Re’ah

 

Everything that I command you,

you shall carry out  punctiliously; 

you must not add anything to it

nor subtract anything from it.

13:1

 

 

 

A thief must return the stolen object itself, as it is written:  “He shall return the stolen object which he took” (Leviticus 5:23…Even if he stole a beam and built it into his mansion…the Torah states that he must destroy the entire structure and return the beam to its owner.  The Sages ruled, however, on account of the provision for the penitents, that he may pay its value and not demolish the dwelling…

Maimonides:  Laws of Theft and Loss 1:5) (12th Century)

 

 

Where something new has arisen that was unknown to earlier Sages, such as that there is reason to fear ruination or (the violation of) a prohibition, a fear that could not have existed in previous generations, it is certainly permissible to enact a rule, like all the enactments stated in the Talmud, because one can say that the earlier generation did not establish the prohibition with that situation in mind.

Moses Isserles (14th Century)

 

 

Where there would be suffering, the rabbis did not enact a prohibition…where there would be loss, our rabbis did not prohibit.

Ketuvot 60a (6th Century)

 

 

 

 

In antiquity, the Middle Ages, and even modern times, the decisors issued lenient rulings and permitted the “transgression” of serious prohibitions concerning marriage and other ethically problematic domains.  Why, then, are the traditional rabbis of our own day so severe, even when the codified Halakhah incorporates ample precedents for ruling leniently?  Are these decisors ignoring the ethical dimension because they feel that the Halakhah as codified in the past has divine sanction and transcends merely human ethical concerns?

Moshe Zemer (Contemporary)

 

 

Anything new is forbidden by the torah in every place.

Hatam Sofer (19th Century)

 

 

Revelation must be understood as a far more complicated and complex process of divine-human encounter and interaction and quite differently from the idea of direct divine communication of infallible laws and propositions, upon which the traditional theory 9f Halakhah depends.

Louis Jacobs (Contemporary)