Can An OCD Rabbi Be The Posek Achron, part 2

Here is an mp3 excerpt of Rabbi Dr. Daniel Sperber talking about the Choftetz Chaim's refusal to allow electricity in his synagogue. You should be able to play this in your browser or download it an play it in your media player:

Download sperber_excerpt.mp3

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Comments

[chnyock@gmail.com]

you are DAMNED for referring to the saintly chofetz chayim simply as "someone with ocd"

go screw yourself

[Ariel Sokolovsky www.BostonChabad.com]

B"H
Too bad Chofetz Chaim wasn't Amish. Same people would be defending his right to follow his peoples traditional way of life instead of playing shrinks and giving him an OCD diagnosis.

[Ariel Sokolovsky www.BostonChabad.com]

B"H
But let's actually try to answer your question.
What does it take to be a posek?
R. Moshe Feinstein replied to this question by saying that it is a matter of people asking him Torah questions and liking the answers he gave.
Thus Chofetz Chaim being a posek depends simply on his interpretations of halacha being accepted by many Torah observant Jews and rabbis.

[Abe]

I suppose that if the Amish were traditional idiots, the Chofetz Chaim could not be blamed for engaging in similar traditional idiocy.
It wasn't only Chofets Chaim that was a bit unbalanced. Yosef Karo, the author of Shulchan Auruch, exhibited strains of paranoia. He wrote all about the "voices" in his head in his famous treatise, Magid Mesharim, where he describes his sexual encounters and puritanical eccentricities in intimate details.
Makes you think twice about the halachic credibility of their edicts.

[Garnel Ironheart]

Try looking at it from a different angle. Consider what the Chofetz Chayim accomplished, in the absence of word processors, a Bar-Ilan CD or even an electric light. Whether you disagree with his books or not, you must admit his works are monumental.
Now, how did he do this? He possibly had a condition called Obsessive Compulsive Personality Disorder (OCPD) which is distinct from Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) in that people with OCPD remain functional, VERY functional.
Most doctors have OCPD. How else to get through 1000 page textbooks in time for exams? Many lawyers and accountants do as well. In fact, I would wager than any successful individual has an element of it.
So if the Chofetz Chayim had OCPD, then it is actually a positive thing because it helped him achieve what it did. Seen in that light, it's a good thing.

[Yosef ben Matitya]

abe mentioned r' yosef caro. but i find no more disturbed and still benefiting from "recognition" than r' yitzchak lurie, r' chayim vital and the besht. those were truly harmful sorcerers. any 'spirituality' derived from them, is avodah zoreh, ov and yidde'onee.

[Ariel Sokolovsky www.BostonChabad.com]

B"H
A psychotherapist from London distingueshes between the actions of Tzadikim and psychiatric illness:

A Tale of Two Orphans:
The Limits of Categorisation

by Dr. Joseph H. Berke and Stanley Schneider http://www.jhberke.com/tale_2orphans.htm
Another interesting article from the good doctors:
http://www.jhberke.com/Freud_Lub_Rebbe.htm"Sigmund Freud and the Lubavitcher Rebbe

Stanley Schneider, Jerusalem & Joseph H Berke, London.

Published in Psychanalytic Review, 87(1), 2000 http://www.jhberke.com/Freud_Lub_Rebbe.htm

[maven]

R. Moshe Cordovero wrote thousands of pages of a dense, complex (and beautiful) nature as commentary on the Zohar, and it would be criminal to label him with a DSM-III diagnosis. R. Yosef Karo's Magid tractate is entirely consonant with the spiritual life of his time and place, I suppose people on this list would condemn not only the Ari, R. Yosef Karo, and the Besht, but also the Sufis (whose dikr R. Karo describes, and who the Rambam's son states maintained the lost techniques of prophecy that the Jews lost over the centuries), Buddhists, and all other mystics. At the end of the day, their work stands through history. I think knocking down the works of the talented because they have achieved something extraordinary is what Nietszche labelled "ressentiment", an attempt of the less gifted to bring down the talented. To some degree, the problems frequently illuminated on Shmarya's blog come from the contemporary Orthodox movement away from the greatness and creativity that was once associated with our high level thinkers, in favor of this novel "daas Torah" group think, as in the case in Israel where psychology studies were banned by the Bnei Brak crowd because, essentially, they were afraid that university trained religious people might, chas v'shalom, think for themselves.

