{"id":41767,"date":"2012-03-15T19:15:13","date_gmt":"2012-03-16T03:15:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=41767"},"modified":"2012-03-19T19:36:11","modified_gmt":"2012-03-20T03:36:11","slug":"do-jews-need-to-listen-to-moetzes-gedolei-hatorah","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=41767","title":{"rendered":"Do Jews Need To Listen To Moetzes Gedolei HaTorah?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>According to <A HREF=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Moetzes_Gedolei_HaTorah\">Wikipedia<\/a>: &#8220;Moetzes Gedolei HaTorah[1] (Heb.: \u05de\u05d5\u05e2\u05e6\u05ea \u05d2\u05d3\u05d5\u05dc\u05d9 \u05d4\u05ea\u05d5\u05e8\u05d4 (&#8220;Council of [great] Torah Sages&#8221;)) refers to the supreme rabbinical policy-making council of any of several related Haredi Jewish organizations.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>In his second lecture for <A HREF=\"http:\/\/torahinmotion.org\">Torah in Motion<\/a> on <A HREF=\"http:\/\/onthemainline.blogspot.com\/2011\/07\/on-rabbi-moses-kunitzs-interesting.html\">Rabbi Moses Kunitz<\/a>, professor <A HREF=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Marc_B._Shapiro\">Marc B. Shapiro<\/a> says: &#8220;There was a plan [in 1912] put forth by <A HREF=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Agudat_Yisrael\">Agudath Yisrael<\/a> that there would be 23 rabbis on this Moetzes Gedolei HaTorah.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;This whole thing is a fiction. It hasn&#8217;t existed for many years. Yes, there is a so-called council of Torah sages in Israel. First, they never meet. They can go years without meeting. In the Agudah world, decisions are made by important rabbis (such as <A HREF=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Yosef_Shalom_Eliashiv\">Rav Elyashiv<\/a> or <A HREF=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Elazar_Shach\">Rav Shach<\/a>). These groups find one great rabbi and he makes the decision. For the Hasidic world, decisions would be made by the <A HREF=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Ger_(Hasidic_dynasty)\">Gerrer rebbe<\/a> or the <A HREF=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Belz_(Hasidic_dynasty)\">Belzer rebbe<\/a>. I&#8217;ve termed this the papal model. These groups find one great rabbi and he makes the decisions. No one took on Rav Shach [except the Gerrer rebbe] and <A HREF=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Chaim_Ozer_Grodzinski\">Chaim Ozer Grodzinski<\/a>.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Agudah wanted to make it 23 sages, which would correspond to the small sanhedrin of ancient times, with the idea that when they made a decision, it would be authoritative. They still think it is authoritative. Just watch some of the videos online of some of the spokesmen at the Agudah convention. It&#8217;s a joke. This Rabbi Sherrer and others. Many people in the Lithuanian world don&#8217;t go anymore. These guys getting up and saying everyone is obligated to listen to the Moetzes Gedolei HaTorah. There&#8217;s no one on the Moetzes Gedolei HaTorah who comes near <A HREF=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Hershel_Schachter\">Rav Hershel Schachter<\/a> in Torah knowledge.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;The American Moetzes Gedolei HaTorah used to meet. You had people of huge stature such as Reb Moshe Feinstein. Rav Aron Kotler kept <A HREF=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Yaakov_Yitzchok_Ruderman\">Rav Ruderman<\/a> off it for a while. There was a famous dispute where <A HREF=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Yaakov_Kamenetsky\">Rav Yaakov Kamenetsky<\/a> got so angry at Moshe Feinstein because Reb Moshe would not condemn Chabad. Reb Moshe was always sympathetic to Chabad.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>According to Wikipedia: &#8220;Moetzes Gedolei HaTorah[1] (Heb.: \u05de\u05d5\u05e2\u05e6\u05ea \u05d2\u05d3\u05d5\u05dc\u05d9 \u05d4\u05ea\u05d5\u05e8\u05d4 (&#8220;Council of [great] Torah Sages&#8221;)) refers to the supreme rabbinical policy-making council of any of several related Haredi Jewish organizations.&#8221; In his second lecture for Torah in Motion on Rabbi &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=41767\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[69,18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-41767","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-marc-b-shapiro","category-orthodoxy"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41767","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=41767"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41767\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":41959,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41767\/revisions\/41959"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=41767"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=41767"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=41767"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}