Emunas Chachomim: Accepting Advice of Chachom is learned from Moshe

Moshe was a prophet.

To argue the other side, and I don’t mean to discount emunas chachamim in non-halachic/reshus situations, but I think it needs to be combined with an expertise in that area of “non-halacha/reshus.” A talmid chacham should not be dispensing medical advice if he’s a non expert.

Everything is in Torah, but only the greatest of the great are actually able to understand everything from the Torah. 99.999999% of Klal Yisroel, including the great talmidei chachamim, will not do well on calculus exam simply by knowing Shas, Poskim, Tanach, and Kabbalah.

A talmid chacham may be a talmid chacham, but if he is not an expert in medicine, business, politics, or even psychology, than his advice in those areas may not be the best advice… and not listening to them wouldn’t necessarily be a lack of emunas chachamim.

Joseph-

I guess I shouldn’t have used that terminology. I don’t disagree with the Tiferes Shlomo. I am clarifying what I think he meant. To argue the other side meant to be an argument on those who understand it differently.

His one example is that Klal Yisroel followed Moshe Rabeinu’s “absurd” military advice. I don’t know if Moshe Rabeinu was a military expert (I wouldn’t be surprised if he was), and he was using his Da’as Torah plus his military expertise to make a decision, but even if he wasn’t a military expert, if anyone can extract military expertise from their pure unadulterated Torah knowledge, it would be Moshe Rabeinu. I don’t know if that can be extended to any talmid chacham.

I wouldn’t be surprised if the Tiferes Shlomo would agree that one is not lacking emunas chachamim if he doesn’t listen to the business advice of a talmid chacham who has no business experience.

What would be the category of the gedolim of our generation like R’ Kanievsky or R’ Shteinman? I have no idea. I have no idea if their Torah knowledge is great enough to be able to extract information that they have absolutely no expertise in like medicine. But I doubt that anyone other than the upper echelon of Talmidei Chachamim nowadays has the capacity to give advice in an area that they know nothing about, regardless of how much Torah they know.

B”H for this thread. I always needed to cut out some of davvening. It is getting to long. We can cut out Atah Chonen Ladam Daas. Who needs Daas when we have chachomim.

Who needs plumbers, I can call my Rav and receive a brocha!