The following mini-post by Dr. Frimer is in
response to my post about Making a Horse into an Elephant. Therein – for purposes
of the post - I granted that Partnership Minyanim may not violate the strict
letter of Halacha, although I was uncertain as to whether that is actually true.
It appears that Poskim I deeply respect have indeed Paskined that there are
Halachic violations with these Minyanim. Dr. Frimer asked me to post the
following which contain sources indicating those facts. The following are his
words – unedited:
I found this post about Partnership Minyanim
interesting. I was disappointed, however, with your suggestion that
there are no hard Halakhic issues at stake. On the contrary, Partnership
Minyanim are very halakhically problematic. Kindly see:
(1) "Partnership Minyanim," Aryeh A. Frimer and
Dov I. Frimer, "Text and Texture" of the Rabbinical Council of
America (May 23, 2010); available online at http://text.rcarabbis.org/?p=909.
(2) "Lo Zo haDerekh: A Review of Rabbi Prof. Daniel
Sperber's Darka shel Halakha," Aryeh A. Frimer, The Seforim Blog (12
June 2008). Available online at:http://seforim.blogspot.com/2008/06/aryeh-frimer-review-of-daniel-sperbers.html.
PDF file of the corrected and reformatted article available online at http://www.jofa.org/pdf/uploaded/1551-USOB5897.pdf.
In addition, my brother Dov and I are completing a 160 page
MS on the subject which will document why Gedolei haPoskim reject this
idea MeIkar haDin. See the above articles for the gist.
You should know that in a lecture given in July 2009, R.
Joshua Shapiro reported on a conference (held several years before) of the
religious Zionist rabbinic organization “Tzohar.”
A halakhic forum of
leading modern Orthox poskim, comprised of Rabbis Jacob Ariel, Shlomo
Aviner, Chaim Druckman and Aaron Lichtenstein, concluded that Kehillat
Shira Hadasha has crossed the red line of what could legitimately be
considered Orthodox practice. See: http://www.yrg.org.il/show.asp?id=33537.
R. David Stav, Chairman of Tzohar (conversation with DIF, Oct. 16, 2009),
confirmed the accuracy of this report.
IMHO R Maryles's comments in this article were
interesting but unguarded, to say the least.
