To Vote But Not to Choose? On Daas Torah and Charedi Politics

A familiar political puzzle concerns the number of Knesset seats won by United Torah Judaism. On the one hand, the Charedi population is growing at a rate far above the Israeli average. On the other, its electoral strength does not seem to be growing with it. In the 2013 elections, UTJ won seven seats. In 2015 it fell to six, and in 2019 it rose to eight. In each of the four elections since then, however, it has won exactly the same number: seven.

How can this be explained?

Several factors may be involved. In this essay, I want to focus on one of them: Charedim—Ashkenazi Charedim, in the case of United Torah Judaism—who do not vote “by the book.” Despite explicit instructions from leading rabbis to vote for the Gimmel slate, they choose alternative parties, or simply do not vote at all.

According to editorials that recur every election season in Yated Ne’eman, this amounts to a form of rebellion, since religious duty obligates every Ashkenazi Charedi to vote for the correct slate. Thus, for example, the paper wrote in advance of the 2013 elections:

A crossroads is always a dangerous place, especially when it is a crossroads of destinies. The present election campaign is crucial and decisive, because it is taking place at a moment when fortune smiles upon the wicked who seek to oppress Israel, and when some seek to trap in their cage the soul-bird that sings within every Jew who trembles at the word of Hashem the song of existence: “You shall act according to all that they instruct you.”

Every period in the vicissitudes of history had its captains. Our masters and teachers, the luminaries of the generations, sat at the helm and controlled the pedals. They instructed when to bend before the wind and when to raise one’s head. They were the traffic light directing the movement of the masses. They gave the green light; they shone red for “stop.” Whoever sought their counsel did not stumble. They were a select few, elevated above the people, whose eagle eyes saw far into the distance, and no one dared interfere. Both the deliberations and the decisions belonged exclusively to the Gadol HaDor of each generation, the captain holding the sail of the ship of his age. Many were those who “received,” but “transmission” was not the province of the masses. The masses had only one role: to obey—in the spirit of na’aseh venishma, “we will do and we will hear.” So it was throughout the generations. The division of roles and the order were clear. No one pushed from behind. No generation was left ownerless.

This hierarchy is the essence. This is the path of transmission. There is no other way.[1]

In a media interview, MK Yaakov Asher compared the elections to a Charedi census: every Ashkenazi Charedi, after all, is obligated to vote Gimmel. The verse “You shall act according to all that they instruct you” is understood not merely as the source of rabbinic authority in halacha, but as the foundation for public and political obedience, including the obligation to vote for a particular party. There is no other option.

Rabbi Shalom Ber Sorotzkin went even further, declaring that the duty of obedience is among the foundations of Judaism. “If we come to an election and decide that we choose,” he said in a recent interview, “then in what sense are you Jewish?”[2]

In this essay, I want to give voice to the many—tens of thousands of Charedim—who do not vote for their “home party” despite the instructions of the Gedolei Yisrael.

I want to give voice to those many—tens of thousands of Charedim—who do not vote for their “home party” despite the instructions of the Gedolei Yisrael. These are observant Charedim, scrupulous in mitzvah observance, upright Jews who do not question rabbinic authority in the realm of halacha. Halacha is binding, and Torah sages are those who rule on it for the Jewish people.

They may nevertheless believe that the authority to issue binding halachic rulings does not extend to the choice of ballot paper. Even if weighty Torah interests depend upon political decisions, the Torah does not require a person to relinquish personal responsibility or the power to choose.

To understand this position, we must return to first principles.

 

“You Shall Act According to All That They Instruct You”

The Torah’s discussion of the Great Court does not begin with a command to obey. It begins with uncertainty:

“If a matter of judgment is too difficult for you, between blood and blood, between judgment and judgment, between affliction and affliction, matters of dispute within your gates, you shall arise and ascend to the place that Hashem your God will choose.”

