Between Gedaliah and Rabin, or: On the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh) and Current Events (Column 242)
There are real differences between Gedaliah and Rabin, but that is not the main point
The essay notes a series of relevant differences between the two cases: the severity of the public consequences then versus here, the assassin of Gedaliah’s connection to a foreign king, Gedaliah’s religious character, his possible attitude toward his opponents, and also the political and parliamentary context of Rabin’s decisions. But he stresses that these are not the heart of the matter. What truly bothers him is taking the name of the Bible in vain: turning a complex biblical episode into a tool of current political propaganda.
The dilemma of someone convinced the leader is leading to disaster
The essay reconstructs, in principle, the perspective of a private citizen who is convinced, together with intelligent people around him, that an elected leader is driving the public toward irreversible disaster. In such a case, he asks, is it really obvious that democratic rules of the game must always take precedence over an attempt to prevent the perceived catastrophe? He stresses that he himself did not accept that assessment of reality in Rabin’s case: in his view there was no existential danger, and the murder could not have changed the process anyway, so it was wrong, forbidden, and senseless. But that still does not make the underlying dilemma simple or solvable by slogans.
Why harsh statements against Rabin are not necessarily incitement
From there he argues that rabbis and politicians who believed Rabin was bringing disaster were entitled to say so openly. The fact that an extremist might draw violent conclusions from such statements does not require silencing an honest assessment of reality, just as one does not abandon religious belief merely because someone else may interpret it fanatically. That is why the automatic labeling of right-wing statements from that period as incitement strikes him as simplistic and tendentious.
Separating the gravity of the act from Amir’s character
He distinguishes between the gravity of the outcome and the judgment of the person. Even if the act is extremely grave, the perpetrator may have acted מתוך a mistaken public-minded judgment and a willingness to sacrifice himself, and therefore is not the ultimate monster he is made out to be. He even says that Amir, despite being deeply mistaken, deserves a certain personal appreciation for that willingness, and that ordinary murderers driven by greed or anger may deserve harsher personal condemnation; even so, he is clear that punishment is deserved, deterrence is necessary, and nothing here legitimizes the act.
Rabin’s commemoration functions mainly as a political tool
The essay sees the way Rabin’s assassination is commemorated as a distinctly political event, divided almost along camp lines. In his view, the dispute is not only about the murder itself but about slogans like “the murder of democracy” or “the murder of peace,” which he rejects. He thinks the Left uses universal language about the sanctity of life and condemnation of murder to advance a specific political message, and that is why it fails to create a genuine consensus around the memorialization.
Why the Fast of Gedaliah cannot decide the argument
From here comes the broader claim: people cling to the Bible both to show that it is relevant and to achieve a knockout blow in a moral argument. He rejects both moves. On his view, our moral principles are not learned from the Bible but exist outside it; at most, people later try to reconcile the Bible with them. That is why turning the Fast of Gedaliah into a memorial day for Rabin is, in his eyes, a tendentious step: if the murder is criminal in your view, say so directly; if not, no biblical analogy will change that. Above all, the story of Gedaliah does not answer the basic dilemma the essay formulates.
Even the reading of the Gedaliah story itself is recruited in advance
As an example of this tendentiousness, the essay points out that Hazal emphasized in the Fast of Gedaliah the idea that “the death of the righteous” is at stake, while the writer he criticizes redirects the episode toward a different lesson that fits his position. Even if another reading can be proposed, for him this only illustrates the problem: people do not learn from the text but insert a prior stance into it and then extract it back out. The conclusion is that the analogy to Gedaliah simply begs the question and uses the Bible as a political tool rather than as a source that teaches something new.
With God’s help
While I was in the middle of writing another column, I came across today (the Fast of Gedaliah) an article by Amit Gvaryahu which, not surprisingly, deals with the worn-out analogy between Rabin’s assassination and the murder of Gedaliah ben Ahikam. That analogy has been irritating me for some time, for several reasons, and this is perhaps an opportunity to clarify briefly a few of them. I will do so briefly, because this is an unplanned column and not a very important one either.
