ABORTION AND THE HALAKHIC CONVERSATION

alternative halakhic positions must be forestalled. One way to do this is to rely upon the fact of an halakhic consensus, to turn the descriptive fact of widespread agreement into a normative standard of correctness. Many orthodox Jews make this claim for the halakhic consensus: the law is what the majority of posqim say it is. When the legal sources are ambiguous, it is the province of the gedolei hador, the great authorities of this generation, to choose the"correct" interpretation.” Indeed, since the gedolim are recognized by all within the orthodox community as men of uncommon spiritual insight and religious probity, they are uniquely qualified to make this choice.” It is important to note, however, that while an halakhic consensus may determine in practice the law as it is followed by most orthodox Jews - when in doubt. it is always safer to follow the majority- the gedolim themselves do not practice in this way. They do not reach their conclusions through a process of legislation, declaring their opinions correct on the grounds that"I say so" or "I and a preponderance of my spiritually-gifted colleagues say so." They assume, rather, a"judicial" approach: they"say so" precisely because the decision is the correct one, that reading of the law best supported by the texts and sources. Within the halakhically-literate community, a decision's correctness is established not primarily by the exalted stature of its author but by the persuasiveness of the textual evidence which backs it. Were this not SO, halakhists could never critically examine each other's work or offer counter­arguments to it. Yet rabbinic responsa and halakhic journals are replete with such criticism. The language of halakhah is a language of argument rather than that of legislative pronouncement. When a poseq wants to issue a ruling of law, he must justify it according to techniques which other halakhists accept as legitimate and can use, if need be, to critique his conclusion.

Such, however, is not the way to reach the"one right answer." Halakhic argumentation is an arena of debate, of shakla vetarya, the give­and-take familiar to all students of Talmudic literature, It does not always produce an answer which all in the community accept as the single correct statement of the law. If halakhists want to produce such a statement, they may have to resort to extraordinary means to impose unity upon plurality. As we have seen, some scholars will go to great lengths to"find" the right answer to

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