If you’re fair, you’ll restore the censoring. As for the question, it is well defined. Where is this consideration of what he thinks brought? If he is a Jew who desecrated the Sabbath knowingly, whether he thinks so or not, after all the conditions are met that is his law. An impractical case? Want to do statistics on how many secular people there are in the country who know the Jewish law? There are no “captured infants” here.

Dear A. The site is open to arguments of any kind, but not to abuse. If you want to vent your anger, you’ll have to find another place. For discussions and arguments, you’re always welcome.

Your response is very typical of those who abandoned their faith. Nobody will succeed in explaining to them that the God they abandoned is different from what they thought. In their eyes He was cruel and will remain cruel, no matter what they’re told.
When you are the one deciding what the law is and then also drawing conclusions from it, then your conclusions relate to the image of God that you created for yourself (and indeed there are others who believe in him too. But not me). I, on the other hand, examine things on their merits, and I do not choose specifically the path that will make God (who does not exist) into someone it is easy for me not to believe in and/or to hate. Each person his own way.
By the way, you also don’t understand the concept of “captured infants.” A captured infant is anyone who truly believes that Jewish law is not binding or that there is no God. It does not depend on knowledge at all, but on understanding what that knowledge means. The context of captivity was mentioned only to illustrate the characteristic way such a situation happened in the past (not today). To take that interpretation literally is really childish and unserious. But it seems to me that this too is again the interpretation of someone determined to place God in a position where it will be easy to hate Him or not believe in Him or both (absurd as that may be).
I’ve dealt with all this several times before here on the site and elsewhere.
Good luck.

Haha. You want a moment of seriousness? Fine. No one has had, or ever will have, an inside grasp of the depth of the rupture I went through on my path with God. My whole life was for that, in the fullest sense of the word, no matter what I went through. And I went through things. I went through too much to put it into speech. In all kinds of senses. The essential things in life we cannot speak about. There are moments that come when nothing remains but to sit alone and be silent. Thus will I call to the man! The one who goes out into deserts empty of God and whose heart has been broken. To shatter and receive a kind of renewed vitality. If there is such a thing as a ‘broken vessel,’ I am a living example of that concept. And I don’t mind confessing that. But all this does not affect writing style, and if it does then only minimally. The storms I went through—writing won’t help much there. So much for a moment of confession.

You draw conclusions about me too quickly. I’m very attentive and my mind is analyzing all the time; I don’t miss a word even if I wanted to. I didn’t create this God, I discovered Him. I too examine everything, and right now this is what I conclude, until proven otherwise. And no one has yet managed to prove otherwise to me. But in case you too reach a moment of clarification and that fateful stumbling block, maybe you’ll be able to hold on to the words of Ibn Tavul in the homily “Hefzi-Bah.” Incidentally, in this homily Isaiah Tishby saw the most authentic and profound formulation of the Kabbalah of the Ari. “And that power [evil] was mixed into all His reality, may He be blessed… and when it arose in His will to emanate His world, He gathered all the roots of judgment that were embedded within Him… and in place of those roots, mercy departed. By way of analogy, a grain of dust within the great sea does not make it muddy and is not sensed, but when the waters are filtered the dust that had been mixed there is found and revealed. So too here… all the power of judgment was gathered and collected into one place, thickening, and because of it the Infinite departed, may He be blessed.” [Hefzi-Bah, 1a.] As for the halakhic concept of a “captured infant,” opinions are divided regarding the secular in our time.

Certainly one should stone someone who exploits the weakness of others for his own personal urges. We’re talking about a corrupt, twisted person who disdains everyone and harms everyone, and is therefore dangerous to everyone, and so he should be stoned.

Of course, this is talking about a case where the person knows he is harming everyone and still doesn’t care.

If you have a problem with harmful people being eliminated, then you’re just a coward.

As for who would actually do the stoning—not everyone can slaughter… but maybe it’s a matter of habit… or maybe the act itself changes something in one’s perception, and therefore it’s better that not everyone do it. Maybe. Need to think about that.

A., are you admitting that you’re biased and in the same breath claiming your view is completely objective?

The Last Decisor, what exactly is exploitation for the sake of urges in Sabbath desecration? And in the other prohibitions too, your thinking is warped. You’re invited, brother, to move to one of the countries where stoning is still allowed. Maybe that’ll wake you up a bit. I’m not a coward, I’m as far from that as east is from west. What am I, probably? A human being.

Elhanan, I don’t know where you inferred that I’m biased. On the contrary, I explained why the outlet of writing doesn’t really help me here. Maybe a little in an amusing direction. If I were really venting a storm here, the whole site would collapse. And yes, my proofs are simple to understand.

If someone has a certain writing style, you don’t respond ad hominem. You address the substance of his arguments.

The Last Decisor, the “maybe that’ll wake you up a bit” was a joke. You won’t just wake up—you’ll flee for your life.