The analogy
The gist of the matter is that in both cases a leader was murdered: Gedaliah ben Ahikam by Ishmael ben Netaniah, and Yitzhak Rabin by Yigal Amir. In both cases we are dealing with a successful and accomplished leader (at least according to the author. I am not sure I would endorse that). In both cases the murder was carried out on the basis of political opposition to his policy, with the backing of important figures. In both cases it was done in cold blood and with planning. In both cases there had been prior warnings that the leader himself did not heed. And finally, in both cases the murder had severe consequences for the public at large (according to the author. I would not necessarily endorse that either). Even so, Gvaryahu continues, although the Sages established a fast for generations in memory of the event, we tend to view it as just another routine obligation of Jewish law, to belittle it, and to forget its significance. The article ends with a prophecy of doom that perhaps within fifteen years we will all have forgotten Rabin and the assassination.
So what is wrong? Flaws in the analogy
At first glance this is an innocent analogy that even has some substance to it. So what angers me? The natural candidate is, of course, the analogy itself. One can certainly talk about the differences between the two cases, and there are such differences. Some of them are even significant differences. Thus, for example, the grave public consequences that existed then and definitely did not exist here. Or the fact that the murderer was an agent of a foreign king, which was not the case here. Or the fact that Gedaliah was an observant Jew and apparently faithful to the Torah and to God (see below). Or probably the fact that Gedaliah apparently did not behave with hostility and contempt toward his political opponents, who were about to pay a very heavy price for his decisions, and did not mock them. And we have not even yet addressed the questionable manner in which the decisions were made, their consistency with his prior declarations, the way those decisions passed in the Knesset, and so on and so forth. But it seems to me that all these flaws in the analogy are merely an error of thought. What mainly outrages me is invoking the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh) in vain, and the tendentious use of these dubious analogies. The flaws in the analogy are only indications of that phenomenon.
The fundamental ethical question?
In my view, the most fascinating question raised by Rabin’s assassination is a dilemma on the personal plane. I will begin by trying to reconstruct reality as Yigal Amir saw it (without knowing him or his views). Think of a private citizen who reaches the utterly clear conclusion—and along with him not a few intelligent, rational, and by all accounts reasonable people—that the leader in question is, in blind obedience and without listening or exercising judgment, about to bring irreversible disaster upon the entire public, and is dragging all of us after him (including those who agree with him, who in his opinion also all suffer from blindness). Let us now ask ourselves whether such a situation is impossible. In principle such a situation is certainly possible, and so regardless of our own opinion we can imagine a person caught in such a dilemma. True, a considerable part of the public thought differently from him (though I do not think it was the majority), but it is hard to say that this is a conclusion that is absurd on its face. Many good and worthy people thought as he did in their assessment of reality, and he probably assumed that the others were being misled in various ways. It seems to me that he did not necessarily have to conclude that such thoughts of his were nonsense.
And no, this does not mean that those people who were around him (politicians and rabbis) bear contributory guilt for the murder. It is entirely permissible (and even proper) to say that Rabin is about to bring unbearable disaster upon the people and the state, if that is indeed what you think. Similar to Yigal Amir’s own dilemma, one can ask this regarding any rabbi or politician. What is he supposed to do and say in a situation in which he reaches the conclusion that Rabin is a rodef (someone whose actions are endangering others’ lives)? Just read the quotations from Bibi and the other leaders of the Right from that period that to this day are automatically classified as incitement. What does that have to do with incitement?! They thought Rabin was bringing disaster upon us and that his actions would cost us much blood, and therefore they said so. That was their assessment of reality. There is no doubt that as a result a person may draw a conclusion and do something extreme (some would say Amir is good proof of that. I am not sure), so what? Am I expected not to say what I think, and to go on walking like sheep to the slaughter (as I see it)? Is it permitted to criticize a leader who is mistaken, but forbidden to criticize a leader who is about to bring disaster upon us? Similar claims arose at that time with respect to religious faith, as though it might lead to murderous fanaticism. And about that too I wondered: does anyone expect me to give up my faith just because someone may draw problematic conclusions from it?!
