The No True Gadol Fallacy
Alas, we must begin with definitions and distinctions, between the True Scotsman and the No True Scotsman Fallacy. :(
“True Scotsman” is a humorous term used in Scotland for a man wearing a kilt without undergarments.
Meanwhile, the No True Scotsman Fallacy goes like this:
In this ungracious move a brash generalization, such as No Scotsmen put sugar on their porridge, when faced with falsifying facts, is transformed while you wait into an impotent tautology: if ostensible Scotsmen put sugar on their porridge, then this is by itself sufficient to prove them not true Scotsmen.
— Antony Flew
This went through my mind recently, when I saw the following quote from Rabbi Avigdor Miller, which has been making the rounds recently:
Rav Avigdor Miller on Hotel Gedolim
Q: Why does the Rav think that going to a hotel for Pesach is such a big sin? A lot of gedolim do it.
A: I don’t believe that gedolim do it.
And what is the terrible chet of going to a hotel for Pesach? I think I told you already. Pesach night, everybody knows, is one of the most sacred nights in Jewish life. The fact is, why do painters portray that scene more than any other subject? It’s because the Jewish nation understands that Pesach night is a sacred event. And to cheapen it by commercialism and community sedarim is a sacrilege. If some people go, it’s because they’re plain sick; they’re invalids. And if you find people who are not sick and they go, you have to know that they are not gedolim, they are far from gedolim. They are Americanized, and the word gedolim doesn’t apply to them at all.
TAPE # 33 (June 1973)
You can’t show that Pesach hotel programs are OK because gedolim do it, because by definition, anyone who does it is No True Gadol.
However, to be a bit self-critical, maybe this isn’t precisely the fallacy. Rabbi Miller didn’t first assert that no gadol does it, nor did he define a gadol. And just is a “gadol”? My father had suggested a recursive definition, that a gadol is someone who gedolim would consider a gadol.
But perhaps a gadol is a great talmid chacham who exemplifies and is rooted in the tradition, and the traditional approaches, of Jewish religious practice as found e.g. in religious communities and yeshivot in Europe of yesteryear. Someone who is Americanized, he says, therefore isn’t what he would deem a Gadol.
(Yet, it does seem a bit circular, self-fulfilling, and tautological, with him defining a gadol as conforming to these expectations, so someone others would really deem a gadol is automatically disqualified. So no true gadol.)
Also, while I share a distaste for many of Rabbi Miller’s opinions and means of expressing them, there is some merit to his condemnation of Pesach programs in hotels.
Now, historically speaking, Pesach has looked different in different places. It was not always, everywhere, parents with their nuclear or extended family sitting around the table reading through maggid. In the times of the mikdash, people had to offer the korban Pesach in Yerushalayim. Non-Jerusalemites didn’t have their own homes, but sometimes stayed in a hotel, and had a waiters (a shamash) attending to them. Post-mikdash, in Lod or in Bnei Brak, where the chachamim reclined together, what did the students (and their families) do?
Still, there is value in this intimate family gathering, of vehigadta levincha bayom hahu, of the specific mimetic traditions involved in preparing your own seder, or cleaning your home in preparation, that is lost when people have their seder in a large dining room with many others, or even where they are wealthy enough to get their own room. An overarching “program” with erudite speakers and activities takes away from personal interaction. And if your family never has that experience, they are missing something. (To self-criticize, I haven’t really experienced the hotel Pesach experience, except I think once as a child.)
Also, in many cases, people are driven towards Pesach programs because making Pesach is too hard. I wrote about this at the end of a previous post:
It reminds me of Bereishit Rabba 19, of Adam telling Chava not to (even) touch the fruit of the Etz HaDaat, the snake pushing her so that she touched it, thus undermining everything. Rabbi Chiyya draws the lesson not to pile on too many chumrot, תָּנֵי רַבִּי חִיָּא שֶׁלֹא תַעֲשֶׂה אֶת הַגָּדֵר יוֹתֵר מִן הָעִקָּר שֶׁלֹא יִפֹּל וְיִקְצֹץ הַנְּטִיעוֹת.
Pesach kept actually lehalacha is eminently possible, but we’ve transformed it into an ordeal, and (some) people escape by fleeing to Pesach programs. They outsource all the preparation and kashrut.
Meanwhile, when dealing with so many people with food demands, I’d expect that some leniencies are being taken, or bedieveds applied. Or not even applying the standards you’d expect in the first place. Related, see this Twitter thread (meaning including followups, and replies) by Rabbi Aryeh Lebowitz, about kashrut (and kosher lefesach) of Pesach programs.
https://twitter.com/bknwrabbi/status/1645431784002269190
