nN 6%]
Innovation and Authority
missible, nevertheless, the brothers Frimer point out that Soloveitchk was gravely concerned that the groups were at odds with prudent public policy and erosive of a proper Orthodox world view.
Schachter ’s second contention, that a minhag must be linked to a preexistent traditional obligation, employed previous exclusions of women’s customs and concerns, and legal precedent for further exclusions. Elsewhere I have explained how women's concerns that do not fit the androcentric categories of halakhah are rejected by the system as non-data.®? Since the categories determine future questions, huge bodies of precedent are amassed on some issues whereas other issues cannot be addressed because the system has no information with which to address them. This process eventually seals halakhah against the intrusion of nondata. Here, Schachter attempts to seal off minhag as well. It is in this context that he quotes Seforno on pursuing the existing minhag. Schachter further argues that the fact that something has never been done constitutes per se, a universal custom that can be preserved only by continuing not to do it. Eliezer Berkovits reduces this argument to absurdity, citing the halakhic principle lo ra’inu eino ra’ayah, that not having seen a practice is not a proof that the practice is forbidden:
[The norm is that in the cases quoted] to show that lo ra’inu is ra’aya (proof), there are always two opinions, one for the practice and one against it. In all these cases, the nonpractice is a rejection of an opposing ruling. Where, however, there is no opposing ruling the nonpractice of an activity does not establish it as a minhag that must not be changed.... During the Torah reading, writes the Magen Avraham, women would leave the synagogue. Shall we now argue that because it was not customary for women to attend the Torah reading, it is now not permitted for them to violate the minhag and listen to the Torah reading!®3
Schachter ’s position on innovation runs so far counter to everyday attitudes that he is forced to acknowledge the inherent contradiction in a modern Orthodox worldview. Orthodox rabbis are not Amish . They presume that progress—scientific and technological progress in particular—is largely good. That God has given a static Torah to a historical world is affirmed as a mysteriOus paradox. Schachter ’s defense for his extreme position on inno