Primary care rabbis

 

I was a lunch guest last Shabat (the Spouse is visiting our kin in Israel). After a delightful meal we started talking about rabbis.

Traditionally, a person is to find a rabbi and stay with that rabbi - you direct questions to the person and accept his answers.

I am fortunate to have a worthy rabbi at "my" synagogue. He's a dayan, a mohel, and a shochet in addition to his congregational duties. He's North African. He's also my second source, my first being books by North African rabbis, mostly Messas (Shalom and Yosef) and Macluf Abehatzarah. I also have other works (R. Lau included), but the luminaries who authored the other books are not North African.

My hostess (I'm old enough to remember the distinction between "host" and "hostess" and "actor' and "actress") emphasized the point that a person needs to follow one rabbi. Period.

I contend that with modern communication, we can - and should have - a "primary care rabbi," a PCR, and specialist rabbis.

The best examples I can think of are medical-related. Medical ethics, even in the general world, are challenging. Within Judaism, more so. Transplants - taking, giving, and receiving; Do Not Resuscitate (DNR).

Law issues also come to mind. Do I sue a rabbi who destroyed my home in civil court or rabbinical court? Civil court, some hold, makes us (Jews) look bad, but suing a rabbi before his peers seems patently foolish and a sure waste of my energy.

Can my PCR, as wise as he is, provide an answer that will be accepted by all? (Well, no rabbi can do that, but you get my point.) My PCR is not a universally recognized authority on Jewish medical ethics, but there are some "specialists."

Would any person in their right mind ask their primary care physician (PCP) to perform open heart surgery? So why would a person ask his or her PCR to answer a technical question?

Back in the day, if a person had a religious question, they went to their PCR and asked him. If he was a good PCR, he would ask someone he considered an authority who might ask someone with a greater reputation.

The problems are that (a) something always gets lost - or changed- as a message is passed along and (b) by the time an answer filters back down to the Jew who asked the question, said Jew might already be dead.

I would be concerned that my PCR would not fully understand my question, that he wouldn't forward it to a specialist (unlike the military where a private can write a letter to the president and all the intermediaries in the chain of command MUST forward the letter, the PCR has no obligation to seek assistance from a specialist rabbi), or that in forwarding my query that the question would be modified - perhaps innocently, perhaps in translation from my language to the specialist's language by the PCR who may have neither my language or the specialist's technical language as his primary language.

I'll quickly concede that an email to a hakham from Yohanon Glenn will, in the normal course of events, get less attention that an email - or snail mail - from a dayan and well-respected PCR. I also will concede that most specialists probably have people to screen their incoming communications and who, receiving my communication, might be tempted to condense or otherwise modify it, defeating the purpose of direct contact between "patient" and "specialist."

However, many of the specialists have published their opinions. Many of the opinions are available on the Internet. What did R. Soloveitchik, Feinstein , or Twerski say about this or that? What was the ruling from the current or previous Hakham Bashi (Sefardi Chief Rabbi in Israel) - hopefully following the advice of the specialists, both rabbinical and technical?

I don't expect my PCP to be an expert in all things medical. In fact, I don't WANT my PCP to claim expertise in all things medical; I expect to be sent to a specialist.

Likewise, I don't expect my PCR - as much as I respect and appreciate him - to be a specialist - an expert - in all things Jewish, especially contemporary issues that are "subject to change" as our wisdom increases.

Unlike medicine or law, I'm not certain there is a guaranteed way to get a rabbinical specialist's response in a timely manner. Rambam constantly complained that he was overworked, and given his fame, there is little doubt his claim was justified. But we can, and I posit that we should, use the technology at hand to find specialists' opinions that relate to our situations.

As for me, I'll search the WWW.

My hostess said we can't pick-and-choose a rabbi based on what we want to hear (but in truth we do that anyway in our choice of congregations), and she's right. At the same time, I think I would be remiss if I failed to seek an expert opinion on esoteric issues that my PCR - wonderful person that he is - lacks first hand, up-to-the-minute experience. If I ask my PCR a question beyond his ken and if he gives me an answer (which, in my PCR's case I doubt would happen) I would be obliged to "live with" the answer.

Opinions are handed down daily in the religious centers of the world; most don't make headlines even in the "professional press" but are known only to the experts concerned with the specific issue. My rabbi, a congregational rabbi, has too much on his plate to scour all the literature in paper and on the Internet for every issue that a congregant might encounter.

With all due respect to my rabbi and my hostess - who, incidentally , goes to a different synagogue - I will continue to seek the experts' opinions wherever I can find them.

 

Yohanon Glenn
Yohanon.Glenn at gmail dot com