Only afterward does the command appear:

“You shall act according to the matter that they tell you from that place which Hashem will choose, and you shall take care to act according to all that they instruct you. According to the Torah that they instruct you and according to the judgment that they tell you, you shall act; you shall not deviate from the matter that they tell you, right or left.”[3]

The order matters.

The Torah assumes that a person can study, think, and investigate, yet still encounter a question that he cannot resolve on his own. There are also matters in which disagreement arises and no decision can be reached. In such cases, the Torah sends us to “the place that Hashem will choose,” to “the Kohanim, the Levi’im, and the judge who will be in those days.”

The Ramban explains the fundamental importance of the Torah’s mechanism for resolving uncertainty:

The need for this mitzvah is very great, for the Torah was given to us in writing, and it is known that opinions will not be uniform concerning all new questions that arise. Disputes would multiply, and the Torah would become many Torahs. Scripture therefore determined the law for us: that we heed the Great Court standing before Hashem in the place He will choose, in everything they tell us concerning the interpretation of the Torah—whether they received that interpretation through an unbroken tradition, one from another and Moshe from the Almighty, or whether they say so according to the meaning or intention of Scripture. For the Torah was given on the basis of their judgment, even if in your eyes they appear to exchange right for left.[4]

As he stresses, the Torah must not become “many Torahs.” The Jewish people live within a covenant with Hashem through the Torah, the “book of the covenant.” There must therefore be one Torah. We are all members of the same covenant with Hashem, and all of us must live by the light of the same Torah.

To ensure that multiple doubts concerning the meaning of Torah do not generate multiple, conflicting Torahs, the Torah established a mechanism of decision: it was “on the basis of their judgment”—that of the sages of the Great Court—that the Torah was given.

The Jewish people live within a covenant with Hashem through the Torah, the “book of the covenant.” There must therefore be one Torah. We are all members of the same covenant with Hashem, and all of us must live by the light of the same Torah.

Already at this stage, we can understand why personal questions that depend upon the judgment of an individual or family do not fall within the category of “You shall act according to all that they instruct you.”

If the purpose of the rule is to prevent the Torah from splitting into two Torahs, then its scope is naturally limited to Torah rulings—questions of permitted and forbidden, obligated and exempt, pure and impure. It does not include discretionary decisions that by their nature vary from person to person.

In the private questions that arise continually in life, different people will reach different conclusions, and there is nothing defective about this. The verse insists that the Torah not divide into competing Torahs. In matters that are not themselves matters of Torah law, however, each person must decide according to his understanding and circumstances.

Here we return to the principle that “whoever takes counsel from the elders will not stumble.”[5] It is certainly worthwhile to consult a rabbinic figure for guidance. Yet, as Rabbi Eliyahu Meir Feivelson has emphasized, one must still exercise judgment rather than simply adopt the rabbi’s opinion in place of one’s own.[6]

That is an entirely different matter from “You shall act according to all that they instruct you.”

 

The Decision of the Great Court

Another important point should be raised. When a halachic dispute requires resolution so the Torah does not become “many Torahs,” the required decision is that of the Great Court (Beit Din HaGadol)—an institutional decision. Such disputes are not resolved through the personal authority of a single leader.[7]

The Torah’s verses, as interpreted by Chazal, teach the laws of the Sanhedrin and the zaken mamre, the rebellious elder, together with the duty to obey the ruling of the authorized court of each generation.[8][9] Rambam describes the Great Court as “the essence of the Oral Torah” and “the pillars of instruction,” from which “law and judgment go forth to all Israel.”[10]

In other words, the command to heed the sages concerns first and foremost a Torah-legal institution. There is a bench of judges, deliberation, disagreement, and a majority decision.

The Torah does not send the person whose doubt gave rise to the question—or the parties to a halachic dispute—to a single individual, leader, or Rebbe in his private capacity. It sends them to an institution: a beit din, a Sanhedrin, a forum of deliberation, disagreement, and majority decision.

