OF GOATS & COINS
בס"ד
Tamuz 29
A conversation I had with several people today revealed this kernel of truth: rabbis today are more like pastors. They teach but have no idea how to truly poskin.
I mean no disrespect to the education rabbis of various stripes have acquired to earn their title, nor to the rabbis themselves. They certainly are qualified as teachers. & "teacher", is, after all, what "rabbi" means. But I'm serious when I say that institutionalising the rabbanut has robbed it of its human, social quality. A quality necessary to poskin. A quality necessary to integrate Torah & life in this world. A quality requiring rabbis to do teshuvah on their own faults. Which is why many of us reach for our bookshelves when we have a Halakhic question instead of reaching for the phone to make an appointment with our rav...
Later I discussed with Ben Rashba's teshuvah permitting amulets: he ruled that it was permissable to use coins with the image of a lion on it so you could bring down the power of the constellation of Leo onto this coin & use it as an amulet. That's in Teshuvot HaRashba; Minhat Kena'ot see D. Margolit "Chochmey Yisrael KeRofim/The Sages of Israel as Doctors
Rashba & Rambam didn't get on so well, it seems...
Ben & I also looked into RambaN, in his writings on the goat for Azazel, & the commentary on Torah Leviticus by Chavell p. 219-220.
If the sofrut tradition dictates that a sofer begin each day by writing the name of Amaleq (may his name be erased) on a scrap & then crossing it out in order to remind us to never behave toward anyone the way the Amaleqites behaved toward us, that's superstition.
If G@d says to take a billy goat & wrap a red thread around its horns & put all the sins of the entire nation on it & then push it over a cliff, that isn't magic. That's a mitzvah.
Shabbat Shalom.
posted by Soferet | 7:11:00 p.m.
![[ Registered ]](http://www.diarist.net/registry/button.gif){kind=small}
3 Comments:
Some of the teshuvot I've been reading lately are Rashba totally trashing Rambam. Rambam asserts something, and then Rashba comes along and is all like "That's completely loony. No-one in their right mind would say that. He must have been high on crack the day he wrote that" - or words to that effect, anyway. Hope you're feeling better, btw.
What does "poskin" mean? I tried to look it up on ask.com and all I found was the name of a labor organizer and a classical composer. . . Thanks!
בס"ד
Jen - yes, it seems to have been the hobby of several big ravs to demean, refute or otherwise mock anything the Rambam dared put to paper. I actually find that quite amusing :)
Tigergrrl: "poskin" basically means to render an official legal judgement based on Halakhah (Jewish Law). A "posek" will "poskin" on a subject when you ask him for his "p'sak".
Post a Comment
<< Home