20 Mark Washofsky

doctrine, and other accounts of legal reasoning and judicial decision have replaced it.° I contend that, just as legal“method” is no longer viewed as a mechanism that produces objectively right answers in law, so we ought to abandon the notion of a method that distinguishes between objectively right and wrong interpretations of the halakhah.

As the title of this essay proclaims, therefore, I am“against method” as a description of the process of halakhic decision making.’ This does not mean that 1 define the halakhic process as a kind of anarchy, in which the halakhist derives whatever lessons he(or she) wishes to derive from the texts without having to pay attention to rules, principles, procedures, and the like. I readily concede that rules, principles, and procedures are an integral aspect of the practice of halakhah; indeed, halakhah could hardly be a“practice”— that is, an organized intellectual discipline— without such things. How I understand the term“practice” and how I apply it to halakhah are questions I will address in the latter part of this article. At the outset, though, it is enough to say that I do not believe that“method” is a proper or accurate description of that practice. To put this differently, while rules, principles, and procedures figure prominently in what the halakhist does, they do not determine the conclusions that the halakhist draws.

In order to develop this argument, I want to look at a particular example of halakhic practice— a body of halakhic interpretations and rulings that were actually put forward by Jewish legal authorities over a significant period of time— that displays two important characteristics. First, it is a“different” halakhah. These teachings and rulings, that is, deviate substantially from the previously existing trends in mainstream Orthodox pesikah to the extent that, as I shall argue, they warrant the descriptive labels“innovative” and “progressive.” Second, the practitioners of this innovative halakhah were all“orthodox” rabbis whose halakhic bona fides could not be questioned. Their work, in other words, cannot be summarily dismissed as the product of Reform or Conservative rabbis who are

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