Narratives of Enlightenment 133
It is perhaps easier for a liberal Jew like me to undertake this effort at the literary analysis, let alone the evaluation, of halakhic writing than it would be for an Orthodox Jew . The latter, who may contemplate the gedolei hador(the leading halakhic authorities of his time) with not a little bit of fear and trembling,'*” may understandably express some resistance to the suggestion that the activity of halakhic decision, the ultimate objective, methodological enterprise,’ is suffused with something as“creative” or subjective as the telling of stories. Yet I think that, with some effort at detachment, even the faithful Orthodox Jew can be comfortable with saying that, though the posek speaks divine truths, he must nonetheless write them down in the form of a literary composition. Thus, when we examine such a composition we can observe that, as any other writer, he is engaged in the making of meaning through literary art. To study the rhetorical and literary devices that the halakhic author employs in order to put his point across need not lessen one’s appreciation of the substance of his conclusion.
On the other hand, we liberals sometimes display a similar faith in our own objective rationality, as though our devotion to the modern, critical study of Jewish sources and traditions demystifies the process of their interpretation and guarantees that it will rise to the level of scientific accuracy. I am deeply skeptical of that faith, at least in part because I detect elements of narrative construction in
virtually every theological publication of the Reform movement"
(and I cannot be the only one who does). I see them as well in the halakhic responsa written by liberal rabbis(including, by way of full disclosure, me). Indeed, if as I have argued law and narrative are inseparably intertwined, how could it be otherwise? We liberals, too, are story-telling creatures; we, too, make meaning from our sources by way of narrative construction. That is not something to deny or to ignore, but to investigate. Our awareness of the narratives in the legal