Innovation in Halakhah

An unauthorized translation of an excerpt from R. Hershel Schachter's article on Women's Prayer Groups:

It is very clear that halakhah is not frozen. Due to all the many changes in circumstances, halakhah has been forced to respond appropriately. The questions of 1984 are not the same as the questions of 1974 and, therefore, in many cases the answers will be different.

However, above and beyond this, just like there have been advances in science, so too there have been advances in halakhah. The midrash in Bereshit Rabbah (49:2) states, "There is no day in which G-d does not innovate a halakhah in the heavenly court." Similarly, Yalkut Shimoni (Shoftim, 49) explains the verse "G d chooses new..." (Judges 5:8) as referring to the battles of Torah, that G-d desires Torah novellae. As R. Hayim Volozhiner wrote*, "There is no measuring the great wondrousness and heavenly impact of true man-made Torah novellae."

However, Tosafot in Pesahim (50b sv. ve-kam) note a contradiction between two talmudic passages. The Gemara in Pesahim states that one should learn Torah even without the proper motivation, because from doing so one will eventually arrive at the proper motivation. In contrast, the Gemara in Berakhot (17a) states that he who studies Torah with the wrong motivation would have been better off never having been born. The Netziv** resolves this contradiction by explaining that learning extant Torah without issuing a ruling or innovating an interpretation is certainly permissible, even a mitzvah, regardless of motivation. After all, he is learning the true Torah. However, Torah pilpul, i.e. creating new interpretations, requires the proper motivation and, if done with the wrong intentions, is spiritually poisonous because the practitioner biases his judgement towards his personal desires.

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* Nefesh Ha-Hayim 4:12
** Meshiv Davar 1:46

Listen to a similar theme in this lecture.