But the atmosphere and the statements around it are only the background to the personal dilemma. Let us now return to the dilemma of the private individual, because that is what is more interesting here. Was Amir necessarily supposed to conclude that the rules of democracy are more sacred than all of our survival? Was he supposed to keep silent and go along with the entire public like sheep to the slaughter (in his own view)? I will not enter here into historical examples of extreme acts like those of Herschel Grynszpan and David Frankfurter, because I know they will immediately crucify me (Godwin’s law), but these are not bad examples (certainly better than the murder of Gedaliah). And no, I absolutely do not mean to say that Rabin was similar to the Nazis, or even that he did this deliberately and intended evil. It is entirely possible that he acted innocently because he thought that this was the right thing to do. Perhaps. I also do not mean to say that what happened to him was what he deserved. But the dilemma I described does not depend on considerations of whether it was deserved or not, intentional or inadvertent. This is a dilemma that is consequentialist at its root. On the one hand stands the fate of the entire public (in the view of Amir/Ishmael of our generation), and on the other hand stand the democratic fabric and the rules of the game (and not the destruction of democracy). Is anyone willing to sign off for me that this dilemma has a simple and unequivocal answer?
I am not entering here into the question of whether Amir’s assessment had any basis, if only because in my personal opinion it did not. There certainly was an expected danger in Rabin’s actions for many people who would pay a heavy price, something that at least in retrospect has support, but I do not think there was an existential danger to the public there. I also do not think such a political assassination can change anything, and indeed it changed nothing (on the contrary, it only caused harm). Therefore, in my personal opinion there is no dilemma, and the murder was wrong, forbidden, and devoid of all logic. But I am speaking on the assumption that this is your sober assessment of reality as a private individual, and of course also that of a substantial group of intelligent and important people around you whom you respect. In such a case, is there really such a simple answer to this dilemma? I am not at all sure.
A note on the ethical judgment of Yigal Amir as a person
Here I will only remark that one must distinguish between the results of the act and the circumstances of its commission. There may be a situation in which an act is extremely grave and yet the person who does it is not such a great villain. The judgment of the person also depends on his considerations, not only on the results of his actions (and perhaps even primarily on the considerations). It seems to me that quite a few people in the public felt as Yigal Amir did, but no one else dared to act. As far as I am concerned, Yigal Amir (although in my view he made a grave mistake) is a person worthy of appreciation on the personal plane for his willingness to sacrifice himself where others did not dare do so. Many of those who condemn him hang their condemnation on considerations of morality and democracy, whereas in my estimation in many cases what is really involved is fear and an unwillingness to pay prices.
Nothing in my words is meant to say that he does not deserve punishment, or that it is not right to try to deter others from such acts, although the insane hysteria that accompanies those attempts is rather irritating, and the personal demonization that Amir undergoes as a human being turns my stomach. My impression is that sometimes this achieves the opposite result. But I am speaking about my assessment of Yigal Amir as a person and of his act. Is this indeed the most terrible crime of all? Is he the ultimate monster among us? In my eyes, every perpetrator of an ordinary murder, the kind that unfortunately happens in this country time and again, for reasons of greed for money or momentary anger, on the personal plane (as distinct from the gravity of the results) is deserving of much more condemnation than Amir usually receives.
