Daas Torah

Patur, according to your strict definition of Lo Sassur we shouldn’t be making a Bracha on Chanuka or Megilla.

That famous quote from the Baal Hatanya is referring to the second category, of asking personal advice. Of this we mostly agree anyhow, that while it is worthwhile to get a Talmid Chacham’s perspective you are not Mechuyav to take his advice. (Although, to ask and then disregard might be Bizayon Talmid Chacham, depending on the circumstance.) Interestingly, the Baal Hatanya didn’t stop giving such advice. He obviously just wanted to slow it down. He wouldn’t have given advice had he not felt capable of doing so.

He didn’t address the main kind — where it is usually invoked — which is public issues. For this it doesn’t take Nevua or derivatives thereof to make decisions. And yes, we must follow our leaders as we always did.

This is what they call a straw man. There is nobody, and I mean nobody who goes to a Godol for actual medical advice rather than to a doctor.

Proponets of Daas Torah bring up the case where the Chazon Ish told a Brain Surgeon where to operate.

There are also cases where supposedly a Gadol told a averach to go see a certain doctor instead of the specialist

So is the R’ Dessler I quoted, written out by DY, also from the ‘certain chasidic Rabbis’ mentioned by R’ Feldman as the only ones who invoke ruach hakodesh when discussing “da’as Torah” ?

And he rejects the possibility that they all made “ta’us gamur”.

And even the most ‘acceptable’ idea he says – that they were great chachamim – is much more emphatic than most here would like. We cannot assume to fathom the depth of their thinking and decisions, and it is impossible that they made a “ta’us gamur”.

So – what would R’ Zelig say here ? This is already after the idea was ‘invented’ ? You can assume he would disagree – but lets be honest:

the clear distaste everyone here has for the idea has not as much to do with the sources, as much as with difficulty conceding the limitation to personal autonomy sanctioned by the torah.

“Public issues were always decided by Rabbonim, including the Vaad Arba Aratzos. “

The deciders were not always the greatest talmidei chachamim. We had an example of that in today’s Daf Yomi.

Patur Aval Assur:

I did not mean to imply that you held “Mai ahanu lei Rabbanan”. I meant to note that nobody should make that extrapolation from your quote.

Sam2:

Again, I was not insulting your “Rav”, yourself and not anyone else either. Writing, for the sake of brevity, “Rabbi JB Soloveitchik” rather than spelling out both names each time, is not insulting. I’ll leave it at that.

Outside of MO circles “Rabbi Soloveitchik” is more likely to mean any one of the Brisker Rovs, past or present. They are, after all, the original and famous Soloveitchiks (and the family that RJBS decends from.) Which leads to the point, in many if not most online discussions MO commenters refer to him with the brief “RJBS”. They do the same for other rabbis to (i.e. RMW for Rabbi Willig, RHS for Rabbi Schachter, etc.) So it is obvious no ill will is intended with these abbreviations and it is the accepted and common form of abbreviating.

I would hold them responsible if they would have sabotaged rescue efforts. Did the Rabbonim do that? Did they declare that no one should escape?

The first four pages dealt with this so I have no reason to think this will change anything. One famous Rav is knows for having advised people not to go, up until a certain point. Many others understood what was coming before the activists.

People didn’t leave because people have inertia. Nobody advised my grandparents not to leave, and yet he left the last minute. It wasn’t even possible for many to leave.

And yes, there were Baalei Ruach Hakodesh who foresaw and spoke about what was coming. Did people just get up and go? It is a gross misrepresentation to say that they held people back. Before the trouble started people were indeed advised not to go to America where they will drop Yiddishkeit. That was the truth, not an intuition. And still, many came, with their rabbi’s blessings.

Yirmiyahu Hanavi knew about the Cchurban and all the deaths, why didn’t he get everyone to run away?

