Pirkei Avot 1:6--Becoming Your Own Rabbi

In Pirkei Avot 1:6, one of the pieces of advice that Yehoshua ben Perachya gave is to עשה לך רב, or commonly translated as "providing yourself with a teacher." Although I don't know a lot of Hebrew at this point, I noticed the reflexive particle לך, which pointed me to an alternative rabbinic interpretation from Rav Avraham Galanti (Z'chus Avos): Make yourself into a great rabbi.

What does it mean to make yourself into a great rabbi? R. Galanti stated that it meant to become a great Torah scholar and a great tzaddik. Obviously, the world cannot be filled with religious leaders; some need to follow while others lead. However, we have to ask ourselves: what function does a rav perform? In the simplest Hebrew, rav means "teacher."

Make yourself into a teacher....the implications of that are phenomenal. First, it means that you need to know your Torah. Not necessarily a Torah scholar like R. Galanti suggests, but definitely enough knowledge of what is expected so one can make halachikally well-informed decisions.

The second idea is much more liberating, and that is the one of personal autonomy in one's halachic decisions. Do your own research, look at the opinions of all rabbis in a multi-faceted manner. This is in contrast to the Haredi world where your rabbi's ruling is sofit (final). This is a conversation I had at length with a good Orthodox friend of mine, about the weight of a rabbi's ruling. His way around that--only ask the rabbi in hypothetical, theoretical situations. Although calling it a loophole gives it a seemingly malicious intent, it actually is benign because it helps one think for themselves.

We're known as "The People of the Book" because we are supposed to know our halacha! At the beginning of the Diaspora, the Jewish approach to halacha was erudite, lengthy discussions, also known as the Talmud. Ever since Rambam had to codify laws in the Mishneh Torah, this line of thinking, i.e., "This is the way it is because I said so," stifles any intellectual thought whatsoever. This prevailing attitude is most modernly expressed in the Haredi movement, where all they do is cite something like the Kitzur Shulchan Aruch as justification. This ignores the fact that in Judaism, there is more than one correct answer, and that not everything is a simple "yes or no." Even Deuteronomy (30:12-13) says that the Torah is "neither in the heavens nor in the sea." It's not stashed in some rabbi's office or in a yeshiva. Especially with the boom of the Internet, halachic texts are more accessible to us than ever. We need to keep the advice of Hillel when he said that "he who does not increase his knowledge decreases it (Pirke Avot 1:13)." Intellectual honesty, an accurate, objective perception of reality, and a knowledge of halacha, the trifecta for an astute Jew who became so by making himself into his own rav. If you don't believe me, you can always study it and become a rav yourself.