[yidandahalf]

Whats up with the clip? I get about ten seconds and that's it. Anyone else get anymore than that?

[Yosef ben Matitya]

Maven,
I don't know much about the Ramak nor about the sufis.
What I wrote about the Ari, the guy was evidently sick. He often resorts to derision of others, he so poisoned our prayer books we will never be able to figure how to get rid of his sorcellery. What are all these so called "kavanot"? aaaa eeeee uuuuu vuvuvu yuyuyu yeyeye huhuhu will bring us to prophecy? what a load of nonsense.
Prophecy was wisely relegated by the talmudic rabbis to fools.
Oooooh! the holy Ari!
Then you have Reb Chayim Vital and the Besht, outright sorcerers who punish humans with black dogs and black dogs with equally savage rabbis! And this is what chassidim consider as spirituality?
Racist whitchcraft? This is their spirituality? I find it nauseating!
They are all charlatans. Not fools, but rather thieves.

[Ben Torah]

good story to catch people's attention but factually false. My grandfather zt'l was a talmid muvhak of the chofetz chayim in Radin, and electricity was installed. The CC also followed every word of the Baylis trial in the secular yiddish press.

[maven]

YBM-

So first of all, the Ari didn't invent the kavanot, they'd been floating around texts for at least a hundred years before the Ari. You may not understand or like the concept of meditative practice, but it is certainly a valid and widely diffused form of spiritual exercise. Furthermore, the stories you refer to are almost all later fabrications and irrelevant to the issues of this board, other than that you clearly went to a traditional mesivta and inadvertantly reveal the failures of that form of education.

Actually, the Ari is VERY relevant to a constructive critique of the current so called Orthodox world, and I can guarantee he would not have been accepted in today's Hareidi world. He was half-Sepharadi, and yet managed to study with the greatest Talmudist of his time. He then became a self-supporting succesful businessman (no government funded kollel, no chapter 8 housing), and in late middle age moved to Tzefat, where he taught for all of two years before dying in a plague. He clearly had something to say, for he didn't actually write anything on his own, all his teachings (essentially a radical reorganization of divergent mystical traditions in a systematized fashion) were transmitted by others (and those "stories" are mostly much later Romantic fiction, as is the linkage between the Maharal and the Golem, and most of Shivchei HaBesht).
He also attempted something that today would brand him a total apikoras- he attempted, with reasonable success, to create a unified Siddur that would incorporate both the Ashkenazi and Sepharadi traditions. In an educated Jewish world he was called a tzaddik for that, today he'd be called a Koyfer, an apikoyrus, and a Reform, if anyone would listen to a "balabos" these days anyway.

[Shmarya]

The Ari was not a self-supporting businessman. He relied on income first from his father, then from another family member and an uncle. He married the daughter of his uncle (of the Egyptian Francis family, if I remember correctly). He died in Tzfat after teaching there for about 1 1/2 years. He waas 38 years old.

[Shmarya]

good story to catch people's attention but factually false. My grandfather zt'l was a talmid muvhak of the chofetz chayim in Radin, and electricity was installed.

Then why would the Chofetz Chaim's son have written that story in his memoirs?

Perhaps it is more likely your grandfather is wrong.

