The Haredi Construction of Rabbinic Authority: A Case Study

When reader Baruch Pelta was at Touro College South, he wrote a paper that I think will be of interest to other participants in this forum. It concerns a chapter in American Jewish history which illustrates the development of Daas Torah and charedi revisionism.

Here is my own summary/ take: The RCA (an organization for Modern Orthodox pulpit rabbis) was part of the Synagogue Council of America (SCA), which was multi-denominational. This was a question that should presumably be answered by poskim who were (a) relevant to the question and (b) possessed experience in communal policy issues. A group of eleven roshei yeshiva, who certainly did not fulfill the first criteria and largely neither the second, issued a ban on participation in the SCA. Rav Eliezer Silver and Rav Yosef Soloveitchik - the only members (or former members) of the Moetzes Gedolei HaTorah who were really qualified to weigh in on this - opposed the ban. But their opposition has been exorcised from the charedi version of events. Jonathan Rosenblum's recent hagiography of Rabbi Moshe Sherer quotes him as saying "Does anyone have the right to refuse to accept a psak din in which all the gedolei Torah in the world concurred?"

You can download the full paper at this link. Baruch Pelta is looking to do writing/ editing jobs; he can be contacted at markpelta1@gmail.com