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Went to a session ostensibly exploring this question, although owing to a certain lack of restraint in the construction of the source sheet, we didn't actually make it to the question.
One thing I've learned over the past ten years or so is that consistency is not essential. Not a necessity, and not a luxury – more like a red herring, or possibly a pretty toy.
I often say that Talmud combines the logical approach of pure mathematics with the interesting irrationality of people, and the halakhic system is indeed based on taking people's (on the whole more or less predictable) actions and absorbing them into a consistent system.
Given an halakhic system, should the system mould to the people, or should the people mould to the system? Overmuch focus on consistency forces the latter interpretation; the halakhic framework exists inviolable, like the integers, and all the rest is the work of man.
As I get further away from being seventeen and naiive, I find this approach less and less compelling. The idea of living within a prescriptive framework [is not nearly as interesting as watching that puppy outside the window omg puppy cute puppy]...um, yes, the idea of living within a prescriptive framework and having one's chief preoccupation be how rigidly one cleaves to its girders seems, not so much overly challenging as profoundly uninteresting.
These days I see the framework as a support, which one may use as support, or as shelter, or as basis – as any number of things, but always as something in relationship to the people. The point is not to blend into the framework, the point is that the framework is the basis for something greater.
One thing I've learned over the past ten years or so is that consistency is not essential. Not a necessity, and not a luxury – more like a red herring, or possibly a pretty toy.
I often say that Talmud combines the logical approach of pure mathematics with the interesting irrationality of people, and the halakhic system is indeed based on taking people's (on the whole more or less predictable) actions and absorbing them into a consistent system.
Given an halakhic system, should the system mould to the people, or should the people mould to the system? Overmuch focus on consistency forces the latter interpretation; the halakhic framework exists inviolable, like the integers, and all the rest is the work of man.
As I get further away from being seventeen and naiive, I find this approach less and less compelling. The idea of living within a prescriptive framework [is not nearly as interesting as watching that puppy outside the window omg puppy cute puppy]...um, yes, the idea of living within a prescriptive framework and having one's chief preoccupation be how rigidly one cleaves to its girders seems, not so much overly challenging as profoundly uninteresting.
These days I see the framework as a support, which one may use as support, or as shelter, or as basis – as any number of things, but always as something in relationship to the people. The point is not to blend into the framework, the point is that the framework is the basis for something greater.