As for you, Michi, one more thing. The things you wrote—“in their eyes He was and will remain, no matter what they’re told”—say that to yourself. You’re the one who remains stubbornly in your position despite all the evidence. And here specifically, your conclusions are the ones that relate to the image of God that you created for yourself. And in other words—and I’m quoting you, from what I saw here on the site—“I have no good arguments for the goodness of God,” and you don’t have the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh) either. The fact that some prophet here and there said how good God is doesn’t mean a thing if you flip a few pages backward or forward. Take that in very, very carefully.

If you have a problem with harmful people being eliminated, then you’re just a coward.
Why would I flee for my life from a coward?
🙂

Hello A,
I’d be happy to speak with you and clarify with you the issues you’re dealing with. My email, if you’d like, is also hassonjoel@gmail.com

The Last Decisor, let it go. You don’t have a penny’s worth of reading comprehension.

Hey David. On my end it’s already clarified. Why not here?

What is “With Heaven’s wicked assistance”?

Apparently the poet means that the letter resh fulfills what is written, “Appoint a wicked man over him.” And he also hinted at puzzlement over the common use of the term “with Heaven’s assistance” at the tops of the columns on this holy site. The other 68 meanings I have not yet merited to understand.

Hello A.

I too went through a certain process, and for 5 years now I haven’t believed (which includes not keeping the Sabbath or Yom Kippur, and the like). Even so, I don’t have anger or hatred like you do, and I feel more frustration or pity when I look at the society in which I still live, in the performance.
If you’re interested in what will happen when a Sanhedrin arises, you can read the utopian book “The Third” by Yishai Sarid. In my opinion it paints the religious public terribly black, but maybe he is close to you in his views.

I’m very sorry about the intense feelings you’re experiencing.

Hello Chaim. The feeling I wrote about is very complex and connected to all kinds of aspects of life, soul, and thought. Its storm rages through my whole being. But it doesn’t affect my attentiveness or my arguments. I was speaking about periods in my life. I’m not looking to blacken anything; my movement is after the truth. I don’t know whether you read carefully above what Jews from our own people wrote here—they have no problem stoning a person. Maybe they didn’t notice, but my true response here is silence. And that is solely because this is not facing us in reality. Nothing remains for me but to be horrified in my whole being and soul. And the doorposts tremble at the sound of the caller. Whoever speaks like that does not have one gram of love of God in his heart. They don’t even know what words are coming out of them. Words of a mechanical heart, with a mechanical mind. There is no humanity here! If love of God were really burning in them, such speech would never come out of them. The true heavens are weeping; nothing remains but to weep with them. And over this I weep; over this is what God truly intended the weeping for.

If it is healing for your pained being that you seek, dive into the depths of the Torah of our Rabbi Nachman. Many Haredim who suffered find there acceptance and consolation.

Natan, don’t embarrass me by lumping me together with the Haredim. Satan is there. The law is the same law, even if Rabbi Nachman does acrobatic tricks with words in the air.

And so no one should speculate about me—“Satan” is an allegory. My semantics are different too. Your answer to what I wrote is ignorant. And not just ignorant—ignorant with depth.

I don’t understand your problem. If you’re really looking for truth and not being moved by emotion, then if the Torah is true (and everything that follows from it), what’s the problem with stoning? The fact that it bothers you “emotionally”? If you’re claiming the Torah is not true and you’re asking from that assumption, then I don’t understand what the discussion is at all…

Indeed, God, perfect in every way, commanded stoning like the most savage of human beings and their cruelty that shakes and horrifies every fiber of the soul through all 248 limbs and 365 sinews. And there’s no problem with that at all. Good luck to you with the sharia of ISIS.

And I truly suggest you move to one of the countries where stoning is a legal method. You and everyone who thinks like you. Go and find there the messiah who will bring you redemption there.

But what is “With Heaven’s wicked assistance”?

How do you know what the fair proportional punishment is for a person who defied the will of his Creator? Maybe this “terrible cruelty” is actually kindness for him, and without it he would receive punishments even more severe than these, and justly so.
Personally, I don’t understand why I am supposed to satisfy the will of my Creator [assuming He exists and commanded, etc.], but religion proceeds from such an assumption, and we have no way to assess how great the crime is when a person defies His will, and one therefore cannot judge that the punishment is “too great.”

A,
The definition of God as good or bad philosophically is simple—it is paradoxical.
If God indeed exists… without getting into all kinds of hair-splitting about whether existence can be predicated of Him or not,
His actions must be beneficial and good (or more precisely, it is obvious to think that the Holy One, blessed be He, does not do something unjust merely in order to harm humanity).
So regarding the wiping out of Amalek, for example—if you do not believe in God, the wiping out of Amalek is a command no less terrible than any other genocide.
If God exists and commanded this—it is reasonable to assume that the situation is such that Amalek is simply a people with no remedy and whose entire essence is evil, and therefore it is better for them and for all of us that they be erased (or perhaps the law of wiping out Amalek does not apply if the Amalekite decides to accept the seven Noahide commandments, according to *some* interpretations).
If on the other hand you are angry at God and do not believe in Him, that is completely absurd; in that case you probably actually mean that you are angry at the founders of the religion / contemptuous of their values (because the values of secular enlightenment are much more correct in your eyes). But if for you religion is merely a collection of laws of an ancient primitive tribe, why does it trouble you? Why not be equally angry at the Maya or at other kinds of ancient barbaric tribes who would rape their women and burn their children?
And if your anger is at the religious or Haredi society because they hold such a value system, where does all your anger and wrath at people like Michi come from, when they are trying at times to offer other interpretations? (which have a basis in the texts)

A thousand, A.

