And further, by these, my son, be admonished: of making many books there is no end (Ecclesiastes 12:12) A pdf version of this essay can be downloaded here [*] Years in brackets refer to an individual’s or book author’s year of birth Thought experiment for the day: Anyone born 1945 would be pushing towards 80 and mostly past their prime. So name any Charedi sefer written by someone born post war that has or is likely to enter the canon, be it haloche, lomdus, al hatorah or mussar. Single one will do for now — IfYouTickleUs (@ifyoutickleus) July 27, 2022 A tweet in the summer which gained some traction asked for a book by an author born from 1945 onwards that has entered the Torah and rabbinic canon or is heading in that direction. I didn't exactly phrase it this way and some quibbled about 'canonisation'. The word does indeed have a precise meaning though in its popular use it has no narrow definition. Canonisation, or ‘entering the canon’ is generally understood to...
Harav Wosner's T'Shuvah, Highlights
By ‘Moish’
Much of the confusion in the recent case has been due to the fact that there is so little by way of precedent in terms of how to deal with rabbis who are alleged to have acted 'improperly'. Within the Charedi world, although such issues have surely arisen, they have been dealt with (if at all) so furtively as to leave barely a smidgen of record in the halachic literature. Precedents from the Modern Orthodox community are easier to find, but, well, they're modern anyway so what do you expect?
The one recent case that does spring to mind is that of Rabbi Mordechai Tendler of Monsey. Without going into details, the rabbi concerned was expelled from the American RCA on account of his alleged misbehaviour with women in a counselling context (ring any bells?) and a group of his local colleagues took it upon themselves to examine the evidence against him and proceeded to publicise their verdict.
Whilst the parallels are far from exact, many of the technical issues that have been raised in our case, such as the admissibility of women's testimony and the propriety of local rabbis taking a public stand, were dealt with in a responsum by Rabbi Benzion Wosner, also of Monsey.
The full text of the responsum is reproduced above, with relevant quotes highlighted. (Due to Scribd’s rendering of Hebrew it may be necessary to download the document first.)
See here for an English summary: http://rabbinicintegrity.blogspot.co.uk/2005_12_01_archive.html
By ‘Moish’
Much of the confusion in the recent case has been due to the fact that there is so little by way of precedent in terms of how to deal with rabbis who are alleged to have acted 'improperly'. Within the Charedi world, although such issues have surely arisen, they have been dealt with (if at all) so furtively as to leave barely a smidgen of record in the halachic literature. Precedents from the Modern Orthodox community are easier to find, but, well, they're modern anyway so what do you expect?
The one recent case that does spring to mind is that of Rabbi Mordechai Tendler of Monsey. Without going into details, the rabbi concerned was expelled from the American RCA on account of his alleged misbehaviour with women in a counselling context (ring any bells?) and a group of his local colleagues took it upon themselves to examine the evidence against him and proceeded to publicise their verdict.
Whilst the parallels are far from exact, many of the technical issues that have been raised in our case, such as the admissibility of women's testimony and the propriety of local rabbis taking a public stand, were dealt with in a responsum by Rabbi Benzion Wosner, also of Monsey.
The full text of the responsum is reproduced above, with relevant quotes highlighted. (Due to Scribd’s rendering of Hebrew it may be necessary to download the document first.)
See here for an English summary: http://rabbinicintegrity.blogspot.co.uk/2005_12_01_archive.html