parshablog
Is it important how the Chazon Ish knew urology?
Sunday, June 28, 2009
From Cross-Currents, a guest post from Rabbi Dovid Landesman, which begins:
I have an acquaintance in Los Angeles, a urologist who is also a well-respected talmid chacham. To establish his credentials let me say that he has completed three cycles as the maggid shiur in a local daf yomi. He told me recently that he received a call from a young man in Bnei Brak who was writing a sefer on hilchos k’rus shafchah and wanted to come to Los Angeles to consult on the medical aspects of the condition. The doctor agreed and when the mechaber arrived, they spent a week reviewing the material. One of the sources which they went through together was the Chazon Ish on Yoreh Deah.My medical friend told me that he was absolutely astounded by the Chazon Ish’s mastery of anatomy as evidenced in his sefer and speculated what was the source of the Chazon Ish’s knowledge. Clearly he did not have a copy of Gray‘s Anatomy under his pillow. I raised the question to another friend, one of the local rabbonim, who showed me a teshuvah from Rav Wozner shlitah maintaining that the Chazon Ish had ruach kodesh. One of my more skeptical friends conjectures that since the Chazon Ish grew up in close proximity to the medical library of the university in Vilna, it is not unlikely that he may have spent some time in the reading rooms learning anatomy. Whatever the case, and it doesn‘t really matter which is the truth, many people will agree that the Chazon Ish was one of the outstanding minds of the past century.
On the other hand, if one maintains that the Chazon Ish was willing to make use of regular channels to achieve his knowledge of science and medicine; and that this was important information to get in order to render pesak, then we might derive another equally important set of conclusions. One is that there is not this automatic deep knowledge of all things medical and scientific on the basis on tzidkus. Therefore, a posek who eschews such knowledge, and paskens on such matters anyway, is giving a deficient pesak. One must know both Torah and the metzius. Furthermore, it is more likely for one to deem it important for the hamon am to be familiar with science. And if dentists all say that both Jews and gentiles have 32 teeth, yet a rabbinic source, or a modern Gadol says otherwise, then one is not a kofer for respectfully disagreeing with that Gadol, and perhaps even seeking psak in relevant matters from those rabbonim who are familiar with the science.
I once asked Rav Gedaliah Nadel z”l, one of the foremost talmidim of the Chazon Ish, about the Chazon Ish’s medical knowledge. He told me that the Chazon Ish’s knowledge came from reading medical journals.
9 comments:
On that Cross-Currents article I posted a comment they chose to moderate and not publish. Maybe it would be discussed here...
The author mentions all sorts of nice thoughts about the Hazon Ish and Torah and kiddush hashem. When he gives an example of a person having an accomplishment not necessarily being a kiddush hashem, he uses Rav Soloveitchik ztl playing ball with Wilt Chamberlain as an example.
I asked - why not say Rav Feinstein ztl or Rav Kaminetzky stl? What about Rav Auerbach ztl or Rav Hutner ztl? Why choose Rav Soloveitchik as the example of playing ball?
From the article:
"However, if one saw Einstein, one would not recite a berachah. Why? Was Einstein any less brilliant than the other three? The answer is that one only recites a berachah on a Jew when he is outstandingly learned in Torah."
I understand that this is a Chiddush of Rav Hutner. I submit that there is a hashkafic problem with this position, in view of the fact that it is statistically certain that if Einstein would have been learned in Torah, he would not have been great in Science.
> I asked - why not say Rav Feinstein ztl or Rav Kaminetzky stl? What about Rav Auerbach ztl or Rav Hutner ztl? Why choose Rav Soloveitchik as the example of playing ball?
There's actually an easy answer to this question. Rav Soloveitchik was tall. The other mentioned rabbonim were not. Therefore it would be more appropirate to mention the Rav in an example about basketball.
He read medical books. see Grade, and B Braun's diss. on Chazon Ish, esp. the interview with Z Yehuda.
סוד ה' ליראיו
Reb gifter said in a shmooze he read medical books too
I meant that he said the Chazan Ish did.
thanks for the clarification.
if this is the same Anonymous, i'm working on a short post involving the rav yonatan eibeshutz comment. do you recall which sefer you saw it in?
kt,
josh
No sorry
no prob. thanks again for the quote. its great!
kt,
josh
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