Because the chain of classical semikhah, transmitted from sage to sage beginning with Moshe Rabbeinu, was interrupted, the central institution of decision described by the Torah ceased to exist in its full sense. According to Rambam, semikhah can be renewed only with the agreement of all the sages of Eretz Yisrael. Here too we see the deep connection between Torah authority and broad public acceptance.[11]

It is important, however, to note the position of Sefer HaChinuch, which extends the mitzvah even to generations lacking a Sanhedrin composed of formally ordained sages. Yet his language must be read carefully:

To heed the Great Court and do everything they command us in the ways of Torah concerning forbidden and permitted, impure and pure, obligated and exempt, and regarding anything that appears to them to strengthen and repair our religion. Concerning this it is said: “You shall act according to the matter.”

Included in the mitzvah is also the obligation, in every generation, to heed and act according to the command of the judge—that is, the great sage who is among us in our time… One who violates this and does not heed the counsel of the great sages of his generation in the wisdom of Torah, according to all that they instruct, neglects this positive commandment, and his punishment is very severe.[12]

And again:

The obligation upon us to heed the words of our earlier sages and the great sages of Torah wisdom and judges of our generation applies in every place and at every time, to male and female alike. One who violates this and breaches the fence in any matter that our rabbis taught us in the interpretation of Torah—for example through one of the thirteen hermeneutical principles, or concerning a matter forbidden by a halacha given to Moshe at Sinai—transgresses this prohibition.[13]

The Chinuch thus limits the scope of authority to “the wisdom of Torah” and “the ways of Torah concerning forbidden and permitted.”

In light of Ramban’s comments cited above, this limitation is built into the overarching principle of obedience to the Great Court—and, according to the Chinuch, to the sages of every generation as well: the concern that there be one Torah rather than two. It does not extend to matters unrelated to the interpretation of Torah, nor to the private instruction of an individual outside the modes of halachic interpretation and decision.

 

The Source of Authority

What is the source of the authority of the Great Court—or, according to the Chinuch, of the sages who came after it?

Rabbi Shlomo Dichovsky emphasizes that although the sages who sat on the Great Court received semikhah from other sages, the recipient also required the assent of the people. Without that assent, his ordination was invalid:

We thus see that the agreement of the people was not merely a condition in the ordination of the sages. Had that been the case, the later agreement of the people when Rabbi Meir married would have sufficed. Rather, it is an essential component of the semikhah itself, and in its absence the entire semikhah is void.[14]

According to Rambam, once the chain of semikhah from sage to sage back to Moshe Rabbeinu was broken, the agreement of all the sages of Eretz Yisrael became necessary in order to renew it.[15]

When the Chinuch extends rabbinic authority into our own time, he also mentions a second sphere of authority alongside Torah interpretation: matters intended to strengthen and repair religion—that is, decrees and ordinances.

The Taz explains that the authority to enact these measures rests upon the people and derives from public consent itself: “For the power and authority granted by the Torah lie in the hands of the public to erect fences against transgression.”[16]

Rav Elchanan Wasserman, Hy”d, likewise extends the principle of authority to an age without ordained sages. In his formulation too, however, that authority is bound up with the power of the collective and with the agreement of all the Torah sages of the generation:

As proof that the collective body of all the sages of Israel has the power of the Great Court even at a time when there are no ordained sages: at the time the Talmud was sealed, semikhah had already ceased, and nevertheless all Israel is obligated to heed them. For since the Torah says, “You have only the judge who is in your days,” and we have no other judge except the agreement of all the sages of Israel of that generation who are fit to rule, it is therefore concerning them that the Torah commanded us to heed them.[17]

Rav Elchanan attributes authority to “all the sages of Israel” in each generation, in the same manner as the authority of the Talmud itself, which also depends on the acceptance of all Israel, as Rambam explains in his introduction to the Mishneh Torah.

The negative implication is equally clear: a decision by a single leader does not carry binding authority in this sense unless all Israel has accepted that individual’s authority upon themselves.

