(This is the second part of a two-part article. Part One appeared in the 711/13 issue of JLBC.)
Da’as Torah! The very words themselves are enough to inflame passions within the Orthodox world, and far beyond.
But what is “Daas Torah?”
Da’as Torah is, at bottom, a modern concept of rabbinic authority that asserts that every conceivable issue, be it historical, psychological, political, social, or in public affairs, needs to be framed in a halakhic manner and has a halakhic solution. Historically, Da’as Torah in all likelihood emerged as a response—some suggest as a panic response—on the part of an early, that is, nineteenth-century Agudas Yisrael, concerned about defending the interests of Orthodox Jewry in a challenging and often hostile modern environment. The traditional Jewish community became more self-consciously “Orthodox.”
Let’s take a step back. In the nineteenth century—the era of modernity—there were any number of Jewish responses to modernity. There was Chasidus, there was Bundist socialism, there was Zionism in its many forms (including Religious Zionism). There was Haskalah, there was assimilation, there was the newly-contoured Eastern European yeshiva—Volozhin was the model. There was Neo-Orthodoxy in Germany, there was Reform. The political and social challenge posed by secular Jewry to traditional Jewry, in the seculars’ response to modernity, gave rise to the need for traditional Jewry to respond in like fashion. It was in this context that Agudas Yisrael developed and took on the form of a political party.
So what was the problem? The problem was that political organization in the modern sense did not come easy to traditional Jews. It was disturbing for traditional Jews to adopt modern guises—such as political parties—even if such guises were necessary to defend their interests. It was in response to (a) the politicization of traditional Jewry and (b) the dilemmas posed by modernity that Da’as Torah arose.
Agudah, of course was not a “party” in the normal sense. It was run by rabbonim—rabbinic leaders—whose views on both halakhic issues and on communal issues were binding for followers of Agudah. Why were their views binding? Because the g’dolim—the rabbinic leadership—who ran Agudah were g’dolim; they were the authentic spokesmen for the Jewish tradition—on everything; in a word—Da’as Torah, the authentic and authoritative Torah viewpoint on everything. If this be the case, then anything else—other, secular, responses to modernity—was inauthentic, indeed subversive.
We need to distinguish between Da’as Torah and p’sak, halakhic decision-making—and the issue is not only about pluralism versus uniformity. P’sak comes out of, indeed encourages, debate, disagreement, machlokes—rabbinic dispute—on matters of halakha; Da’as Torah requires the suppression of one’s critical faculties and submission to the superior wisdom of the gadol on matters that may be far removed from halakha. This point is highly suggestive when we look at where our own rabbinic leadership has been on Da’as Torah.
Where were modern halakhists in terms of Da’as Torah? For one, the views of the Oruch Hashulchan are of interest. The Oruch Hashulchan, Rav Yechiel Michel Epstein, wrote a hakdama—an introduction—to the Choshen Mihpat section of his halakhic work. (In fact, he wrote two introductions, the first is to the “melech”—the Czar—saying in effect, “We Jews are honest in business.”) The Oruch Hashulchan compares Torah to the orchestra, whose musical essence is harmony, indeed counterpoint. Likewise Torah is all about discussion and dispute and machlokes. If you have one person playing the music—one “Torah view”—it’s boring. (The Oruch Hashulchan’s method in his own code, by the way, was to present all of the views on a halakhic issues; he never imposes his view. In this regard, he is “anti-code”; the book represents a particular “Litvish” approach to halakha that is analytical, and eschews formal codification.) The Oruch Hashulchan was consistent with the protocol of the Eastern European yeshivas: an open system, with many views; no one view imposed by Da’as Torah—especially in public-affairs matters.
The Netziv, Rabbi Naftali Tzvi Yehudah Berlin of the Volozhin yeshiva, of course, was of a piece with the “Litvish” approach. His world was one in which he was uncomfortable with a single Da’as Torah view.
Then there is the Hazon Ish, the person who, with two words in a celebrated responsum—dalat ha`am, “the dregs of society,” in contradistinction to the rabbis—prefigured the hegemony of the rabbinic leadership over the mimetic tradition of orthopraxis, the standard for hundreds of years in the hundreds of communities in Europe. This dynamic arguably led to our present condition of the haredi dictatorship. Was Rav Karelitz—the Hazon Ish—Da’as Torah?
Controversy surrounds other modern g’dolim. Rav Hutner—Rabbi Isaac Hutner, of Chaim Berlin, author of the magisterial Pachad Yitzhak—in the 1970s delivered a shiur on the Holocaust, in which he developed the thesis, well known in Orthodox circles, that Jewish history is cyclical, a cycle of Hurban and geulah, Hurban and geulah. If this be the case, than we do not need new locutions such as “Holocaust” and “Shoah.” It’s “Hurban Europa”—the “Hurban.” (Large topic; I discussed this a couple of years ago.) The point is that Rav Hutner’s analysis of this historical matter may suggest that he was a Da’as Torah proponent; but some of his students, including Rabbi Aharon Rav Lichtenstein, assert that he was not.
On Rav Moshe Feinstein, it is likewise not clear. Rabbi Feinstein’s son-in-law, Rabbi Moshe D. Tendler, said that Rabbi Feinstein in private was highly critical of Da’as Torah: “Why are people talking about Da’as Torah when they don’t even know a Shakh or a Taz?!” But Rabbi Feinstein did deliver a public address at the 1977 Agudah convention (published in the Jewish Observer), in which he defended, forcefully, Da’as Torah. G’dolim in public may affirm and assert; g’dolim in private may express reservations and doubt.
Finally, where was Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik, the Rov? This is an interesting question. As is often the case, Rabbi Soloveitchik was in two places—but not at the same time (unusual for the Rov!). In 1940, in a eulogy delivered at the second Agudas Yisrael of the United States conference for Rabbi Chaim Ozer Grodzinski—the great Rav Chaim Ozer of Vilna—Rabbi Soloveitchik, articulated an eloquent expression of Da’as Torah. Using as metaphor the artifacts of the High Priest, he spoke of the need to unite in one person, as in the high priest of old, the tzitz—the symbol of halakhic scholarship and p’sak—and the hoshen, the symbol of policy decisions on communal issues. The Rov asserted that halakhic scholarship and policy decisions on communal issues (“all current political questions”) likewise needed to be united in one person. The Rov did not use the term, but it is clear that he was talking about Da’as Torah.
Rabbi Soloveitchik’s position made a 180-degree turn as result of the experience of World War Two. At War’s end, it was clear that many of the g’dolim, who had urged their flocks to wait out the storm—with disastrous results—were wrong. “History is a posek,” said the Rov. And indeed, through the post-War decades Rav Soloveitchik was consistent in his assertion that issue after issue—the Viet Nam war, for example—were not issues for p’sak. The Rov asserted, in effect, “Get the mumchim in the field to guide us. Poskim should not interpose themselves in areas in which they have little expertise.”
And this points up the central issue in Da’as Torah, It is not at all obvious that there is a Da’as Torah—a Torah view that is decisive—for every development in Jewish life. Our analysis too often is the result of a wanton use of anachronism in search of political satisfaction.
I invoke the one whom I characterize as “the great Jewish writer,” Nathaniel Hawthorne (despite his reputation as an antisemite): “Let us thank God for having given us such ancestors; and let each successive generation thank Him not less fervently for being one step further from them in the march of ages.” Similarly for our generation, and for our recent past in terms of our halakhic and social imperatives.
By Jerome A. Chanes
