Sunday 30 October 2011

Following in the Footsteps of the "Creative Master" - Part 3

I've been asked to identify the "Creative Master" to whom I was alluding

Suggestions have included:
Rashi
Arizal
Ramchal
GRA
R Hirsch
RAI Kook
RYD Soloveichik
Even Reb Shlomoh Carlebach's and his music!

There is no individual here. There just is a need to see that some followers are faithful to their Master - not by slavishly following them - but rather by going beyond them by internalizing their teachings and by emulating the Master when adding their own "spin"

And still others are synthesising several masters and are therefore not fully "faithful" to any one. EG RY Karo used a B"D of 3 masters to help adjudicate many issues.

While RY Karo claimed fealty to the Rambam, he still needed to blaze a slightly different trail to update Halachah in light of the many post-Rambam Poskim. This does not mean he did not adhere to the Rambam as his master, rather it means he added a dimension to the Rambam's corpus by incorporating more Poskim to the mix.

Shalom,
RRW

1 comment:

Avraham said...

The problem with this is that the disciple often damages the teachings.
Sometimes this is forgivable because without the disciple no one would even know about the master but it is important to learn to discern the levels of quality. A good example is the difference between the Shulchan Aruch and the Rambam. Or the difference between the baali hatosphot and the later Tosphot want to be's. I believe no one should be teaching in a yeshiva if he is not able to discern these differences and articulate them clearly.(Or if they don't understand tosphot in the first place like too many so called roshei yeshivot that I had the sad misfortune to meet have met.)