Conservadoxy

[onionsoupmix]

With several notable exceptions,  Orthodox Jewish law has been frozen for the past 1600 years.

There is no Sanhedrin and no governing body and no one leader can take it upon himself to authorize important and needed changes. Instead, we all just cling to traditions passed down over the centuries and convice ourselves that this is authentic Judaism

Comments

[anonymous]

"change based on reinterpertation of the text is likely to be greater, but no one is willing to do it because the sanhedrin is not here."

there has definitely been change based on reinterpretation. just the "frum" perspective often pretends that that's what the text meant all along, hiding the reintepretation unless you go back and look at the whole development. there are many academic studies of such changes in the middle ages. for example, anything by jacob katz, i think. haym soloveichik also has articles with case studies of change-by-reinterpretation due to social pressures. (eg, how the "laws" of martyrdom changed in medieval ashkenaz to reflect the facts of what people actually did during the crusades). there is some famous article(s?) on the changing laws of stam yeinam and selling chametz to accomodate the fact that many jews were liquor merchants. (and many others - i am no scholar...)

perhaps the big difference with the constitution is that the "text" to be interpreted continues to accrue - commentaries become "canonical" at some point, so that in order to make change on has to reintepret many layers. (interesting side note: moshe halbertal (i think) has pointed out that in some ways cannonizing a text is often a step toward allowing more tenuous interpretations (because you can;t just go against a cannonize text, you have to make it mean what you want...))

also it is true that there is no way just to say "oops, we were wrong - take that back" as a constitutional amendment (or a SCOTUS ruling overturingn a previous ruling) can. but halacha is still able to functionally take things back when it wants. the real issue is that it often seems to want/not want change in all the wrong places...

i guess my point could be summarized as: this is more complciated than you make it out to be, you should read some academic literature on the subject if you are genuinely interested (in your copious free time, i know...)