Tuesday, July 17, 2012

Of Horses and Elephants – A Response

Guest Post by Dr. Aryeh Frimer

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.