Misplaced Loyalties: טעה המצווה לשמוע לדברי חכמים

A Preface.

I’ve often encountered a challenge when writing about topics that interest me — where I start writing without realizing how involved the topic and how much time it will take to write something accessible to a general audience. As such, recently I’ve tried to write really short self-contained blog posts.

So it’s with some misgivings that I start writing about an extremely involved and contentious topic like the sugya of מצוה לשמוע לדברי חכמים. But at the end of the day, I want to write about things that interest me.

That said, some disclaimers must be made. This is a topic where a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, and I make no promises to finish this in a comprehensive way. Perhaps that is not responsible, but then again, I don’t claim to be a very responsible person. Of course, as always, I must say what goes without saying.

Even if I had intended for whatever I wrote to be authoritative — it would not be — because I am not an authority on anything. But I do not intend for anything I write to be authoritative at all — I am just thinking out loud — so even in the alternate reality where I was an authority on the subject matter, what I write here would not be authoritative.

To be well versed in on the subject, besides knowing the relevant sugyot in Shas and the commentaries — there is a lengthy תשובה in the שו”ת חקרי לב about the matter. Depending on how far we go, we will likely reference it a lot and we may go into it at depth. It would make sense for anyone trying to really understand these matters to go through the תשובה

http://hebrewbooks.org/pdfpager.aspx?req=1725&st=&pgnum=813&hilite=

שו”ת חקרי לב א יו”ד סימן פ”ד