There’s is no obligation to wear tzitzit - there’s only an obligation if you happen to be wearing a beged with four corners…
Yet…
R’ Moshe said that it has become a minhag in kallal yisroel to wear tzitzis and therefore one is obligated to wear tzitzis all day.
This concept of since everyone does it becomes a chiuv really bothers me- because how did R’ Moshe know that this was a real minhag that klall yisroel accepted? Maybe it was just a midas chasidus that many happened to keep… I am totally not sure how minhag works but from what I’ve learned about it - it seems that minhag is not just anything that people happen to do … it is something that a group in klall yisroel accepts upon themselves knowingly for generations… how did R’ Moshe know that that was the case?
I wanted to ask if you know the Rav’s stance on how we know when something is a real minhag or not. And also if he agreed to R’ Moshe that it is a real obligation to wear tzitzis all day or just a good thing?
I know he talks about it in beginning of ohr yitschok but it’s not so clear to me what he meant- because he says mimah nafshach if your taking it off bec. your uncomfortable it’s muttar if your just doing it to be porek ol then we allow a porek ol to be a porek ol- but I don’t know what happened to the middle option- which is someone who is not porek ol but just doesn’t want to - unless if I’m understanding him correctly what he means is that such a person goes under the category of uncomfortable and is pattur… ?
Thank you for the teshuvah- it’s just a little hard for me to extrapolate what he would hold by wearing Tzitzit all day - he seems to say things like that a real minhag needs to be guarding people from a real cheshash issur and also he mentions the shulchan aruch that the people have to know that it’s really muttar and they decide to still be machmir…
Not sure how to apply this to the minhag to wear tzitizit all day though… on the one hand it makes sense to wear tzitzit all day because you get more mitzvot so i don’t think it would be a minhag shtus but on the other hand it’s not something that is guarding from a potential issur… so maybe it’s not a real binding minhag … also it does seem that according to the shulchan Aruch I just mentioned that the people have to consciously accept the minhag unto themselves as something they know they don’t have to do but they are doing anyways… my gut tells me that wearing tzitztit all day just came about from smart people that were just trying to get as many mitzvos as possible- It would seem a bit far out that they were mekabel it upon themselves officially… I would probably assume it just just came about haphazardly… I just find it interesting that R’ Moshe says wearing all day is a real binding minhag- and that it’s now obligatory- how did he know that? how did he know the kavanah of people back when they started doing this?
And so to clarify - I’m just not sure if I can extrapolate what the Rav held about the minhag of Tzitzit all day from that particular teshuvah… if you or anyone else heard the Rav say anything a bit more specific about it or of any other minhag that was very similar to this please let me know thanks!
Your question is loaded - and a good one at that.
I don’t think I can offer an amazing answer, so I won’t try. I certainly can’t comment on how R’ Moshe knew something.
What I can say is, there were many instances when people tried pulling the “Minhag card” and the Rabbi wouldn’t hear of it. On the other hand, there were many times when people tried brushing off a minhag and the Rabbi wouldn’t budge. He insisted it was a minhag, and thus not negotiable - no matter what.
A major Gadol knows how to make these distictions, while most of us don’t.
The Rabbi definitely held that Tzitzit is an obligation on all. I hope that’s 100% clear. However, he was quick to make exceptions. For example, the Rabbi held you don’t have to wear Tzitzit at the gym. I asked him, what about the way there and back. He said, leave it at home.
Back to the point, this is something that is very hard to codify and I would include this in a comment he once made. We were discussing the concept of “Al Tifrosh Min Hatzibur” and we were trying to get some kind of understanding when you say this and when you don’t. The Rabbi declared that this topic requires its own Chelek of Shulchan Aruch (meaning, there are way to many details and considerations to just lay out a couple of rules). Same is true with Minhagim.
Thank you so much! that was very clear… thanks for the detailed answer- i got the basic picture… my Rebbi Rabbi Yitzchok Breitowitz also said something very similar to that- that minhagim are extremely complex with many many different opinions of when it’s binding and many exceptions and very hard to make rules about them…
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