Q&A: A Comment on Your Book To Perform Your Commandments
A Comment on Your Book To Perform Your Commandments
Question
In the third essay in the book, you brought a debate you had with Prof. Rivetsky: according to your view, we should not instruct a person how to commit the optimal sin, and someone who wants to sin should not go to a rabbi to ask how to minimize the sin; whereas Rivetsky held that it is worthwhile to instruct him to minimize the sin as much as possible. But in the first essay in the book, you wrote regarding the guilt that comes for the very damage done to reality itself (I cited this to show that this is not necessarily from Kabbalah, as he elaborates on this in Nefesh HaChayim). If so, it is possible that even according to your view, on the basis of "all Israel are responsible for one another," at least in matters of Jewish law, you would have to instruct him to minimize the sin as much as possible, so that the reality of the sin causes less damage.
Answer
For that consideration, there is no need to posit blemishes. It is obvious that there is value in reducing sins in the world. But a halakhic authority is not supposed to give such instructions, because they contain legitimation for sinning. “Stuff it down the wicked man's throat and let him die.”
It seems that now you are presenting this differently in your book. It seems that out of ideology, we do not answer a person who wants to sin—that someone who sins should not go to a rabbi. I would say the same thing if my friend asked me because he wanted to rob a store and just didn’t know whether to do it in broad daylight, in which case he would harm the shopkeeper and the customers in one way or another, or whether to do it at night in order to reduce the suffering. There is nothing to answer to such a question: someone who wants to harm another person—we should not try with him to reach a minimum of suffering; rather, we push him away with both hands. We do not discuss such matters with corrupt people. But here it seems that you are presenting it merely as a concern about giving him legitimacy.