Trolling Wikipedia

DY: Agunos in the time of Chazal didn’t mean the same thing. The modern Agunah issue began less than a few hundred years ago when we no longer had the autonomy to beat recalcitrant husbands until they gave their wives Gittin.

PBA: It was in a Sefer published in the early 20th century. Needless to say, it was roundly rejected. I don’t remember the name offhand but B”N I’ll get back to it here if I remember/see it again.

PBA: (What process the tzedukim used is not clear to me; I am skeptical of the second grade pshat that they didn’t hold of any torah sh’baal peh.)

AFAIK this pshat is pretty clear around shas and Rashi repeats it a multiple times. Much like some ultra-Modern “Orthodox”, they knew all the halochos, learned it carefully, but rejected torah sh’baal peh.

(OK, of course ultra-MO are not in practice nearly as extreme, and don’t reject torah sh’baal peh, just some parts of it which they see as divisible from the rest and incompatible with their worldview.)

As an example, see end of Sukkah 43b where they purposely disrupted a mitzvah by making it impossible to use the avrovos without violating a issur derabonin. The meforshim gives various peshotim exactly which issur derabbonon were involved but all agree the Tezdokim (in this case Baisusim, specifically) knew the the intricacies of muksa very well (no doubt learned all day in a beis medrash) and used that to knock the chachomim and disrupt mitzvos.

YCT and the ilk appear to have similar animosity to the parts of torah sh’baal peh they don’t like. Some non-ultra-MO can stray into this territory too at times; the MBP issue is an example of not just disagreeing with mesorah/halochoh if it gives a bad impression, but actually helping disrupt it instead by giving public support to its detractors, just because it’s gives a bad impression in the 21st century.

For the record I believe Popa is right that the Tzedukim did not reject all of the Oral Torah (in the second grade sense). I don’t have the sources off-hand, but they have machlokisim in the Gemara with Chazal regarding dinim that are only found within the Oral Law, where the Tzedukim are more strict than Chazal were, or they reject only part of the din.

Tzedukim put on teffilin that looked like our teffilin. They were not like the later Karaim who read the Torah literally.

Rashi does say that they rejected Torah Sh’Bal Peh. I would suggest that Rashi was either being lav davka (i.e. the reject part of Torah Sh’Bal Peh) or, more likely, he means that they rejected the Authority of Torah Sh’Bal Peh.

Ben: the tzedukim were the ones who davka put tefillin on their hands and between their eyes, following the pasuk literally. They also didn’t light fires before Shabbos, per chazal’s interpretation but instead were cold and hungry on Shabbos. Tis is rejecting the Torah she’be’al peh.

YCT graduates wear tefillin, follow hilchos Shabbos, and generally care about Halacha- that’s why they have a semicha program that involves intense study of Halacha.

Its not that they don’t like Torah, or want to undermine frumkeit. They are struggling with being frum in this modern world we live in. That’s perfectly fine. Their ‘halachic’ conclusions might not be right, but their intentions are good and they want to live as frum Jews- otherwise they’d discard it all.

Rational,

I don’t know how they put on their tefillin, but actual tefillin as black boxes with scrolls in them and straps attached, are nowhere explained in the Torah sh’bksav.

I would like to note that I disagree with Popa’s characterization of YCT.

The Karaites and other groups invented their own Torah Sheba’al Peh. We know this from findings from places like Qumran.

Karaim do not put on tefillin. But it seems that Tzedukim did (tefillin were found in Qumran, and I buy Dr. Schiffman’s argument that the Qumran sect was Tzedukim).

That goes to the point that the Tzedukim did not outright reject the concept of a Torah Sh’bal peh the way that the later Karaites did.

Ben, there’s huge difference between not understanding something, and finding it “troubling”.

DY,

I don’t think there is. I think the difference is semantics. The yeshivish way to refer to it is “I don’t understand.” The modern way to refer to it is “I find it troubling.”

One can psychoanalyze why each uses the terms they use and maybe it reflects some underlying world outlook, but in normal parlance it is used the same way.

The Tzedukim didn’t take the advice of the guy Popa mention — to start from scratch. They put on Tefillin, because everyone always put on Tefillin. Then they made the changes whenever they felt that the Chachamim injected their own desires and worldview.

They didn’t call themselves Perushim because they called themselves Yehudim. Perushim is a title created by outsiders, who wanted normal Frum Yiddishkeit to be a certain sect within Judaism. The only time we find Chazal referring to themselves as Perushim is when they quotes Tzedukim.

Popa,

I have wondered if they thought so. Meaning they called themselves b’nei tzadok, partially because they were started by someone named Tzadok, but also because the wanted to tie themselves to the Kohanim B’nei Tzadok who are praised by the Navi as preserving the true tradition.

Tzadok Hakohein, mentioned many times in Navi, has no connection to Tzadok and Beitus, the two talmidim of Antignus Ish Socho, spiritual founder of the Tzedukim and Baitusim. They lived many hundreds of years apart.

I’ve seen some un-thought-out silly remarks on this website over the years, but that one comes close to the top!!

Or, to say it a little nicer, meiheichi teisa.

Midwesterner,

I am going to try to say this in the nicest way possible. You might want to tone the rhetoric when the basis for your comment is your lack of knowledge of something. In the future you might want to right something like: “what makes you say that, weren’t they separated by hundreds of years?”

The answer to that politely worded question is that I hold of Dr. Lawrence Schiffman’s basic theory of the Dead Sea Scrolls (see one of my earlier posts above). If he is correct that the Dead Sea sect were Tzedukim, then my theory stands to reason because they refer to themselves as “B’nei Tzadok” and they modeled their community around how they perceived Kohanim should act, considered their adherents to be symbolically like Kohanim, viewed themselves as making up for the improper practices of the real Kohanim in Yerushalayim, and viewed themselves as keeping alive the “true” traditions.

If this information is new to you, I would recommend reading Dr. Schiffman’s book “Reclaiming the Dead Sea Scrolls.”

Popa, I see YCT is looking for a Public Relations Associate. You’re just the man. It’s on a Jewish jobs website.

Every good business has PR. You might as well call al the more than 600,000 PR,sAd, or marketing people in the U.S. “spin doctors,” WIY. It’s not a YCT thing

Sam2:

And Rabbi Linzer (my Rav says that he is still Frum and worthy of the title) admits that it doesn’t mean anything. The whole point of the double-ring ceremony is to make the woman feel good about herself. He even says that you have to explain this because he points out some problems in the Kiddushin if they think that she needs to give a ring as well.

R’ Moshe in Even Ha’ezer 3:18 writes that the Kiddushin is perfectly valid. Although he does hold that it’s assur to do it.

Popa:

I’m not sure if your question was meant for me or for DaasYochid. If it was meant for me, the answer is no. I just came across this thread today, and felt the need to argue with Sam, or R’ Linzer according to Sam.