Looking for a source
"When Elijah the prophet set out to discredit the false prophets of the idol Baal, he built an altar on Mount Carmel and sacrificed an ox there. The Talmud points out that after the First Temple was built sacrifice was forbidden any place but there. Elijah's altar would normally have been forbidden, then. However, as the sages taught, if we know someone to be a prophet of impeccable sanctity and piety, that person even may suspend one of the Torah's laws temporarily (except the one forbidding idol worship) for the purpose of sanctifying God's name."(JewishMag)
Does anyone know what the source of this idea is? Seems like a great way to justify a free-for-all.
Does anyone know what the source of this idea is? Seems like a great way to justify a free-for-all.
posted by e-kvetcher at 6:56 PM
3 Comments:
The source is not coming to me at the moment, which drives me insane, but I have learned it inside in the past- I think in one of the many discussions about whether d'rabbanan can trump d'orayta, Eliyahu is brought as an attempted proof and fended off with "hora'at sha'ah is different".
One of the many examples of people being more daring than modern halachic authorities would ever dare to be, and the system having to justify them afterwards post facto.
It does seem to me that this is one of the things said about the Moshiach somewhere - that he will be able to change halacha, at the end of days, when we'll all be endowed with some new kind of consciousness by which we no longer need those halachot. Or something.
>It does seem to me that this is one of the things said about the Moshiach somewhere -
This is what I meant by free-for-all. History is full of false Messiahs.
Shabtai Tzvi was 'notorious' for suspending Torah laws. But apparently he was working within the framework of the sages themselves.
Post a Comment
<< Home