A note on the tendentiousness
Before I get to the use of the Tanakh, let me preface it by saying that, strangely but not surprisingly, attitudes toward Rabin’s murder and the importance of commemorating it divide rather clearly (though of course not absolutely) between Left and Right. True, everyone condemns it and everyone opposes it, and yet it is clear to everyone that this is an entirely political issue. The Left is not mourning a prime minister but the "murder of democracy" or the "murder of peace" (both nonsense in the extreme, of course). The impression is that the Left makes cynical use of "murder is murder is murder" and of the ultimate condemnation of political assassination, and of the value of human life and other empty mantras, but all of these are nothing more than a spade to dig with for very specific political purposes. One can see this every year in the various rallies over Rabin’s assassination (where, with marvelous innocence, the Left cannot understand why this never takes off and why there is no consensus here).
And now to the Hebrew Bible
In my opinion, the dubious reliance on the Tanakh, in this case as in other similar cases, has two main roots: 1. to show that the Tanakh is current and that one can learn from it something relevant to us. 2. to bring decisive proof for your side in an ethical or political argument. There is a tendency to think that if we have found a source in the Tanakh, we have proved our point. It is a knockout. I deny both things.
Let us assume, just for the sake of discussion, that the dubious analogy between Rabin’s murder and the murder of Gedaliah is indeed perfect. Why is that important? Let us admit that all of us, on all sides, use this analogy as a spade to dig with. Whoever condemns the murder makes such an analogy, and whoever does not points to the differences, devises forced reinterpretations, or finds some other way of escaping (and that is fairly easy, as we have seen). I have already explained here more than once that our moral principles are not based on the Tanakh but exist outside it and independently of it. Taking the Fast of Gedaliah to be Rabin Memorial Day (as though we were short of memorial days for Rabin) is a clearly tendentious act. Why? Does the Left interpret the Tanakh differently? No, they simply make use of it (as does the Right, in other circumstances).
If this act is immoral in my eyes, then it is immoral, and it is of no importance whatsoever to me whether or not it resembles the murder of Gedaliah. And if the act is justified, no proof from the Tanakh and no dubious analogy to Gedaliah will change that. The Tanakh is not relevant to our lives, and I find it hard to see even a single ethical principle that can be learned from it. At most, the Tanakh needs to be made to fit our principles after the fact (and the gates of apologetics have not been closed). To see this, you need only return to what I explained above regarding the fundamental dilemma raised by Amir’s act. Does the Fast of Gedaliah teach us anything about it? Can one learn from that biblical passage that even if I think a leader is bringing disaster upon us all, I am forbidden to do such a thing? How is that learned from there? I do not see that emerging from there in any way. You can think yes or no, but the story of Gedaliah will not help you in any way.
An example of the tendentiousness of the discussion
To conclude, I will bring an example of such tendentiousness from the author’s own words:
The Fast of Gedaliah does indeed have meaning, and its meaning is great. The Talmud, to be sure, explains to us that the essence of the fast is This teaches you that the death of the righteous is as weighty as the burning of the House of our God. (‘to teach you that the death of the righteous is equivalent to the burning of the House of our God’; Babylonian Talmud, Rosh Hashanah 18b), but another reason can also be given: it is a fast meant to remember the ability of human beings to be quite certain that their God stands at their side, when in fact He has no contact with them at all.
He himself notes that the Sages did not see this murder as a blow to a political leader, but rather as a blow to a righteous man. But that does not prevent him from taking the matter elsewhere. Again, not because it is impossible to connect the murder of Gedaliah to the murder of Rabin. It certainly is possible (within the limits I mentioned). But if I ask this in a learned fashion: what is the proof that the death of a righteous man is equivalent to the burning of the House of our God? Perhaps it is because the murdered man was a political leader and not because of his righteousness? As he himself writes, this saying of the Sages is evidence to the contrary.[1]
But I return again to the fundamental question: why are these analogies necessary at all? If you think this is an act worthy of condemnation, say so and that is all. Why force the Fast of Gedaliah according to your understanding, and then ‘learn from it’ what you yourself put into it with your own hands? Simply say what you yourself think, and that is all.
