Reddit reviews Changing the Immutable: How Orthodox Judaism Rewrites Its History

It sounds comforting to say that Judaism is an immovable rock in the sea of time, and yes we have concrete proof that the text of the Torah is unchanged, but even that has some cracks (namely the case of the Three Scrolls) and the Torah itself is not the core of Jewish practice for anyone but groups like the Karaites. The Talmud, even in its unbroken sequence has proven to be a very organic, living document. That's both by design and necessity. Jews and Jewish practice has absolutely changed and adapted to a changing world. For example, prohibitions against providing aid non-Jews have been relaxed and allowances for things like polygamy and child marriage restricted. We can't pretend pre-digital laws perfectly fit into 2019 any more than we could expect to live as one did in Babylonia or Jerusalem during Talmudic times in the modern day. Judaism has evolved.

That's not to say halacha is flexible. It is absolutely rigid and unbending in a pure exercise of letter-of-the-law legalism. But the halachic process is far more organic than hardliners will admit. Rabbinic decision-making is not one of prophetic revelation or divine decree, it's made by humans in response to changing human conditions. But the core strength of the process does not lie in the verdict, as Loius Ironson points out in Angels in America, but the process of debate and investigation by which we get there that makes Judaism unique among religions. Many books have been written about the extrajudicial decisions made by rabbis over the centuries that deviate from the law based on the reality of a situation, and even some on the efforts to ignore or outright deny these halachic decisions. Herman Wouk talks about this in This Is My God, calling it the 'slow veto' of Judaism, whereby changes to modern living start with the decisions of old, but are adjusted by necessity as communities accept or reject where they must to survive.

I've come to think of the Torah less as 'the bible' and more as the Constitution. It's a framework document, the core of all the myriad of legal decisions and counter-decisions and counter-counter-decisions over the centuries. It in and of itself is not a working document for how to live life, but it's the core of the larger Jewish superstructure. We'll always be hated and viewed as backward by some and called bigots by others, and while the core is unchanging the greater Jewish lifestyle and understanding is able to adjust where it needs as it always has.

> orthodoxy has always had the same beliefs and the same observances. The only changes are in regards to custom, and even then at a glacial pace.

The order in which the blessing vs lighting the candles changed in Hadlakat Nerot specifically because of the Esseans their are others but that is the one that I can think of offhand.

I have on my ever expanding reading list a book about changes in Orthadoxy called Changing the Immutable: How Orthodox Judaism Rewrites Its History by Marc Shapiro that I want to get to. The People's Prayerbook series (Hoffman) goes into some good history as well but they are easier used as a reference (IMO). Their is also a good article on the above book here.

The article points out some other items like the fact that men were not allowed to use mirrors, and one opinion in the Talmud was to allow fowl and milk to be cooked together. Orthodox Judaism does change they just do it in the Talmud, but that also allows for re-writing of things. *Rabbinic Judaism itself was only created after the destruction of the second Temple and takes a lot of it's practices from the Babylonian exile.

>What the Hatham Sofer wrote is straightforward enough. The Haredi velt has a long history of whitewashing history when it inconveniences the contemporarily accepted social narrative.

It is not disparagement, it is an acknowledged sociological fact that has been documented time and over again. For a lengthy study of the phenomenon see Dr. Marc Shapiro's "Changing the Immutable".

If in this specific context, you would like to understand how I believe it constitutes whitewashing, see this excerpt:

>Perhaps the posek most responsible for creating resistance to accepting the Hatam Sofer at face value was the Maharam Schick... There is certainly no one capable of denying the status of the Maharam Schick as a leading posek and communal leader of the second half of the 19th century, and as the Gadol who came closest to inheriting the mantle of leadership of his teacher, the Hatam Sofer. But... The Ḥatam Sofer certainly did not consult Rabbi Schick (who at that time was still engaged in private study in Halitsch) before composing his 1837 reply to another former student ― Rabbi Horowitz, Chief Rabbi of Vienna since 1829. Rabbi Schick certainly did not receive any direct information on this issue from his revered teacher, for if he had, he most certainly would have mentioned
it at some point in the two Responsa that he composed regarding MBP [mesisah b'peh].
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As for a "rule one warning" - I have not been a "jerk" (though your suggesting I have been seems kind of jerky). If the moderators feel the need to now censor me after years (longer than you've had your account) of demonstrated civil participation on this forum, I will definitely have to reconsider my participation in /r/Judaism.