a i
Against Method 23
responsa, rabbinical court rulings, and halakhic journals. The most outstanding of the latter was Hatorah Vehamedinah(HTM), appearing annually or biannually from 1949 to 1962, edited by R. Shaul Yisraeli under the sponsorship of various Orthodox Zionist institutions.?’ The authors who published in HTM were, in the main, younger scholars who saw their task not to issue decisions but to study the legal sources on public and political questions in the hope that their findings might be helpful to the Chief Rabbinate, an institution that did possess the authority to render actual pesak.* A glance at the article titles in these volumes reveals the range of their concerns: the halakhic constitutional theory of a sovereign, preMessianic Jewish state; rules governing the conduct of a Jewish army; the criminal and penal code of the state; the structure of government institutions and the qualifications of public officeholders; the political status of women; the status of non-Jews under a Jewish government; the halakhic validity of secular legislation(i.e., of the Knesset and other administrative bodies); taxation, marriage law, inheritance, and child custody; urban planning; how the police and other vital services may function on Shabbat ; national service for women and for yeshiva students; the Sabbatical year; the observance of Yom Ha'atzma’ut and other“secular” Jewish holidays; and more.
At the beginning of this section, I used the words“halakhic creativity” to describe the work of these Zionist rabbis. I should stress that this“creativity” did not take the form of invention. The authors of the articles that appear in#7M do not call for takanah(legislation), the creation of new halakhot or new legal institutions. Some Orthodox observers, to be sure, advocated such remedies. Convinced that the existing halakhic process was too limited and cumbersome to respond adequately to the challenges posed by political sovereignty, they called for more radical measures, including far-reaching rabbinical legislation” and even the revival of the ancient Sanhedrin** Most of the Zionist rabbis, however, regarded these suggestions as excessive and, at worst, as transgressions against the halakhah itself” An