social norms that have kept a community going are likelier to keep it going than ones that haven’t.

In situations that call mainly for common sense and decency, Shimen’s first instinct is to conjure up what his bubbe (grandma) would do.

the fact that there are objectively wrong paths in Jewish law is already assumed by the rabbis of the Mishna, who devote an entire tractate to the hypothetical situation in which the highest rabbinic court rules incorrectly.

American Orthodox Judaism, which for Shimen is nothing but a vulgar and superficial shadow of the authentic Yiddishkeit that he recalls with love and anguish.

Weakening the soft authority of communities in favor of the hard power of states is likely both to weaken welfare and to diminish liberty.

articulated principles of halakha serve us when we don’t have clear intuitions on the matter at hand.

Each of these stories makes the same point. Intuitive knowledge of Torah (Torah as a first language) is replaced by a compiled set of rules (Torah as an acquired language) only when necessary.

All the fine properties of halakha considered above – robustness, adaptability, intuitiveness, and so forth – are possible precisely because halakha is a communal, rather than a governmental, process.

When new issues arise, popular consensus often precedes rabbinic consensus.