Another place where the necessity of broad participation in halachic decision-making becomes evident is the status of the minority opinion. As the Minchat Chinuch explains, a halachic majority decision must follow genuine deliberation and exchange between the parties, including the presentation of dissenting views:

The Torah rule that we follow the majority applies specifically when the two groups have deliberated together concerning this law, face to face. Only then do we say, “Incline after the majority.” But if they did not deliberate together, and instead each wrote his own opinion separately, as in the books of the halachic authorities, then even if a majority agrees with one view, we do not follow the majority in such a case. For it is possible that had they debated face to face, the majority would have conceded to the minority view.[18]

The moment of decision, then, is not the period of study and clarification, during which differing opinions must be represented. Decision comes only at the end of the process. This also emerges from the verses in Devarim: first there is dispute and uncertainty; only afterward does the Great Court resolve them.

Indeed, a judge sitting on a beit din may not simply rely on another opinion, even that of the “Gadol HaDor.” He is obligated to express his own view:

“You shall not answer concerning a dispute so as to incline” means: Do not speak concerning the dispute merely in order to incline—that is, merely because you are following the words of a certain great judge or the majority, rather than because of your own understanding. Nor should you remain silent concerning what is in your heart regarding the judgment and simply incline after their words. Do not do so… Do not say, “It is enough for me to be like Rabbi So-and-so.” Rather, say what is before you.[19]

A court must therefore ensure a full and authentic discussion that represents the complete range of views on the question under consideration. The majority ruling itself has no validity if the minority was not given the opportunity to explain its position and demonstrate its force.

In this way, all Israel participates in the process of halachic decision-making: all voices, including dissenting ones, are properly represented, and the ruling emerges from their encounter.

Such processes are plainly absent from the individual rulings commonly issued today under the rubric of “Daas Torah”—and even from the process by which the identity of the “Gadol HaDor” is determined.

 

From the Judgment of the Sages to “Daas Torah”

Thus far we have seen a model of Torah authority that obligates us to heed the sages and accept the majority ruling, but that is nevertheless structured around boundaries, personal responsibility, deliberation, and public acceptance.

Against this background, the modern innovation becomes clearer: the movement from halachic and Beit Midrash authority toward a broad conception of “Daas Torah,” demanding complete obedience to a single sage even in public and political questions, and even in the absence of meaningful deliberation.

The public no longer chooses its sages, nor does it have a role in study or discussion. Its sole task is to obey.

The concept of “Daas Torah” in its modern form emerged in response to a genuine crisis. The Haskalah and secularization undermined the standing of Torah scholars, creating a perceived need to strengthen emunat chachamim.

It seems likely that “Daas Torah” in its modern form emerged in response to a genuine crisis. The Haskalah and secularization weakened the standing of Torah scholars, giving rise to a need to reinforce emunat chachamim—faith in the sages.

Rav Dessler gives powerful expression to the need for deep trust in Torah scholars and to an awareness of the limitations of personal judgment:

Chazal instructed us to heed the words of the sages even if they tell us that left is right. We must not say, Heaven forbid, that they have surely erred because I, insignificant as I am, can plainly see their mistake. Rather, my own perception is null and void, like the dust of the earth, before the clarity of their intellect and the Divine assistance granted to them… It is very possible that what people imagine to be direct perception is nothing more than fantasy and chasing after wind. This is Daas Torah within the framework of emunat chachamim.[20]

This is a serious position, one that calls for humility and reverence toward Torah sages. Yet it raises a difficult question: how far does this emunat chachamim extend?

Is a person expected to relinquish what he himself understands and knows? Is a Torah scholar also obligated to nullify his own judgment? And if our senses are so thoroughly unreliable, by what faculty are we to decide who the genuine Torah sages are—and whom we are required to obey?

At this point the Chazon Ish enters the discussion. In a letter to Rabbi Kalman Kahana, who supported legislation for national service for women, he wrote:

The approach that divides Torah into separate compartments—rulings concerning prohibition and permission as one part, and instruction in the arena of life as another… is the ancient method of the heretics…[21]

In light of everything we have seen above, this is a dramatic statement. The Chazon Ish seems to create a kind of “fifth Shulchan Aruch”: a realm not based on interpretation of Torah law but entrusted to the inner judgment of the sage, while nevertheless requiring everyone else to obey his conclusion.

