Letter from M.
Hello Rabbi
How are you?
1. I would like to ask, please, why is the punishment for a disobedient son and teacher stoning if there is a fear that he will become a robber and murder someone whose punishment for murder is fencing?
2. I was curious about a kind of “investigation” into why a Jew receives the death penalty, whether it is for the crime itself or for the corruption of the soul or because it was discovered that there was a serious defect in his soul due to the crime and for that he is sentenced to death.
The one who wanted to say that this punishment is for the discovery of a defect in the soul explains why a rebellious and disobedient son is punished with death because all the conditions he has reached indicate that a defect in the soul has been discovered in him and therefore he finds
To be executed. What do you think?
1. It may be because he becomes a serial killer in character and way of life, rather than a random murderer whose punishment is a sword. Like the difference between a person who speaks slander and someone who fails to speak slander.
2. I am not familiar with this investigation and I do not know how to interpret it. Simply put, punishment is given for an offense and not for a situation. The offense depends on intentions and guilt and not on the result (the spiritual damage). The spiritual damage is itself a type of punishment, and I see no logic in imposing another punishment on it.
I also don’t see how this resolves your question about a rebellious son. After all, the defect in his soul is like the defect in the soul of a murderer, so why is he stoning and not beheaded? Of course, something like what I wrote above, and there is no need to add the assumption you proposed here.
Shalom Rabbi
Thank you very much
I had a question about what you wrote.
What happens if it is shown that turning on a light with an electric switch on Shabbat is a desecration of Shabbat according to the Torah, and someone comes to turn on a light and two people warn him and he says that he does it knowingly and does not turn it on, but then it turns out that the light bulb did not turn on or because
it burned out (according to the opinion that it was the switch itself) or that the switch is cursed (according to the opinion that it builds an electrical circuit) and in fact there was no desecration of Shabbat in the technical sense. Will he be stoned or not?
I no longer remember the discussion, but I didn't understand why stoning would be required if there was no prohibition. The prohibition is the construction of an electrical circuit. If the light bulb burns out, no electrical circuit is created because there is a break in the light bulb. An electrical circuit is a working circuit. It is like someone who thought of eating pork and ended up with lamb (the issue of a monk 23).
The Rishonim have already discussed this
Yad Ram”ah answered that the end is to deceive people, and the work of deceiving involves desecration of the Sabbath, which is punishable by stoning.
The opinion of the elders among the Tosafot wrote: “And it seems to say from the text that one does not obey the voice of his father and the voice of his mother, and woe to him who curses his father and mother, that he is under stoning” (apparently disobedience to parents that ends up leading to future actions that make his father and mother easier is the issue here).
And the Mehr”l wrote: ”And it seems that in the end he will be obligated to die several times, for this the Torah has made it more severe for him” (which is the answer that was answered here).
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