When I wrote a post many months ago about my belief that the current rabbinic leadership does not measure up anywhere near the previous generation of Gedolim, I was duly criticized. Just to be clear, I meant that even though we are in the period of Achronim and both R. Akiva Eiger and R. Moshe are Achronim and the current rabbinic leaders are Achronim too, I strongly feel that the era of the holocaust, which destroyed not only an entire culture that dates back many centuries, it destroyed a caliber of Gadol that we have not produced since. There are still such Gedolim around today and they include people like Rav Yosef Sholom Elyashiv and Rav Ovadia Yosef, they are quite elderly. And there is no one like them today. The” Rav Moshes” of this world have left us for the next. Rav Eliezer Waldenberg being the most recent. I have therefore concluded that we are now in a truly different era. The holocaust was a dividing line.
By that, I do not mean that we do not have rabbinic leaders. Of course we do. Nor am I saying that our generation of leaders can't argue Halacha with the last. They can. But they are of a different world... a different level.
I’m not exactly sure why that is, but I suspect that the European model of Gadol had a lot to do with the European mindset. There was an elitist factor then that attracted only the best and the brightest and the focus for them was on self-sacrifice and learning. There were no distractions. The “Shtetel” life that existed pre-holocaust and that pretty much remained the same for centuries was apparently more conducive to producing high caliber Gedolim and Poskim. The enmity of the gentile world and its constant pogroms and theforced ghettoization left very few possible distractions to those brilliant minds. These are just some thought that spring to mind as I try and think of why there are no more “Rav Moshes” anymore.
Whenever I bring up this subject I am accused of bashing Gedolim. I know my protestation to the contrary will be ignored and I will be bashed again. But I still want to assert and be clear that I am not bashing anyone. I am just making an observation and comparing what we have today against what we had yesterday.
One of the things most often cited to show that we should treat our rabbinic leaders the same as the Gedolim of yesteryear is the quote from the Gemarah in Rosh Hashana, “Yiftach B’Doro K’Shmuel B’Doro”. This means that Yiftach, the Shoeft (judge/leader predating the era of kings) was considered a very minor Shofet. But he was never the less a leader of Israel. And in his generation he was no less a “Gadol” than Shmuel was in his. This Talmudic phrase is always thrown at me to show that, no matter how small one geneartion’s leaders are compared to the last, they remain our leaders no less so then their predecessors. To a certain extent that’s true. But it is not an exact formula of equality. This can be seen from the Gemarah in Taanis (4A)… today’s Daf Yomi.
So who was Yiftach? In discussing the aspect of not asking God properly when requesting something, the Gemarah tells us that Yiftach had made such an improper request of God. He vowed that if he was victorious in his battle against Ammon, then upon his return he would sacrifice to God the first thing that comes out of his door. That is an improper request as anything could come out of his door, even something not qualifiying as a legitimate sacrifice. And indeed, what happened was that his own daughter was the first one out of his house. There is a dispute about what happened next. Some commentators say that he actually sacrificed her and others say that he just “consecrated” her… forcing her to remain celibate for the rest of her life.
Yiftach, B’Doro not only possibly committed the cardinal sin of murder, he did not know that a vow against any Torah law is not a valid vow. And even with that gross misunderstanding of Halacha , he should have at least been Shoel Neder to Pinchas… he should have gone to the Navl and asked for a nullification of such a vow.
So this is Yiftach. He thought it was OK to murder his daughter (or keep her celibate life) because of the conditions he imposed on himself in the form a vow... a vow that he did not know was legitimate and then arrogantly refused to ask the Navi for absolution for. He was after all the Shofet. “Let the Navi come to me!”
Well I would ask that if Yiftach in his generation is like Shmuel in his, then I suggest that the comparison to our era’s Gedolim is not flattering at all. I certainly do not attribute to our rabbinic leaders the kind of ignorance of Halacha and arrogance of spirit that Yiftach had.
It is clear from the Gemarah that some generations of rabbinic leaders are quite a bit less glorious than Gedolim of others. The message is that even though we need leaders in every generation and every generation will provide us for them, there are differences and those differences have consequences. If one generation of leaders is of such low stature that they are “Yiftachs” we need to be careful about what they say, lest they make a Yiftach-like statement.
Our generation’s rabbinic leaders are not Yiftachs. But they aren’t Shmuels either.
