I usually enjoy Rabbi Michael J. Broyde's halachic analyses, although I didn't find that his long post on women and halacha in this Hirhurim post added to the topic in any meaningful way. It really could have been reduced to this single sentence that he included: "is this conduct a mitzvah, mutar or assur?", possibly with the addition of "End of discussion."
But I found his footnote #1 quite troubling:
Recently, I entered the hospital room of a dying person who was intensely davening shacharit (he was in the middle of birchot keriat shema when I arrived) but the time of the day was after chatzot. This conduct was sinful, but I chose not to say anything, even when he asked me if he was doing something wrong, in the view that a sincere person like this can maybe rely the view of the Rambam that birchot keriat shema can be said all day, as the Peri Chadash accepts le’halacha, or maybe simply this was not the time and place to explain the issue.WOW! The guy is on his deathbed. He is intensely praying what may be his last shacharit, and Rabbi Broyde's first thought is that this was a sinful practice? I can just picture the heavenly court now: "hmmm, what should we do? He's a beinoni - his mitzvot are in perfect balance with his aveirot?" "Wait!", says another ministering angel - "we just realized that he was davening after chatzot and he isn't a hassid. Send him to gehinnom!"
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7 comments:
Ugh. That's such a sick attitude. It's ideas like that that made me realize the incompatibility of halacha with basic morals. When I was taught that a man can not hold his wife's hand when she's giving birth (due to her nida status), or even if she were to suffer some devastating loss, such as a parent dying, he can not hold her and console here (if she's a nida), I realized that halacha is really not a moral and ethical system. It's just a legal one.
OMG,
This is so disgusting. Judaism has become an halakhic technocracy. True spirituality and connection to God has been completely abolished. We left God years ago, probably during the time of the ban on Rabbi Eliezer Hagadol.
I spoke to god. She said he is going right to gehenom. Especially since he was davening without his hat or bekeshe on.
Does he know what time of day Chabad for instance will hold a minyan
in the end, he didn't give him rebuke. Isn't failing to give rebuke a sin?
(just kidding)
In all fairness, he didn't rebuke the man.
I agree with the above that halacha is really not a moral and ethical system. It's a legal one.
However, over time, the morality has bubbled more to the surface, and we're killing fewer Midianite babies to get back at their dead mothers.
Talmudic Judaism is full of soulless legalism.
That's all rabbinic non-sense to begin with. YOU CAN PRAY WHENEVER YOU FEEL THE NEED.
If he can get an lubavitcher lawyer to represent him in Heaven, he'll be ok.
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