MARK WASHOVSKY

In response to concern that this ruling would render medical education impossible in Eretz Yisrael, Rav Kook suggested in 1931 that medical schools engage in the purchase and importation of gentile corpses for research. We should not worry, assures Kook, that this practice would inflame anti-Semitism. The Gentiles, at least the best among them, will recognize that"this nation, chosen to spread the light of holiness in the world...is entitled to a certain perquisite of holiness." While this statement merely insults the intelligence of its readers, it compares favorably to the position more recently enunciated by Dr. Yaakov Levy, who suggested that the science of pathology be left virtually in its entirety to the Gentiles,"whose world view does not insist that they show special reverence for their dead.” He demands, in other words, that the observant Jew adopt a stance of blatant moral hypocrisy: Jews may benefit from vital scientific information derived by Gentiles through procedures which Jewish law forbids as immoral. Such are the arguments raised on behalf of the opinion of the"preponderant rabbinic majority." It is certainly questionable whether many in the observant community could accept the reasoning and the value positions embedded in them. Liberals, for their part, would simply challenge observant Jews to confront these arguments and to consider whether, compared to the ruling of Uziel, the consensus view constitutes the best available interpretation of Jewish law.

These examples, along with others that could be cited, demonstrate that liberals can successfully challenge the halakhic consensus on"systemic" grounds. The notion that the opinion of the gedolim is the authoritative voice of halakhah rests, in the final analysis, on the presumption that this opinion is textually defensible, that it meets the objective standards by which the rightness of all rabbinic decisions must ultimately be judged. Even the gedolim do not claim to rule by the power of takanah or charisma. They claim rather that their authority derives from the sacred texts of the legal tradition and that their rulings constitute

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