Yeridat ha-dorot

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Yeridat ha-dorot (Hebrew: ירידת הדורות), meaning literally "the decline of the generations," or nitkatnu ha-dorot (נתקטנו הדורות), meaning "the diminution of the generations," is a concept in classical Rabbinic Judaism and contemporary Orthodox Judaism expressing a belief of the intellectual inferiority of contemporary Torah scholarship and spirituality in comparison to that of the past. One of the first expressions of the idea appears in the Talmudic adage found in Shabbos 112b (Soncino):

R. Zera said in Raba bar Zimuna's name: If the earlier [scholars] were sons of angels, we are sons of men; and if the earlier [scholars] were sons of men, we are like asses...

The idea is found in many other classical Jewish sources, and underlies the reluctance of the Torah scholars in a particular generation to challenge the legal rulings of a previous generation. Weiss-Halivni (1993) discusses the relationship between the principle of yeridat ha-dorot and the seemingly contrary principal of chate'u Yisrael ("Israel sinned," referring to a failure in transmission of the tradition), an idea invoked to explain cases where derash (exegetical interpretation) trumps peshat (plain reading) in order to restore original intent.

[edit] In contemporary Judaism

The concept of Yeridat ha-dorot is particularly influential in Haredi Judaism, which regards not only Halakha but even customs of old as possessing divine inspiration and wisdom which later generations cannot match. Modern Orthodox Judaism has a somewhat ambivalent approach to the concept, believing that classical positions can sometimes be re-examined in light of modern circumstances but deferentially, and in accordance with classical rules of interpretation, while embracing modern science and secular learning.

The Conservative movement, while not expressly rejecting the concept, has endorsed the contrary idea that wisdom grows with succeeding generations, holding that modern concepts of morality and the like are sometimes superior to classical concepts and that Jewish tradition must sometimes be re-examined and pruned from a modern light. Conservative Judaism is a pluralistic movement which accepts multiple positions about the degree of deference to tradition in contemporary thought and decision-making.

Reform Judaism and Reconstructionist Judaism, as modern liberal movements, reject the whole idea as incompatible with progress, liberalism, and modernity.

[edit] References

Kellner, Menachem Marc (1996), written at New York, Maimonides on the "Decline of the Generations" and the Nature of Rabbinic Authority, State University of New York Press, <http://www.amazon.com/dp/0791429229/>.
Weiss-Halivni, David (1993), “From midrash to mishna: Theological repercussions and further clarifications of "Chate'u Yisrael"”, in Fishbane, Michael, The Midrashic Imagination: Jewish Exegesis, Thought, and History, Albany, NY: SUNY Press, pp. 23–44