Wisdom & Wit

Wisdom & Wit for Parashat T'tzaveh

R’ Yechezkel Abramsky served as the London beis din for about twenty years, and in that time he made sure that the laws of kashrus were scrupulously observed by all those who sold meat. One of the butchers, who did not want to go along with the demands made by the beis din, went to (secular) court to force the issue. He claimed that the restrictions placed by the beis din impinged on his basic freedom, and that he wanted the right to determine for himself what was kosher and what was not.

R’ Yechezkel himself went to court to defend the beis din. In a very strongly argued statement, he noted that the primary purpose of democracy is to defend the truth. Now, when it comes to kashrus, the only ones who can truly make a decision as to whether something is kosher or not must be a Rav. For a person to sell food which he claims is kosher, but for which there is no rabbinic backing, he said, was to lie to the people who bought that meat, because they expected meat purported to be kosher to maintain certain standards. To ask democracy to overthrow the requirement for rabbinic supervision would be a travesty, because democracy would then be used to propagate a lie.

In the end, the judge, taken by the cogently presented argument by R; Yechezkel, dismissed the case.

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That which a wise man will not allow himself to do even in he midst of the Purim festivities, a fool will do on Yom Kippur.

Shmuel Himelstein’s Words of Wisdom, Words of Wit; A Touch of Wisdom, A Touch of Wit; and “Wisdom and Wit” available at your local Jewish bookstore

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