A Guest Post by Rabbi Boruch Clinton
Introduction
Understanding the particular set of minhagim your community
has chosen and how they came to choose it is a worthwhile goal. It’s also
useful to try to know why it was just this rather than some other combination
that, over time, took hold. In some instances, the narrative will revolve
around achieving higher levels of adherence to halacha. Other times, choices
are framed as the best options for solving looming problems. But there’s often
no narrative at all. Some changes just seem to happen organically without any
obvious community sponsor or plan.
Those are all ideas I try to address within my Finding Tradition in the Modern Torah World project. [See https://marbitz.com/home/rabbi-s-r-hirsch/finding-tradition-in-the-modern-torah-world/]
