Guest Post by Rabbi Avi Shafran*
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| Rabbi Avi Shafran |
In an article entitled Retroactive Prophesy, Rabbi Avi
Shafran strongly criticized an essay by Rabbi Berel Wein. I responded to that
with a post of my own yesterday stating that I felt Rabbi Shafran’s opening
comment was unfair to Rabbi Wein - and then proceeded to explain why I thought he
misunderstood Rabbi Wein’s comments.
I
sent Rabbi Shafran a copy of my post and he responded to me in almost exactly
the way he did in this follow-up essay. I do not normally cross-post. But I
have made an exception in this case for obvious reasons. I will be responding
to this essay later today. Rabbi Shafran’s words follow.
As I expected, my critique of some recent writing of Rabbi
Berel Wein has generated many comments and communications. There were,
also as expected, yeas and nays
The nays focused on either or both of two complaints.
Paraphrased loosely: 1) How DARE you criticize an elder statesman of the
Orthodox Jewish world? (And a sub-complaint: How DARE you not refer to
Rabbi Wein as a Rosh Yeshiva?)
And 2) But Rabbi Wein is right! Gedolim have erred in the
past! So what bothers you about what Rabbi Wein wrote?
The first thing first. I have great respect for Rabbi
Wein as a person and a scholar, and feel enormous personal hakaras hatov to him
for several things, among them his wonderful history tapes, which I used back
in the 1980s to create a syllabus for a high school Jewish history course I
taught then; and his mentorship of, and Torah-study with, a cherished son-in
law of mine, who remains close to, and works with, Rabbi Wein to this day.
I meant no insult, chalilah, by not referring to Rabbi Wein
as a Rosh Yeshiva (he led Yeshivas Shaarei Torah in Monsey for 20 years).
He has not, however, served in that position since 1997, and his rightful
claims to fame are his great knowledge of Jewish history and his
writings. The Wikipedia entry for Rabbi Wein, in fact and accurately,
identifies him as “an American-born Orthodox rabbi, scholar, lecturer, and
writer… regarded as an expert on Jewish history…”
As to the reason I felt it was acceptable, even required, to
publicly criticize his recent essays, I can only say that there are times that
“ein cholkin kavod lirav” – “we do not defer to even great men” This, I
felt and feel, was such a time.
As to the second complaint, the complainers need only read –
this time, carefully – what Rabbi Wein wrote, and – just as carefully – what I
did.
I did not contest the assertion that the religious leaders
of Klal Yisrael can err; in fact the Gemara says so, in many places; to the
contrary, I clearly stated the fact.
What I contested was the attitude that any of us can be
sure, based only on our own lights, that great men in fact erred in specific
cases; and – most egregiously – that those judgments allow us to cavalierly
reject the current guidance of our own generation’s religious leadership.
To wit, Rabbi Wein insinuates that the Gedolim of today, who
are looked to for guidance by the majority of yeshivos, Bais Yaakovs and Jewish
day schools, are limited by “a mindset that hunkers back to an idyllic
Eastern European world of fantasy that is portrayed falsely in fictional
stories.” That jaundiced judgment is used by Rabbi Wein to explain why
those Gedolim don’t endorse the celebration of Yom Ha’atzma’ut or the
commemoration of the Holocaust on Yom HaShoah (but rather, instead, in other
ways and at times like Tisha B’Av).
“The whole attitude of much of the Orthodox world,” he
further writes, “is one of denial of the present fact that the state exists,
prospers and is the largest supporter of Torah and Jewish traditional religious
lifestyle in the world.” No one, though, denies those facts, only that they
somehow mean that opposition to the creation of Israel before the Second World
War is, as a result, somehow retroactively rendered erroneous.
Rabbi Wein also writes that “One of the great and holy
leaders of Orthodox society in Israel stated in 1950 that the state could not
last more than fifteen years. Well, it is obvious that in that assessment he
was mistaken. But again it is too painful to admit that he was mistaken…”
Perhaps Rabbi Wein is referring to someone else, but if his
reference is to the Chazon Ish, it is a tale widely told in some circles that
lacks any basis I have been able to find. On the contrary, the contention has
been utterly rejected by someone, a talmid of the Chazon Ish who became an academic,
who spoke to the Chazon Ish extensively about Israel. The godol, the
talmid writes, expressed his opinion that time would have to tell whether
Israel would develop into a positive or negative thing for Klal Yisrael; but
the Godol did not, the talmid stresses, ever opine what he felt the future
held, much less offer some timeline.
The issue is not whether Gedolim are Nevi’im (they are not)
but the Gedolim of each generation are, in the end, those to whom the Torah
wishes us to turn for guidance, the “einei ha’eidah,” the “eyes of the people.”
Or just some righteous but out-of-touch ivory tower scholars who cannot
be relied upon for anything but issues concerning kashrus or Shabbos.
I make no apologies for standing up for the former
conviction. And I would welcome Rabbi Wein proclaiming a similar
stance. But, alas, words he has written have struck me, and many, many
others (including both those upset at those words and others who welcomed them
with glee) as implying the latter.
I truly wish I hadn’t felt the need to address those words,
but I did.
*Cross-posted with permission from Rabbi Shafran's blog