Elsewhere, concerning the same question of compulsory national service, he wrote: “The feelings of my soul instruct me that this is a matter of yehareg ve’al ya’avor—one must die rather than transgress—and perhaps from a strictly halachic standpoint as well.”[22]

Although the issue had not been treated as a formal halachic question, nor subjected in the Beit Midrash to the ordinary tools of halachic deliberation, the Chazon Ish relied upon the stirrings of his own heart and ruled that the public was required to obey his conclusion.

Throughout Jewish history we find broad halachic authority. What we do not find is an obligation to treat every opinion expressed by a rabbi as an application of “You shall act according to all that they instruct you.”

This is where the innovation occurs—not an innovation in halacha itself, but in the conception of authority.

Throughout Jewish history we find broad halachic authority. What we do not find is an obligation to treat every opinion expressed by a rabbi as an application of “You shall act according to all that they instruct you”—certainly not in the form described above, grounded in a “Daas Torah” that has not itself been clarified through halachic modes of reasoning.

One may therefore argue that this expansion is not compelled by the classical sources. Rather, it is a response to modern political reality that came to acquire binding status within the Charedi world.

 

The Danger of Demanding Obedience

The Chazon Ish’s innovation coincided with a startling new reality: the fusion of religious authority with modern political power—political parties, coalitions, budgets, appointment committees, and an electoral system in which the votes of multitudes may be determined by a single call for obedience.

When religious authority and political power converge, the question becomes unavoidable: in an age of absolute authority, what preserves the mechanisms of personal responsibility, study, debate, and accountability?

As we have seen, the halachic tradition itself recognizes the authority of the public to enact communal ordinances, but it never detaches that authority from consent and procedure. Rashba, for instance, writes:

It is clear that the public has the authority to erect fences, enact ordinances, and make communal agreements as it sees fit, and these have the force of Torah law. They may fine and punish anyone who violates whatever they have agreed upon, provided that the entire public agrees, without objection… and provided that these agreements include the Torah scholar of the town, if there is one, or an important person appointed as leader over the town.[23]

Public authority, in other words, cannot operate in a vacuum. It requires consent, procedure, responsibility, and participation by those authorized to exercise it.

When an editorial declares that “the masses had only one role: to obey,” it erases precisely those mechanisms of responsibility that we have encountered throughout our discussion: the obligation of each judge to state his own opinion, public acceptance, face-to-face deliberation, and even the preservation of minority views so that later generations may learn from them, as the Mishnah teaches.

This is the danger. Not authority itself, and not leadership itself, but the moment a person is told not to ask, not to study, not to exercise conscience, and not to bear responsibility.

When authority becomes absolute and the possibility of dissent simultaneously weakens—when decisions rest upon the private “stirrings of the heart” of a leader—the mechanisms through which Torah is studied and decided by the Jewish people are weakened as well.

When authority becomes absolute and the possibility of dissent simultaneously weakens—when decisions rest upon the private “stirrings of the heart” of a leader—the mechanisms through which Torah is studied and decided by the Jewish people are weakened as well.

As argued above, it is difficult to identify contemporary rabbinic opinion with the mitzvah of “You shall act according to all that they instruct you.” But there is a deeper question still: is unquestioning obedience in fact what the Torah commands?

Once a dissenting opinion is defined as rebellion against Torah, a person no longer asks, “Is this correct?” He no longer develops a considered position of his own. Instead, he transfers responsibility to another.

In such a system, it becomes exceedingly difficult to prevent abuses of power, as we know from various cults that deprive their members of practical and intellectual freedom. Such structures are almost invariably accompanied by serious harm and injustice.

When loyalty to the group becomes indistinguishable from loyalty to Torah, politics does more than employ the language of Torah. It transforms the very meaning of Torah authority.

