Rabbi Richard S. Rheins
ter”(le-migdar milta), the Sages are empowered to abrogate a law of the Torah even by directing the performance of an act the Torah prohibits. The reinforcement of Rabbinic enactments even in those cases that do not, strictly speaking, involve safeguarding will lead to the better observance of those measures designed to create such a safeguard, because if people fail to respect one Rabbinic enactment, they will ultimately lose respect for all of them. Therefore, anything that reinforces a Rabbinic enactment comes within the application of the principle safeguarding the matter.
Rabbinic legislation which contradicted the Torah may be enacted in order to protect the spiritual and physical well being of the Jewish people and Judaism . Still, no one should infer from this that the rabbis assumed the power to speak with the same eternal authority as the Torah . The rabbis have been obligated to make it clear that their enactments are not additions to the Torah . Rabbis are not empowered to add or subtract from the Torah , they are empowered to declare fakkanot and gezerot that strengthen Judaism and the Jewish people. As Maimonides wrote in Mishneh Torah , Hilkhot Mamrim 2.4:
If in order to bring back the multitudes to religion and save them from general religious laxity, the court deems it necessary to set aside temporarily a positive or a negative command, it may do so, taking into account the need of the hour. Even as a physician will amputate the hand or the foot of a patient in order to save his life, so the court may advocate, when an emergency arises, the temporary disregard of some of the commandment, so that the whole of the commandments may be preserved. This is in keeping with what the early Sages said:“Desecrate on His account one Sabbath that many Sabbaths will be observed”(Yoma 85b).%
Limits To Rabbinic Legislation
Despite the authority to legislate, there have always been stringent limits; their dominance has always been obvious. Were innovation and radical reform easy, Judaism today would be very different. Judaism has evolved. Most observances and beliefs that dominate modern Judaism (monotheism, Shabbat , festivals, daily prayer, tzedakah, dietary restrictions, Torah study, the Hebrew language, Brit Milah, etc.) can all be traced to the Biblical period. The“conservative” nature of Judaism has preserved a link to our ancestors and fostered bonds among Jews of