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GOD, MAN AND TIME
God and the Jews have had a long time relationship. In fact, the relationship has often been compared to a lover and his beloved (Song of Songs) or bride and groom. As in any relationship, it’s not always easy to get used to each other immediately and adjustments have to be made. All this takes time and effort on both sides.
What appears to be monolithic and unchanging to the less informed is in reality dynamic and varied.
This pattern, which has been going on for ages when examined, might disturb some thoughts or ideas that you have accepted for many years. Or it might open your eyes with wonderment and make you say, ‘I didn’t know that’ – or ‘I didn’t really think that is why”.
RANDOM THOUGHTS ABOUT CHUMROT
A famous agadah (narrative in the Talmud):
God sent Moses to the Beit Hamidrash (House of Study) of Rabbi Akiva. Moses sits in the back and hears Rabbi Akiva explaining laws that are derived from the crowns (ornamentation) found on some of the letters in the Torah. When one of the students inquires – from where did you learn this? Rabbi Akiva answers – it is ‘halachah Moshe m’sinai’ (a law passed down directly to Moses at Mount Sinai). Moses is flabbergasted since he himself hadn’t heard of these laws.
(Menachot 29B )
If Rabbi Akiva would visit Bnai Brak – his old home town – today he would have great difficulty identifying many of the religious practices of its Jewish inhabitants. His reaction to cities in both the Diaspora and Israel with Jewish communities such as Boro Park, Flatbush, Stamford Hill, Kfar Etzion and Efrat would equally perplex him.
He would realize that what they were doing was basically correct but he would quickly come to the conclusion that they were adding restriction upon restriction to the original laws.
Not only would he be in a quandary, but in spite of his knowledge and credentials, most of the religious population wouldn’t accept him as their leader. He just wasn’t stringent enough. I wouldn’t be surprised if a returning Chazon Ish would encounter the same reaction. ..
In short, Rabbi Akiva would see a world full of chumrot. Instead of perceiving a world where mitzvot (commandments) were a uniting force within the Jewish people – he would be thrust into a world where religion has became competitive and divisive. What happened?
The perception of the Jewish religion, to both many practicing and non-practicing Jews and to the world as whole, is that of a monolithic, stagnant, and non-changing or at best, a rarely changing, archaic religion – antiquated, outdated and rigid.
Practicing, knowledgeable Jews are not exempt from the difficulty of imagining the enormous changes that have occurred in their religion over the last two or three millennia.
For a religion (and a people) to survive and endure, especially under the harsh and varied conditions to which the Jews have been subjected, changes must occur and different aspects of the religion must be emphasized. This has occurred in both practical applications as well as in the philosophical realm.
Religious leaders have had to make brave halachic rulings within the framework of both Torah and rabbinic law that answered their community’s particular needs. This was a dynamic outgrowth of the constant changes taking place within the local society and the world as a whole.
The increase in literacy, the advancement of science, the growing threats of assimilation all were factors that came into play. And the result is a religion that, despite its small number of adherents and its population which has been dispersed time after time, is still alive and vibrant.
A MINI ROMP THROUGH HISTORY
The dynamic development of change had many causes and each led to a type of adaptation and modification.