What kind of scenario are you depicting where a zionist leader would advise people that things are fine and that people stayed because of him? If he knew better but wanted to pacify the masses then yes, he is to blame. If those who decided to listen to him rather than to someone else ended up suffering, that wouldn’t be any different than any other advice that didn’t work out. If you don’t know you can only calculate. And a single extreme situation doesn’t prove anything about the ability to calculate.

The Sanhedrin made a mistake by being Mattir Tzidkiyahu’s Neder. Reb Zecharya Ben Avkilus made a mistake by having Rachmanus on Bar Kamtza. Yehoshua was fooled by the Givonim. Moshe Rabbeinu made a mistake by allowing the Meraglim, does that justify the calling of Atem Hemitem?

HaLevi

The Belz Rebbi in his final Tish in Hungary in 1944 told his flock to stay in Hungary that it was safe there and it was assur to go to Palestine

Hakatan, just cut it out. I don’t think you are being honest about this. First of all you would never refer to Reb Chaim or the Brisker Rav as Rabbi Soloveitchik, so the name is not ambiguous. Second, why are you harping on this issue? You see that he takes it in a denigrading way. If you won’t change or apologize just follow your earlier recommendation to leave it at that.

The normal response to seeing someone get insulted or upset from your words is to back off, at least somewhat. Why keep on drilling?

You are purposely referring to those Rabbanim who advised not to leave and to those laymen who said to leave. This is not a fair argument. If a Rav said Europe is about to explode and someone else said that it won’t, then who should they listen to?

There is a person for every view. Finding the one, after the fact, that turned out to be the case doesn’t show anything. If I run down every street yelling, “Your pot is bubbling!” and eventually it turned out true for someone, that proves nothing at all. On the flip side, when a sudden current swept away a professional swimmer that doesn’t put a shaddow on his professionalism.

People were not wholesale advised not to run. And if you are comparing, as many do, before anything started when Rabbonim kept people from going to places where they will lose Yiddishkeit while others urged people to go — not out of any long term understanding, but out of ideology — then you are comparing apples and pebbles.

You are actually picking on exception rather than the rule. Besides, in Poland nobody told anyone not to worry, so why didn’t they run? This is why I mention the Navi. It doesn’t help.

These points were raised earlier in the discussion.

Halevi,

My point isn’t if the Rabbonim can be blamed. I would never presume to judge any Jewish leader in Europe at that time, Secular or Religious. The discussion here is if it is necessarily smarter to listen to someone because they have “Daas Torah” and what meaning and value the term even has. From the example I brought above it would seem that blindly listening to “Daas Torah” is not always the smartest thing to do. That’s all. I would never be so arrogant as to actually judge them as human beings

ZD, that is slander. There is one Rav who is famous for having said that. Others incouraged escape long before anyone believed them. Others taught people how to jump from trains before people knew what they were. It was Rabbonim who were at the forefront of seeing ahead and understanding very well the personalities involved. It was others who stood in their way. Then they tried turning the tables.

Brining exactly one incident to draw from is not quite an honest way to make a conclusion, especially if that incident didn’t have much to do with insight. This is besides the fact that it is a big misrepresentation of the facts to state what you are stating, unless you are talking about before anything started, in which case it is a silly argument.

Those at the forefront are the Einei Ha’eida, and they have a perspective of a big picture. They lead Klal Yisroel, inasmuch as they are listened to, to what is best for Klal Yisroel.

The idea of looking to non-Torah leaders to lead is in fact an old one, as it says, Nitna Rosh Vinashuva Mitzrayma. But we know the Torah’s perspective on that and how it turned out.

“Auschwitz and Treblinka were known about in 1943”

To be fair, by 1943 there was nowhere to flee. They should have listened to Jabotinsky in 1938, when there were still a few places that were letting Jews in.

Even in ’38 whatever very few places might have accepted a handful of Jews, certainly nowhere no place even that early would have accepted masses of Jews. At most a few here and there. (And whatever quotos they were willing to accept were generally filled anywhere.) So the accusation that we could have escaped is mostly baseless.

Also in 1944 it was possible to move between Hungary and Romania and survive the war .

