Follow the Rav of Your Generation

In a responsum on not cutting the hair during the first thirty-three days of the Omer, the Maharitz notes that the practice spread to many places but had not been kept in Yemen. About forty years earlier, a wise man from the isles of the sea passed through Sanaa and forced the public to keep it as a prohibition rather than a custom. The Maharitz points out that Rav Dovid ibn Zimra and Rav Menachem Lunzano wrote that some communities cut their hair each erev Shabbos in honor of Shabbos. About twelve years before he wrote, a few of the more zealous, he among them, had returned to cutting hair, following the instruction of Rav Dovid Mishreki, who was the ablest rav in the city and did so himself. The proper rule, the Maharitz writes, is to follow the rav of one's generation, as it says, “and to the judge” (Devarim 17:9), even if it goes against an earlier custom. The Torah gave him authority to decide as he sees fit, and by his word they encamp and by his word they travel, as the Rashdam writes in Yoreh Deah, siman 40.