[maven]

Shmarya-

Hate to get postmodern with you, since I think I'm generally on your side, but are you SURE about those facts on the Ari? Are you SURE he didn't work as a businessman and ran off to the Nile to meditate when he was supposed to be working? Or are these not "facts" you remember from your Chabad upbringing and based on their very specific "mesora" on this matter? The reason I brought this up in the first place was YBM's set of assertions about historical figures which are actually based on hagiographical accounts. I think if you "meditate" on this you'll see what I'm getting at. Sort of like, doesn't the Torah say that Avraham sent Eliezer to get Rivka? In these cases there is a desire to make the Ari, the Besht, whatever, fit with certain politicized models. You might have heard around Chabad that they only accept their own accounts of the Besht from Keser Shem Tov, for example.
But I guess my stating two years of teaching instead of a little over one and a half would count as a criminal error in a posting regarding obsessive compulsive disorder :)

[Shmarya]

http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/view.jsp?artid=627&letter=L#1851

Founder of the modern Cabala; born of German parents at Jerusalem in 1534; died at Safed Aug. 5. 1572. While still a child he lost his father, and was brought up by his rich uncle Mordecai Francis, tax-farmer at Cairo, who placed him under the best Jewish teachers. Luria showed himself a diligent student of rabbinical literature; and, under the guidance of Bezaleel Ashkenazi, he, while quite young, became proficient in that branch of Jewish learning. At the age of fifteen he married his cousin, and, being amply provided for, was enabled to continue his studies undisturbed. When about twenty-two years old, becoming engrossed with the study of the Zohar, which had recently been printed for the first time, he adopted the life of a hermit. He removed to the banks of the Nile, and for seven years secluded himself in an isolated cottage, giving himself up entirely to meditation. He visited his family only on the Sabbath, speaking very seldom, and always in Hebrew. Such a mode of life could not fail to produce its effect on a man endowed by nature with a lively imagination. Luria became a visionary. He believed he had frequent interviews with the prophet Elijah, by whom he was initiated into sublime doctrines. He asserted that while asleep his soul ascended to heaven and conversed with the great teachers of the past.

[maven]

Your citation is from an Encyclopedi published in 1900! Here's how the current Britannica tells the same story (note the opening phrase):

The main source for his life story is an anonymous biography, Toledot ha-Ari (“Life of the Ari”), written or perhaps edited some 20 years after his death, in which factual and legendary elements are indiscriminately mingled. According to the Toledot, Luria's father died while Isaac was a child, and his mother took him to Egypt to live with her well-to-do family. While there, he became versed in rabbinic studies, including Halakha (Jewish law), and even wrote glosses on a famous compendium of legal discussions, the Sefer ha-Halakhot of Isaac ben Jacob Alfasi. He also engaged in commerce during this period. While still a youth, Luria began the study of Jewish mystical learning and lived for nearly seven years in seclusion at his uncle's home on an island in the Nile River.

And a slightly more embellished version of the story on your favorite web site: http://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/111878/jewish/Rabbi-Isaac-Luria-The-Ari-Hakodosh.htm

I'm in the office so I don't have access to my academic books (grad student at Hebrew U under Idel), but I'll try to find some more critical sources for your entertainment. But its not about the Ari, just making the point that much of what we "assume" to be "true", may be not that clear. And that's an assertion I can't believe you'd have a problem with.

[Shmarya]

Please check your scholarly sources and get back to us.

[maven]

There is an excellent article by Avraham David in a special issue of Mechkarei Yerushalayim devoted to the Ari, a number of years ago, which details many of the letters we have of the Ari's business transactions. He apparently had a lot going on, was very active in the spice and vegetable trade, and apparently had outposts working on his behalf in Italy and other places. He also apparently was an active philanthropist and fundraiser. It is very clear that the biography in the largely mythical Toledot HaAri is way off, he probably lived in Jerusalem past his childhood (as he is documented in kitvei yad to have studied with someone and would have been 8 years old in the mythical version), was clearly linked to the Ashkenazi community, having served on their bet din, so some contest the entire biography. What was interesting from the article was that his need to be self-sufficient as a businessman was possibly motivated by the standard of the Egyptian Torah leadership at the time, which followed the Rambam very observantly and felt that Torah scholars should not be supported by the community, so all their gedolim, including the famed Radbaz, had full time jobs and no chapter 8 housing. (That part of the Rambam's teachings has been conveniently forgotten). So, Shmarya and others, I think actually the truth about his biography actually make the Ari more inspiring of a character rather than less, and once again, one should be critical (in the academic use of the phrase) about "facts" learned in grade school that may have been "adjusted" for political purposes, as one of your correspondents mentioned with regards to the ArtScroll hagiographies.

