ABORTION AND THE HALAKHIC CONVERSATION
the arbitrary nullification of legitimate alternatives to Feinstein's own view. Therein lies the particular power of halakhic method: the elimination of plurality, the identification of the"correct" answer to the halakhic question of abortion.
3. R. RASSON ARUSI: THE WAY OF CLASSIFICATION
If Soloveitchik and Feinstein seek formal mechanisms with which to identify the"correct" interpretation of the halakhah, R. Rasson Arusi lifts that search to a new level of sophistication.** His method is to construct a system which classifies rabbinic texts in order of their halakhic importance. The goal is to distinguish texts which authoritatively determine the halakhah from those which are merely advisory in nature. Using these rules of classification, the poseq can separate the wheat from the chaff, basing his decision upon sources that truly apply to the issue at hand rather than those irrelevant to it, thus insuring that he will arrive at the correct answer to a controversial question of Jewish law.
In one sense, Arusi's system is nothing new. Jewish legal authorities have long differentiated between halakhic sources and non-halakhic(agadic) ones, ascribing authoritative force to the former and not to the latter.>® Within the realm of the purely halakhic sources, too, the Talmud and the geonim introduce numerous rules of decision-making that identify the"winner" in the event of a legal dispute.*® Here, however, in his rules to distinguish between conflicting halakhic sources, Arusi exceeds all earlier efforts, and the abortion issue affords him a test case for his method. He charges that some posgim(he cites Waldenberg and Rabbi Yehiel Ya'akov Weinberg by name) rely improperly upon"secondary" sources to permit abortion for reasons other than danger to the mother's life, when better,"primary" sources would demand the opposite, more stringent conclusion.”’” The"primary" sources may be identified as follows:
1. Sources which speak directly to the issue at hand. In our case, the only Talmudic text which deals directly with abortion is M. Ohalot 7:6, which
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