Suppose you see Jews entering gas chambers of their own will, and you don’t understand why, but after a minute you hear the SS officer explaining to the Jews that these are showers.
Suppose you could stone that officer to death.

Would you stone him?

I remind you that we are dealing with a human being. A full human being. Not drunk and not on drugs. An SS officer faithfully carrying out his duty.

“With Heaven’s wicked assistance.”

Eliezer, this tyrannical-cruel command is no different from the command of a fascist tyrant, nor from our more advanced centuries. It belongs to the most primitive times and regions. And that should suffice for the understanding. And if you write “maybe it is actually kindness for him” after everything I wrote, all I can tell you is to go bang your head hard against a wall.

Rational, we were also commanded to wipe out the Perizzite, even though it is a quiet and peaceful people not engaged in war. Even more so than the Canaanite. I live among my own people, I am a Jew, and this is in my soul. And who said I haven’t also gone over cases of other peoples, or in our time? It pains me. That such a reality exists in humanity at all. If Michi had other interpretations, he would present them. But he’s evasive. I don’t know what drives him.

The Last Decisor, the example is not comparable.

What are the odds? “A. replied 1 second ago.” Since the post, this is the first time I came back to the thread.

The example is not comparable at all. I asked about a different example. Would you stone in the case I described with the SS officer?

And as I said, the law is the same law. No matter what interpretation they present for it.

A.,
And what about euthanasia, abortions, or sex reassignment surgeries? Why don’t you rise up against them while you rise up over something that is currently entirely theoretical?

And as Eliezer wrote, the Torah gave the sinner an opportunity to atone for the sin and thereby protect his eternal soul (all those sentenced to death confess). It’s not perfect, but it’s better than punishment in Hell.

We were commanded to separate both the Perizzite and the Amalekite from idol worship and have them accept the seven Noahide commandments. Just to be precise.

A,
This is very interesting.
Earlier you claimed you are not a coward.
And yet even on the simple question of whether you would stone an SS officer, you are incapable of answering.

It seems you subscribe to a philosophy of cowardice, and are overall a philosophical coward.

That’s only how it seems; it’s entirely possible I’m wrong. Depends whether you answer the question about the SS officer case.

I didn’t read all the surrounding discussion, but of course we would stone the SS officer—he has the legal status of a pursuer!
You surely want from here to argue that if we stone someone else as a command of the Torah, we too would have the status of pursuers.
So two things:
First, the law of the pursuer is within Jewish law, and you can’t use it against it :). Surely you’re an atheist, so you don’t recognize any other moral system anyway. So on your view, there isn’t anything more right or less right in one law or another. It’s no more than strawberry ice cream versus vanilla.

In any case, even if we accept the objective moral system, this is nowhere near the same.
After all, if God tells us to do so, we won’t see any problem in it. (And if you do see a problem, then it’s not clear what your morality is grounded in, and you’re sawing off the branch on which you’re raising the difficulty.)
And the whole reason we would punish the SS man as opposed to the person carrying out the Torah’s command is that he is mistaken and we are not. Very simple. And even if he thinks he is right, then again, first he should be killed because he is a walking terror attack. And second, he should be killed because he did not weigh his conclusions properly enough.
If I recall correctly, you can see a discussion of this regarding Yigal Amir in one of Rabbi Michi’s columns there.

K, is that A.?
Who is “we”? I asked about you personally. Would you stone?

And you even add that you would stone because of the law of a pursuer. Which is completely bizarre.

Are you willing to answer: would you stone a Nazi who is leading Jews into gas chambers? The Jews are entering willingly. They are not fleeing. The Nazi is not chasing after them. He explains to them that these are ordinary showers. In the end someone else will open the VX taps. Someone else will kill the Jews. That Nazi is only making sure they enter the showers calmly and peacefully.

Would you, personally (you and not someone else), stone him if no other option were available???

The Last Decisor, I’m always A. with a period after it. Not K. or anyone else. I would go to a total war against the Nazis, and first and foremost I would aim myself at Hitler. So obviously all means are legitimate in order to save people. What does that have to do with anything?

Y.D., right, because euthanasia (by consent), which is an easy death, or sex reassignment surgery is really connected to this. Abortion is another topic, but it’s not connected here either. No, it’s not theoretical at all—it’s completely realistic if there is a majority here. For a long time already they’ve been buying vessels for the Temple, there are rehearsals for the Passover sacrifice, and plans for building the Temple. I don’t know where you inferred that there is a Hell, but the very thought that there is one points to warped thinking. The descriptions of Hell in the words of the Sages are psychopathic-sadistic.

legitimate*