[Shmarya]

Point well taken. Thank you.

[Yochanan Lavie]

When man talks to God, it's called prayer. When God talks to man, it's called psychosis.

I believe in a spiritual life, but IMO, the Ari was influeneced by gnosticism (see Gershom Scholem, Moshe Idel). I don't believe in stuff that's not in the Tanach, beautiful though his ideas may be. I used to accept them, but cannot anymore.

(I am not a literalist, but I have a problem with "hidden oral traditions.")

[maven]

Moshe Idel argued against the idea that somehow gnosticism, an antisemitic christian heresy, was preserved for two thousand years secretly among the Orthodox mystics to emerge in the time of the Ari. That was "old school" Jewish studies, where any idea of interest in the Jewish world naturally had to come from some outside influence, it was inconceivable that Jews would create imaginative of value on their own (there was a long standing anti-semitic concept like that, echoed in a chapter by Wittgenstein, as well as in the usual characters like Weininger, etc) So, Scholem could not fully evade his German upbringing on this :)
One would argue that it is in the Tanach. Look at the chapter where Saul becomes king, he gets enraptured by "apprentice prophets" doing mystical techniques and gets taken by the wind.
And a "only in tanach" person, you think we should change legislation to allow eye for an eye retribution?

[Yochanan Lavie]

Maven: As stated above, I am not an ultraliteralist. I don't believe everything in the chumash literally, either. I think Bereishit is allegory; evidence for deep geological time and for evolution is overwhelming, IMO. However, I do think that Avraham existed, and God was behind the creation. I don't think Shemot through Devarim happened exactly as wrtten (or as Cecil B. Demille depicted). But I do believe in a (no less miraculous) smaller scale Exodus and a divine covenant. Tanach is not history the way we know it- that's a concept that Greeks such as Herodotus and Thukydides invented. It is mythic history that contains a kernel of what we would call historical truth, surrounded by even more important divine wisdom that can guide our lives. However, I see no evidence for sephirot, shevirat hakelim, tzimtzum, or other such concepts. I can even accept the last 2, but not the sephirot, which almost points to a decaune God (worse than Christianity's triune god). I guess you can say that I accept pshat except where facts have proved pshat unsustainable. In which case, I look towards an allegorical-homeletical interpretation. I guess I am a cross between a Karaite- lite and a Maimonidean rationalist.

No, I don't believe in "eye for an eye" because the torah later mentions monetary restition, thereby superseding the literalness of "eye for an eye." (Even hardcore Karaites grant you that). And I haven't killed my "ben sorar u'morer" yet.

[maven]

Yochanan-

with regards to your child, do we need to call protective services or Vicki Polin? :)

[Yochanan Lavie]

Maven: LOL.

[Moshe]

Sperber misrepresented What the son of the Chofetz Chaim said. Although the piece is not clear, he never uses the phrase of Chadash assur Min Hatorah. He says that his father was against innovations in religious customs. He cites 2 examples & gives reasons for both, not simply because it is new. One of them is using electricity in the synagogue. He says that his father felt that the verse that says "Honor Hashem with lights" is more appropriately fulfilled when each person donates his own candles. As I said the reasoning is not clear, but it is not what Sperber says. I wonder if the Chofetz Chaim eventually relented, as I kind of doubt that by 1930, there was no electricity in his Yeshiva.

[Eikinkloster]

"I don't believe in stuff that's not in the Tanach, beautiful though his ideas may be. I used to accept them, but cannot anymore.

(I am not a literalist, but I have a problem with "hidden oral traditions.")"

The Tanach itself is regarded by the scholars as having been a "hidden oral tradition" for long. Actually, there is such a characterization on the Tanach itself, about Deuteronomy.

Scripture is the recollection of men's attempt to express the transcendental. At face value *all* scripture is dangerous, irrational mumbo jumbo.