the Chazon Ish!

The second problem is that Rabbi Ginzberg insists that it’s kefirah to say that today’s Gedolim can’t resolve today’s difficult issues. But he quotes Gedolim as saying that they can’t ever go against directives issued by Gedolim of previous generations, even if those directives were given for specific circumstances which have since changed. So if they themselves explicitly say that they are incapable of reevaluating even resolutions given under very different circumstances and specifically for those circumstances, then by definition they are incapable of resolving today’s difficult issues!

Just plain incoherency.