Because of the nature of the matter itself and its potentially grave consequences, obedience must operate within proper boundaries. An education that teaches that obedience is the highest value silences the Torah voices of individuals and distances them from the Torah itself.

As the Minchat Chinuch notes, this principle applies even to the voices of women:

It seems obvious that if the sages of the generation disagree concerning some law of prohibition and permission… and we follow the majority, there is no distinction. Even sages of lesser stature join the majority if they are genuine sages—“Do not look at the vessel,” and so forth. Likewise wise women, such as Deborah, who judged Israel… Regarding disagreement on any matter, there is no distinction at all. Whoever is a sage, his or her opinion is counted, whoever that person may be. So it seems obvious.[24]

The erasure of voices and opinions, then, is not merely a social or political problem. It damages the very process through which Torah Shebe’al Peh is meant to be clarified.

Every scholar has an obligation to voice his judgment, and that judgment must be taken into account. Silencing such voices in the name of the new command to “obey” does not strengthen Torah. It distorts it.

 

Conclusion: To Listen Without Surrendering Responsibility

Precisely because emunat chachamim is of such immense value, we must not blur the distinction between halachic ruling and political decision-making.

The primary danger is to Torah itself and to those who study it. When halacha and a system of political power merge, it is not only politics that changes; the very concept of authority changes with it. If loyalty to a group is presented as a religious obligation of complete obedience, without space for dissenting views and without an explicit grounding in halacha, the personal responsibility of every Jew to study, weigh, and decide is diminished.[25]

Rabbi Dov Landau famously expressed this point in 1989, at the conclusion of a sharply worded letter in which he criticized Degel HaTorah and its leadership:

I hope that in response to the above, familiar arguments in the spirit of accepted and well-known conventions will not be raised against them. Such as: “The elder has already ruled.” Or: “Such is Daas Torah.” Or: “It is forbidden to oppose, even in the slightest, the view of the Gedolei HaDor.” Or any of the various novel halachic rulings that have been innovated recently—and not only recently—concerning the subject of right being left and left being right, and so forth.

And if they nevertheless make such arguments to you, I will say only this: all these fine and pleasant ideas are exceedingly familiar to us, and have been for a very long time. With due respect, we were not born yesterday. We are neither youths nor children—not in age, and not in our familiarity with these subjects, which does not date from today or yesterday.

Certainly they will not now teach us wisdom and understanding in these matters [with all due respect to those who would teach us], concerning which our holy teachers, the mighty foundations of the earth, instructed us most thoroughly. We drank their faithful waters with thirst, and from the wellspring of their exalted Torah, their deep understanding, and the meditations of their pure hearts we were privileged to draw, each according to his measure.

Their holy figures, their exalted words, and the sanctity of their wondrous conduct stand even now before our eyes as though alive. They set our spirits aflame, pulse and surge within us, and guide the course of our lives in Torah, faith, mitzvah observance, and a healthy, complete, clear, and well-founded Torah outlook.

Let all those who were not privileged to have all this understand it![26]

The “novel halachic rulings” to which Rabbi Landau refers are precisely this asserted duty of obedience—the silencing of every dissenting opinion. Such innovations raise serious concerns, and they are at odds with the Torah’s own mode of deliberation.

In its original meaning, the verse “You shall take care to act according to all that they instruct you” refers to an institutional system for resolving disputes and ensuring that Torah does not fragment into multiple Torahs.

Today, when that original framework no longer exists in its direct form, the verse still calls upon a person to listen—to the halachic tradition, to Torah scholars, to the Beit Midrash, and to the judgment of the Jewish people as a whole.

But listening does not relieve a person of responsibility.

The great challenge of our generation is not to choose between authority and personal judgment. It is to restore the proper balance between them: one Torah that possesses authority, Torah scholars worthy of trust, and a public that does not relinquish the responsibility Hashem has placed upon it.

That does not weaken Torah. It is how Torah is preserved.

---