Summary
The analogy between Rabin’s assassination and the story of Gedaliah ben Ahikam is nothing but begging the question, very much like the story of Abraham our patriarch and the hat. I have proof that Yigal Amir’s act is criminal and deserving of every condemnation. From where? It is explicit in the Tanakh, from Gedaliah ben Ahikam. How does that come out of there, when there are so many relevant differences? Because Gedaliah too was murdered against a political background. Yes, but he also wore trousers. The question is what exactly was problematic there, and whether, despite all the differences, an answer to the dilemma I described above can be learned from there. True, but surely you agree that political murder is a criminal act, and therefore it is obviously learned from the story of Gedaliah.
If that is what you think, then say it, and do not trouble to hang it on Gedaliah ben Ahikam, or on the Tanakh at all. In any case, what you extract from there is only what you yourself already think beforehand and put into it with your own hands. As stated, this is a clear example of using the Tanakh as a spade to dig with, which is further evidence, for anyone who needs such evidence at all (see column 134–5), that we learn nothing from the Tanakh. We simply use it.
[1] One can of course argue, and rightly, that the plain meaning of Scripture does not necessarily have to accord with the midrashim of the Sages. But does the author intend to argue this against Jews who are faithful to the interpretation of the Sages and not to the plain meaning of Scripture (assuming that this is indeed the interpretation)? Is that his main claim against them? In any case, this is enough for me to demonstrate the tendentiousness and lack of point in such analogies. The author does not bother to argue with the Sages or explain why they ignore the most important aspect of the passage (political murder). He simply says what he thinks, and that is perfectly fine. But why abuse the story of Gedaliah ben Ahikam for that?!
Discussion
I referred to columns that dealt with this. You can look there and in the comments for lengthy discussions. In general, I oppose a priori declarations. In practice, this is the situation; whether it seems reasonable to you or not does not change the facts.
2 brief comments:
1) Analogy is not identity! When one speaks about a historical analogy, one is speaking about similar lines and characteristics, not complete identity between the cases. And the analogy between Rabin’s murder and Gedaliah’s murder is one of the clearest there is (unless you are blinded by your private views). The murder of a political leader by one of his own people against the backdrop of an ideological dispute is the “grandfather of all analogies/impurities.”
2) Begging the question is the definition of every interpretive act whatsoever. The Talmud, whose logic you like so much, is built entirely on forced interpretations, “synonymous” words, and identifications, all of which are “begging the question.” The entire Oral Torah that you believe in so strongly is built on this principle. Which is it then?
And a word in closing: if you cannot understand the profound shock Israeli society experienced in 1995, then you do not understand the depth of the statement: “We would have been like Sodom, we would have resembled Gomorrah.”
1. Many thanks for the enlightening lesson on analogies. I hope you will still permit me a brief logical remark that also touches on reading comprehension. My concern here is not with the general theory of analogies, but with drawing conclusions by force of an analogy. Where the analogy lacks components that are essential for the conclusion, it is of no value. This was explained היטב.
The question whether such a murder is the ultimate impurity or not is not my topic. In my view it is not, but that has nothing to do with the question of the analogy, which is my main concern here. The question is not what judgment such an act deserves, but whether that judgment is supported by the analogy or not.
2. Poor me, I really did not manage to understand this nonsense. If you have a claim about some Talmudic inference, you are of course welcome to raise it and we can certainly discuss it. But the sweeping accusation you raised here is baseless, and in any case it obviously has no connection to our discussion. If you show me that the Talmud drew some conclusion on the basis of a similarity between synonymous words and question-begging assumptions, where there is a principled difference between the two sides of the analogy, then you would have an argument relevant to the matter. So far this is an empty declaration.
If you will allow me a personal remark: a person should learn to use his head even when his heart is storming. The fact that you are very angry about the murder, and even if in your opinion I do not relate to it properly, none of that means you are exempt from bringing evidence or from raising relevant arguments. Your arguments here are in no way relevant to the discussion.
