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Against Method 33 Between Halakhah and Meta-Halakhah

One might at this point object that the evidence I have presented does not support the broad,“across-the-board” statement I make in the preceding paragraph. One might say that the dispute between the Zionist halakhists and their opponents is so totally attributable to clashing ideologies as to render the machloket an exceptional case that teaches us little or nothing about halakhic thought and practice in general. Professor Marc B. Shapiro makes precisely this observation:

Zionist rabbis author responsa showing how one must live in Israel , serve in

the army, say Hallel on Yom Ha-Atsma’ut. Non- and anti-Zionist rabbis

write halakhic treatises proving the exact opposite. Often, both sides claim

to be approaching the sources with objectivity, but it is clear to the outside

observer that this 1s not the case.... These poskim are building a halakhic

decision in large point upon ideology and not vice versa....[With regard to

more extreme examples of this sort of writing] many would assert what we

are dealing with is simply propaganda masquerading as halakhic discourse.*’ To Shapiro ,“what we are dealing with” is a dispute so fundamentally ideological that it cannot truly be regarded as a matter of halakhah at all. Although each side expresses its ideology in traditional halakhic language, hoping thereby to win the hearts and minds of the observant community, they are divided not so much over the meaning of legal texts as over irreconcilable issues of weltanschauung. If the Zionist rabbis fail to prove the halakhic correctness of their positions, that is because their positions are not in fact based upon halakhah but upon theological and ideological assumptions that their opponents simply do not share. It is for this reason that there is no one obviously correct answer to the question,“Can Jewish law accommodate the creation of a sovereign state in our time?” Such indeterminacy presumably would not obtain when the question under discussion is a properly halakhic one, when the conflicting points of view can be tested and judged by the accepted procedures of Jewish law. A halakhic controversy that is halakhic, a question that fits comfortably within the standard framework of Jewish legal discourse without touching upon divisive ideological commitments, can be solved, convincingly and