Halachic Advocacy

Rabbi Benny Lau recently published a guide for families of members of the religious LGBTQ+ community, and more recently in an interview, Rabbanit Malka Puterkovsky suggested that shifts in the dynamics of marital relationships should mean that we should reevaluate the laws of non-intimate touch between husbands and wives when in a state of Niddah. In light of this, Rabbi Avraham Stav wrote a thought-provoking facebook post where he considered why both these well known individuals felt it necessary to make a disclaimer that they were not rendering a halachic ruling, and how we should understand the notion of publicizing of bold halachic perspectives in this manner. Given all this, the RZWeekly team decided to dedicate our most recent episode to explore this question, during which we considered the concept of halachic advocacy, the difference between religious guidance and religious rulings, the classic process of Sages presenting halachic theories to their peers, and whether Rabbi Stav’s observations about Rabbi Lau’s booklet and Rabbanit Puterkovsky’s remarks hold true.