Authority and Criteria in Liberal Halakhah
Moshe Zemer
I. The Authority of Liberal Halakhah
In order to establish criteria for pesikah, we must first
clarify our view of the authority of the halakhah. This question of halakhic authority is perhaps the major source of contention between Progressive and Orthodox decisors. The Orthodox view may well be represented by the Chief Rabbinate of Israel in its 1984 brief to the Supreme Court of Israel in the case of the Israel Movement for Progressive Judaism against the Rabbinate for the right to officiate at marriages and to register them.
The Chief Rabbinic Council contended that Jewish Law derives its divine authority from the absolute dominion of the Mosaic Law given in Sinai. According to their brief, a halakhic Jew is one"who considers himself bound by the Torah (kavul alyedei hatorah- literally"chained’ by the Torah ) that was given to Moses in Sinai, and sees himself chained by the words of the sages of the generations and the decisors of halakhah during the entirety of Jewish history..."" In this view, any non-Orthodox Jew who does not see himself so chained by the Torah is disqualified as a halakhic Jew.
In reply, I filed, on behalf of our movement, a halakhic brief with the Supreme Court which noted that the Chief Rabbinate’s position is based on a literalist interpretation of Biblical texts and rabbinical sources. These gentlemen cling to the doctrine of the early Mishnaic period which propounds that Scripture"teaches that the Torah , its laws and details and interpretations were all given through Moses on Sinai."