What Does it Mean to be a Halakhic Jew?

Shai Akiva Wozner: "Faithfulness to Halakhah: What is it?" in Amichai Berholz, ed. "The Quest for Halakha: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Jewish Law" 2003

Earlier version of article by Wozner available in Akdamot vol 11

Haym Soloveitchik, "Afterward" to Rupture and Reconstruction: The Transformation of Contemporary Orthodoxy p. 50

Bound by ideology and animated by conviction - rather than linked and activated by unthinking habit - the enclave is far more consistent than the mimetic society, but for the same reason, also more brittle. It is more consistent because each part, each practice, is consciously related to the other, as parts of a larger whole to which one has given one's allegiance and to whose realization one has pledged oneself. The laxness that seeps so naturally into habit fulfilling part of a regimen while neglecting another, or the mysterious selectivity that a society casually exercises in the choice of which of its cherished norms it will observe and which it will let fall into desuetude, is far less frequent and often conceivable in the ideologically based enclave. Imprecision, casualness inconsistency are all anathema. Of course they occur in the enclave, its members are only human, but they are far fewer than in a mimetic society that is 'moving easy in harness.'

A mimetic society is elastic; the enclave is brittle and subject to the shock of sudden collapse. In a mimetic soceity, parts of the mimetic conduct may disappear over time, but since the habits of conduct which compose it are scarcely recognized as a system, the collapse does not readily spread to the whole.

Two metaphors for being faithful to Halakhah? What are implications of each metaphor? What are advantages and disadvantages? How

I. Halakhah as the commands of a king.

II. Halakhah as the advice of a doctor.

Consider an actor who auditions for a role portraying a smoker. For the sake of this role he will smoke one cigarette at each performance, four nights per week, for the duration of the show. His doctor would say, "from the perspective of medical science I cannot endorse your smoking even one cigarette each night since it causes a discrete harm." But, the doctor understands that her patient may still take the role. Because the actor needs to pay the rent, needs to express himself creatively, needs to contribute to humanity through his art, he will do something that causes a discrete harm to himself from the perspective of medical science. But he makes that choice while respecting medicine as a form of knowledge. And the doctor knows that her patient has other priorities besides maximizing compliance with medical advice. The doctor does not feel disrespected by her patient because she never had an expectation that medical science contained every relevant factor needed for making life decisions.