Normative Reality

It just seems to me that so many of the arguments that exist regarding certain behaviour in the Torah world can be reduced to divergent viewpoints in response to one simple question: how does Torah connect to, what I may term, normative reality?

Let us assume that there is a normative behaviour that exists in this world in response to a specific situation. For example, if two people wish to get married and raise a family, they have to be concerned about their livelihood and the physical needs of this family. So, in deciding to marry and when to have children, they have to consider their financial resources. Once, though, someone accepts the truth of Torah, how does this person respond to these same issues? Now, the truth is that there are divergent halachic viewpoints and my issue is not really the halacha per se. My question is: what are people really looking for? In other words, when someone accepts Torah, what consequence do they really want in terms of this issue? Some would still maintain the same concerns as most other people in the world recognizing that Torah could affect the decision somewhat -- the Torah Jew cannot just take their time as may be the normative response. Other, though, will see in the view of Torah a desired direction to break from normative cause-and-effect and operate on a different plane.

These two poles actually represent to me the essence of so much of the disagreements that exist within the Torah world. There is a normative cause-and-effect that Torah will affect. The question is: how we relate to such a circumstance. Some want this to be so, that Torah takes you to a different plane of existence and the more that Torah leads you to reject normative cause-and-effect, the more desired that conclusion. There are others who, while recognizing that Torah will, at times, reject the decision of normative cause-and-effect, wish such situations to be limited as they would still rather work within this plane. So much of the debate within the Torah world seems to revolve around this issue. Some want normative cause -and-effect to be the base. Some specifically do not want this normative structure to have much voice. This core difference in outlook just seems to permeate throughout the Torah world and explains, in my opinion, so much.

Rabbi Ben Hecht