Consensus, Compromise and Autonomy

Rabbi Melanie Aron

August 30, 2003

This summer at the Temple's board retreat we had an interesting discussion of what it means to operate by consensus. For some people, this meant that important decisions were not made until we had enough discussion that all points of view had been expressed and we had reached an agreement among the board members. Others saw operating by consensus as requiring a degree of uniformity that would stifle descent. We ended up having a conversation about what it means to disagree and what the limits of disagreement are for someone who is a board member of the congregation.

The discussion we had this July is paralleled in the commentary to this week's Torah portion. The section that occasions this reflection is found in chapter 17, verses 8-11. The highlights are as follows:

"When a matter shall arise for you, too difficult for judgment, you shall go up to the priests and the Levites and to the judge of those time....according to the Law which they shall teach you and according to the judgment which they shall tell you to do... do not stray neither to the right nor to the left of the word which they declare to you."

These words would seem to be a very strong call for compliance with authority. In fact that is how they are usually understood: "Do not stray neither to the right nor to the left", was interpreted in this way by Rashi, who quotes earlier rabbinic teaching to say: "Even if they tell you that what is right is left and what is left is right, you must always obey the decision." But the Yerushalmi, the Talmud that was compiled in Palestine in the 4th century, has a different interpretation of these words. Why does the Torah say, "do not stray neither to the right nor to the left" words that seem in some ways unnecessary or redundant? The Jerusalem Talmud states: "One might think that even if they tell you that right is left and that left is right, you must nevertheless listen to them. That is not correct. It is for this reason that the Torah specifies, do not stray from right nor left, in order that you may understand that only when they tell you about the right that is right and the left that is left, then you must listen to them." Horayot 1:1

We seem to have a real conflict of opinions. How then are we to resolve this in practice? The solution in our tradition seems to have been twofold. First a distinction was made between practice and theology. In matters of practice there was tremendous effort to insure conformity. Rabbis differed in their interpretation of the meaning of Life after Death and the Coming of the Messiah, and that didn't seem to be a problem. But when one rabbi calculated the new moon of Elul, the rosh hodesh that we celebrated yesterday, differently than the rest of the community, he was forced to conform to the calendar of the community. The Head of the Community at that Time, called him to come before the beit din, the rabbinic court, on the day which was Yom Kippur according to his individual calculations, thus insuring that there would be only one calendar in the community.

Rabbi Shlomo Riskin, whose writing on this issue in the Jerusalem Post in 1993 was very illuminating to me on this whole subject, draws another distinction. He notes that there are issues that are open to interpretation and others where a scholar can arrive at objective certainty and know that the majority is absolutely wrong. In the first case the individual scholar must follow the majority, but in the second case, the individual must follow the dictates of his or her conscience. Rabbi Riskin finds support for this view in the Mishnah. There we find a provision for a sin offering if a scholar knows that a decision of the Sanhedrin is incorrect but nevertheless acts in accordance with the majority.

There are times when we give up our autonomy to be part of a group- our family, our friends, even the Jewish people. But there are also times when we need to stand by our own viewpoint and not be swayed by the majority, even of people we like and respect.