http://bmeihadaga.blogspot.com/2009/10/models-of-torah-iii.html

http://bmeihadaga.blogspot.com/2009/11/models-of-torah-iv-eitz-chayyim.html

Much of Rabbi Glasner’s haqdama is quibbling over various aspects of Rambam’s notion, whether even midrashim given at Sinai can be re-drashed, or only post-Sinaitic drash; Rabbi Glasner believes Rambam says the latter, but Rabbi Glasner himself believes the former is the truth. (It is of course amazing that Rabbi Glasner feels confident with going toe-to-toe with the Rambam! Rabbi Glasner elsewhere in his haqdama spends much length discussing how he hates pilpul, how he studies mostly rishonim and rarely aharonim, and how he states the truth with no regard to against whom he is speaking.) That Rabbi Glasner discusses this point of Rambam at such length shows how important this notion of Rambam’s was. For if a Sanhedrin can make a new midrash halakhah to replace an old one, what can this possibly mean except that halakhah was meant to be fluid and evolutionary!!! And I’m not sure if Rabbi Glasner mentions the aggadah in Menahot about Moshe seeing Rabbi Akiva, but clearly, Rambam’s notion in Hilkhot Mamrim could easily explain why nothing Rabbi Akiva said was familiar to Moshe.

Thank you for posting this. It’s very important.

(By the way: the Dor Revi’i is a perush on Gemara Hulin, not shu”tim.)

I would also like to note that from conversations with David Glasner (descendant of Rabbi Glasner – http://www.dorrevii.org) and the sons of Rabbi Dr. Eliezer Berkovits, I have determined that Rabbi Berkovits learned under Rabbi Glasner’s son, Rabbi Akiva Glasner, and that Rabbi Akiva Glasner was even the mesader kiddushin for Rabbi Berkovits.

Indeed, then, a comparison of the views of Rabbis Glasner and Berkovits yields many similarities. I would note two differences, however:
(1) Rabbi Glasner said the Torah would not become Oral again until the Sanhedrin was reestablished, whereas Rabbi Berkovits seems to have become impatient, seeing too many problems and not enough solutions in the Orthodoxy of his day;
(2) In the petiha to the Dor Revi’i, Rabbi Glasner discusses how natural morality can itself constitute law. For example, he insists that it is better to eat pork or treif/nevelah rather than human flesh, even though no law against the latter appears in the Torah. Similarly, he believes it superior to cross-dress rather than be naked, even though there is no prohibition against the latter. Rabbi Berkovits also allocates a significant role to ethics in halakhah, except that rather than relying on natural morality to create new laws, he instead sees Biblical and Talmudic morality (kavod ha-briot, hefsed gadol, etc.) as playing a role in halakhah (almost?) equal to the role played by formal textual exegesis. Rabbi Berkovits, as far as my limited learning goes, would be most similar to people like Rabbis Benzion Uziel, Haim David Halevi, and Emanuel Rackman.