I knew quite a few people who did this including some relatives of mine

Well contrary to my earlier statement I found another Rishon who seems to apply Lo Tasur to the Chachamim of every generarion (although again, he is speaking in a strictly halachic context).

Rashba (Teshuva 2:322)

??? ?????? ?????? ??? ??? ???? ???? ??? ????? ??? ???? ????? ??? ?????? ?????? ?? ????? ???? ???? ????? ????? ?? ?? ????? ?????? ???? ???? ??? ?????? ????? ??? ???? ??? ???

My understanding of Daas Torah is very simple:

When we had neveim, if you were uncertain as to what Hashem wanted you to do, you would go ask the Navi. Today, b’avoisainu harabbim when we have no neveim, it makes sense to go to someone who spends most of their time contemplating Hashem’s will (and who knows you) to guide you in making your best guess at what Hashem wants you to do.

Frankly, I have a hard time seeing how anyone can disagree with this but I am open to hear any counter-argument. Note, however, that these are “best guesses” they are not nevua.

Sometimes rabbonim speak from personal prejudices or opinions that are NOT necessarily Torah mandates, and that’s where the problem emerges. I know I mentioned once that a bunch of mikvah attendants were speaking with a rov to get a consensus on how to deal with the issue of women who came in with nail polish that was difficult to fully remove. Instead of addressing the shailah that was being asked, his immediate response was, “What do frum women need to be wearing nail polish for?” That might be his personal view of cosmetics in general and nail polish in particular, but that is not a Torah mandate to refrain from polishing the nails. This is surely not an isolated example.

P. A. A.

I don’t know who all the abbreviations are referring to, but I find it quite amusing to listen to “daas torah” that there’s chalila no Daas Torah!

???”? ??? is R’ Menachem Genak and ????? is R’ Soloveitchik.

I don’t know why you think that R’ Soloveitchik was issuing a statement of daas torah that there is no such thing as daas torah. He was simply stating a fact. If he would tell me that this week is parshas shelach would that be a statement of daas torah?

Sam: I don’t think it’s up to us, men and women of the Coffee Room to judge, evaluate, appraise the actions and thought of our Torah Leaders. Yes, everyone down here is human (including a certain froggie), make missteps and errors. But we (laymen and women) don’t judge our greats. That’s the sad lesson of ??? ???? ?? ??????. And also ??? ?? ???? – ??? ???? ???? ????? ??? ???? ???? ?????.

“The issue is when this said person issues a statement, without providing a Torah source (or where other people bring in conflicting Torah sources) and people say that these statements are binding on klal yisrael as determined by the percieved stature of the issuer of the statement.”

Patur Aval Assur,

There are two separate issues that you raise. I think that when a person is struggling to determine what Hashem wants him to do, there are often no clear-cut, black on white answers. Sources can inform the answer but he is going to a Chacham for his intuition as to what Hashem would want, not for a source (which can always be distinguished).

The issue of being binding on Klal Yisrael are issues of halacha, and whether or not the ruling of a great sage in modern times (post-Talmud) can be binding on Klal Yisrael. I don’t think anyone maintains that non-halacha advice of a great sage can be binding on someone who didn’t ask for the advice (or even someone who did). And I don’t think anyone holds that even the halachic ruling of a single great sage, when there are other sages who disagree, can be binding on someone who didn’t ask for the ruling.

“If My Rov would tell me this week is parshas shelach, I’d have to lein parshas shelach this week.”

What would you do if you knew that it was not parshas shelach? What would you do if your Rav was doing birchas hachodesh and he said the wrong day?

And maybe that’s the reason I don’t follow the “daas torah” of such “manhigim” who say not to follow Gedolim. To question, analyze their every saying, thought to see of it fits into my pithy narrow mind.

No, I follow the ones and the derech of mesorah, that say ????? ?????? ?? ???? ???? ?? ???? not with an? fancy, modern explanations. A “Rav” who says otherwise, deserves to have HIS views examined, analysed, scrutinized. ??? ???? ???.