More on Kulah Shopping

A while back, Rikki asked an intriguing question about "kulah shopping," and got a comprehensive response from the Sinenskys.  For further clarification of this difficult issue, we are lucky to have a guest respondent, another local Rabbi.  Here is a response from Rabbi Daniel Z. Feldman, Rabbi of Etz Chaim of Teaneck:

In response to the question about what is wrong with “kulah shopping” I think that the problem is one if intellectual integrity.  The act of psak is a quest for truth - you should act in accordance with the opinion that you think is right; however, the problem is that people often don’t know enough to determine what is right, so like with everything else in life, they need to ask an expert.  Then the question becomes how you decide who to ask.  It would make sense that the questioner should ask the posek she believes is most likely to give an answer she believes is the most accurate possible “truth” (and who is available).

Sometimes, it is already known that there are a range of opinions.  Selecting among them also requires intellectual honesty.  It would seem that there are, in general, three good reasons to choose a specific rabbinic view to follow:

   1. It represents the majority of poskim.

   2. You consider the posek to be the foremost authority on the subject;

   3. You have a specific personal relationship with him (or the opinion itself seems correct, and you are expert enough to know);

Any of these can be valid, depending on the circumstances, and don’t necessarily require that you ask all of your questions to the same person.  If you consider one person to be the expert on business issues, and another on rules of שבת, that is fine.  Or someone could ask her everyday שאילות to a Rabbi that is easy to reach, and save “big ticket” issues for someone who she considers greater or with whom she feels more closely connected, but might be harder to contact regularly.

That said, choosing a Rabbi or psak based on the results can suffer from a lack of intellectual honesty.  If we are striving for what is right, we must be careful not to allow our biases about what we want to be the answer to be.  Think of it like choosing a doctor for advice on how to treat a serious medical condition.  I might go to the doctor who is at the top of her field in the particular area that I need help, or I might go to the one who has been treating me for years, or the one who is a close family friend, but I would never choose based on which one is going to tell me that I don’t need surgery or that I can continue to live on hot dogs and diet soda.  When we realize that the stakes in terms of Halacha observance are high, and that the notion of eilu v’eilu does not imply a halachik free-for-all, the problems with kulah shopping are clear.

This comes up regularly for Rabbis themselves.  Often their congregants ask “why can’t we do ________ (halachikally controversial practice), ______________ (Orthodox Rabbi) says that it’s OK?”  The answer is that the fact that a single or even multiple Rabbis endorse something, unless the Rabbi who needs to decide has a specific reason - see the three listed above – to take this position, he won’t, and shouldn’t be expected to.