Originally published 9/12/08, 1:06 PM.
From the archives of Nishma's Online Library at http://www.nishma.org/, we have chosen an article that relates to the week's parsha, both to direct you to this dvar Torah but also for the purposes of initiating some discussion.
This week's parsha is Ki Teitzei and the topic is civilain caualties in war. The issue is the concern and treatment of civilians in a battle situation. We invite you to look at an article on this topic at http://www.nishma.org/articles/insight/insight5762-06.html
6 comments:
A question related to this week's "Insight": how can one view the prohibition to violate shabbos to save the life of a non-Jew? Nowadays we generally get around the prohibition based on the excuse of eivah/sacanas nefashos should we refuse to save their lives. However, in a vacuum the halacha would forbid it. Is there a way to explain this "discrimination"?
In response to the question of saving a non-Jew on Shabbat, I want to bring an analogy from the view of Rabbi Akiva in regard to captial punishment. Rabbi Akiva, in the gemara in Makkot, stated that if he was ever on a beit din, he would have found a way never to have executed someone. But the Torah clearly states as a mitzvah that a beit din should carry out capital punishments if they render that decision. The reality is that, within Torah thought, there are actually, I would maintain, two realms of legal thought and directive. One is what I would term is the pristine value in and by itself. In that realm, one who is violates certain mitzvot should receive the death penalty. In that realm, for some reason, Shabbat observance supercedes a non-Jewish life. Yet there is another realm of Torah legal thought, a realm that encompasses a full myriad of value considerations. This is the realm of Torah She'b'al Peh and the realm of halachic reasoning which is what is really suppose to guide our lives practically, in distinction to the pristine value. In this realm, according to Rabbi Akiva, there should never actually be an execuation In this realm there is always an argument for why practically a non-Jewish life does always effectively override Shabbat. There are still many questions and a fully explanation of this theory demands much more time and space than is available in available in a blog comment. But I hope that this clearly shows that practically, according to halachic methodology, a non-Jewish life will always be saved on Shabbat. Its just the method by which that conclusion is reached. The study of the pristine values of the broad value constructs of prima facie halachic statements is still imporant for its value and philosophical teachings -- and there is something in this law that presents valuable ideas about the distinction between Jew and non-Jew as well as stating something about Shabbat (I think that the law that a non-Jew should not obaerve the Shabbat is within the same realm). But in the end, the final result is that the non-Jewish life is saved.
Of course, one should also know that there are positions within the breadth of Halacha over the centuries that limited this idea that a non-Jew cannto be saved on Shabbat only to idolaters and that a righteous gentile must also be saved prima facie.
Rabbi Ben Hecht
"If the evil of terrorism is ultimately defined by the spilling of innocent blood, the question ironically is how can one justify the spilling of innocent blood in order to prevent the spilling of innocent blood."
The above statement is a clarifying first footnote in BH's piece and yet despite flashes here and there, this question is buried ultimately in a very non Toraitic and especially non rabbinic appeal to "eradicate this evil." Still, I find even the mentioning of a possible ethical problem here a bold move by BH.
It seems clear to me from the discussion of Bleich's material that the halachic tradition has traditionally avoided analysis of empire or state machinations. Moreover, the historic disasters of the war against Babylon, the civil war against Yanai, the revolt against Rome, and the Bar Kosiba revolt made the early rabbis quite wary of war talk. Though self defense is clearly a discussed category, the person who lives under Torah operates differently from the person committed to power. I guess that my first disagreement with BH is his supposition that the basis of our foreign policy is anything other than the maintenance and increase of the projection of US power. the term "war on terrorism" is at once a face saving reaction and a fantasy of officials drunk with power believing in replacing "rogue" regimes in the Muslim world with governments created in our own image. I guess my primal feeling is one of absolute terror that we are trusting the forces of power to thwart our enemies, reacting with thousands times the force first hurled at us. BH never even raises the issue of a commensurate response. Of course this principle is laid out on an individual level in the Talmud, for example in Yoma 24b. I think, through our torahs, we can find insight into our own individual practices in a war situation, but ideally the words of Torah should not be used to justify the ends of any state.
The last argument of the piece, by placing responsiblity on the group rather than the individual, raises two very serious problems. First, if the individual is not responsible for actions in war then the whole category of war crimes by individuals goes out the window. Individuals can then do as they please under the cover of war, without consequence. Secondly and much more importantly for the question at hand, if the group bears responsibility and not the individual fighter, then as a nation, we bear the responsibility for every innocent death in Afghanistan, a toll which has already far exceeded the toll of 9/11. We must face an Afghani population that increasingly fears our collateral damage, mistaken bombings and summary imprisonments and searches together with a corrupt puppet regime as even worse than the Taliban. In other words, this last argument "derived" from the Mahahral does not dispense with responsibility for innocent death but merely passes it on to all of us.
If we start with the credo of Rumsfeld (I cringed finding this credo as a basis for a halachic discussion) then we have an excuse to support strategies which needlessly increase innocent death if they provide security to the military.
Actually what most concerns me here is the ending of BH's piece: the appeal for the eradication of evil. The torah uses the term ra to describe actions and very rarely, people, committed to causing suffering for the sake of their pleasure or power. I'm not aware of any place, especially in classic rabbinic literature where we are urged to "eradicate evil." Rabbincally, because of the possibility of teshuva, no one, no matter how awful their divine punishment may be, is ever considered Evil. We are exhorted to "hate the rah" , actions which have carelessly or deliberately or unjustly led to pain and suffering. The exhortation to hate does not in any way mean annihilate. Sanhedrin 113b clarfies that if we are singular witnesses to someone involved in a crime we are not even permitted to bring the person to court because the public shaming of court process could be a wrong itself if the person is innocent. Rather we are permitted to hate this person. Clearly hating does not mean annihilation, it means an opportunity for tochacha or expressed opposition. Therefore, "hating evil" is no excuse for war. But even worse, using the word evil risks encouraging the belief in an autonomous absolutely negative entity, the fight against which supercedes all other ethical principles. Our presidents foreign policy based on this premise, the goal of the eradication of evil and its by any means necessary approach, is, I believe, the very heart of avodah zarah.
The principle text for this conclusion is Sanhedrin 64a . This text describes a member of Israel going into the Peor shrine to defile the peor idol. After crapping upon the figure and wiping himself on the idol's nose, The man of Yisrael is cheered by the Peorians for having achieved a new level of Peor worship. The worship of Peor is the very pursuit of denigration and annihilation. Our sages warn us: whatever we attempt to eradicate, we become.
Concerning the mitzvah to hate someone, the citation is Pesachim 113b, not Sanhedrin 113b .
Thank you.
While I share many of the feelings of first.anonymous, I still wonder if the Torah does indeed completely agree with these feelings. Within our modern perspective on war, the only possible justification for fighting is perhaps self-defence and the comments of first anonymous clearly show the difficulties often with such arguments. I am just not sure if the Torah shares this view that the only justified war is a defensive war. The gemara clearly speaks of Dovid Hamelech initiating war for economic and imperialistic reasons, reasons that would be challenged today. The Torah perspective thus may challenge our modern perspective on the morality of war should be recognized as such. With this in mind, first.anonymous' words may have to be reformatted to express the full Torah perspective on war.
Rabbi Ben Hecht
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