A Comparison With The Approach Advocated by C.R. Jonathan Sacks

There is an approach to the relationship between ethics and Halakhah that is close to this approach. It recognizes that when sages make “halakh[ic] changes” they do so “in order to ensure that Torah does not change… in a… transformed world” (Sacks 1992, 140, 141-142). In other words this approach also recognizes that sages have interpreted the goals of individual halakhot in order to reach decisions about the form their contemporary Halakhah should take. Furthermore, this approach also understands that a sage would reach a Halakhic decision via a broad understanding of the whole relevant corpus - via “Daas Torah… the broad constellation of values, and priorities between them, that emerges from the posek’s lifelong involvement with Torah in its broadest sense,” and that a sage would not “mechanically… extrapolate from a narrow range of precedents to the case at hand” (Sacks 1992, 153). In other words, this approach recognizes that leading sages did not simplistically apply one value at the expense of another.
There is nonetheless a problem with this last approach, in light of the findings that have thus far been reached via this dissertation’s method. That approach still distinguishes between the sage’s formal arguments and the sage’s consideration and balancing of values. Although it argues that “[t]he overarching halakhic issues have not been formal ones”, it nonetheless believes that the value discussions “have not, for the most part, surfaced in the detailed argumentation of responsa, though they can be glimpsed from time to time” (emphasis added). This book, on the other hand, will show that if one reads correctly, one finds that the human issues are expressed very clearly in the argumentation. This book will show that the sages clearly express the human issues at hand and read their sources as also expressing and balancing human issues.
The Significance of the Difference Between Approaches
Unfortunately, Chief-Rabbi Sacks does not apply this theory forcefully. This is exemplified in his reason for favoring R. Nachum Rabinovitch’s ruling that one should recite ha-tov ve-hameitiv on the birth of a daughter: He favors that ruling since Maimonides did not codify the Talmudic position that directs one to recite that blessing only for the birth of a son. This lack of citation allegedly proves that Maimonides thought this Talmudic position to be a mere culturally dependent example of a more general law but not a law in itself. Sacks favors this ruling over the Mishnah Berurah ruling that one should bless she-hehiyanu over the birth of a daughter as one would bless over seeing a friend after thirty days, since the Mishnah Berurah’s ruling is based on a comparison of different areas of law. [Sacks also adds other criticisms.] (pp. 150-152)
Sacks fails to realize that the Talmudic position arose in a culture which viewed the birth of a daughter as a burden for the woman who would have one less son to support her in her old age (and so called for no blessing), the Mishnah Berurah referred to an urban culture in which the birth of a daughter was not a burden but also not as celebrated as the birth of a son (and so called for a mere she-heyiyanu - and not mehayyei meitim, which one recites after not seeing a close friend for 12 months), and Rabinovitch referred to a culture in which both boys and girls are celebrated equally.
In other words, Sacks didn’t realize:
(1) that there is no debate, rather an application of the same values under different conditions,
(2) that direct precedent is not the issue for a sagacious decision “that emerges from the posek’s lifelong involvement with Torah in its broadest sense”,
and that those who “ensure that Torah does not change… in a… transformed world,” do not make distinctions between laws and examples of law.