And one final word about the final word: apparently all of us still have more to learn.
Broadly speaking, I agree with the rabbi’s words.
Two comments on comparing this case to proofs from the Bible:
A. Since there is quite a high correlation between religious people and those who refrain from participating in memorial ceremonies for Rabin, in this case it seems to me that Amit found it important to show the connection (again—does he manage to persuade people? I doubt it. It should be noted that, as I understand it, Amit defines himself as Orthodox).
B. I think the proof in this case is not from the Bible alone. Many severe and difficult events are described in the Bible. The proof is that in a period of death and destruction, we make a big deal for generations out of the murder of one person amid all that chaos. Why? Hazal have an answer—“the death of the righteous is equivalent to the destruction of the house of our God.” And here the son asks: then why do we fast on this day, and not on every day? (Statistically, there cannot be a day in the year on which no great righteous person died.) Here Amit gives the answer he gives.
I agree with two things—A. The Bible can be bent in whatever direction you want. B. The analogy between Gedaliah and Rabin is poor, in many respects.
I think the very question—why specifically the death of this particular righteous man justifies weeping for generations—is a legitimate question.
In your opinion, is a terrorist attack also less terrible than an ordinary murder in the criminal underworld? After all, that Arab truly believes that by doing so he is bringing the occupation closer to its end.
A completely legitimate question, but about it I make two claims: 1. The more plausible answer is the result (the destruction of the Jewish settlement in the Land of Israel), not the mere murder of a leader. 2. The answer is a function of your outlook, and therefore you will learn nothing from it.
By the way, this is not the death of the righteous but the murder of the righteous. Therefore there is no question why we do not fast every day of the year.
I do not know the writer, and I do not think his being Orthodox changes anything here. My claim is against Orthodox people who use the Bible.
Obviously. Is there any doubt about that?
The demonization being done to the murderer is very interesting. For many, the distinction between a cruel and evil murderer and an idealistic and dangerous murderer has become blurred, and it is not clear to me what motivates this.
The argument that he supposedly “murdered peace” is nonsense that nobody believes.
It’s not clear what the motive is? “A spade to dig with” (the pit of the next peace process), have we said that already?
K
Mishael Cheshin used Gedaliah’s murder to send Margalit Har-Shefi to prison in a verdict that was an extraordinarily manipulative literary act.
All Gavriyahu did was deliver a homily. His academic articles are based on more.
According to your method, there is nothing to learn from the murder of Gedaliah son of Ahikam, because after all “he also wore trousers”… So why, according to you, was it established as a fast day? What is there for us to learn? After all, there is never a historical case that repeats itself exactly…
Or perhaps, in your understanding, it is not because of the political murder at all, but because the land was finally abandoned?
If that is indeed the reason—then why, in your opinion, don’t we fast after the failure of the Bar Kokhba revolt? And the plowing over of the city of Jerusalem and its transformation into Aelia Capitolina? (Perhaps because there there was Jewish heroism? And there is something to learn from it for our own generation as well?)
And how did you determine that Gedaliah was observant of Torah and commandments?? Did you meet him?
(Just so you know: Gedaliah would today be branded a leftist traitor to Israel and to his people, who during the siege of Jerusalem surrendered himself to the Babylonians so as not to die. And I would guess that in the circles in which you move they would have preferred that he “pay with his blood” for that treachery.)
And in general, is there anything to learn from history? Any history (including the one written in the Bible…)?
Or is everything in any case just a “trousers analogy”?
And why were Hazal horrified (and God forbid, the Bible itself as well) by the sin of David and Bathsheba? All in all, just another man who cheated on his wife…
Perhaps because there is a great rupture between what is expected of a leader and the reality on the ground.
It seems to me that the disingenuousness in relating to Yigal Amir’s act as “just another murder” is a disingenuousness belonging to the camp that tries to “minimize” the immense rupture this murder created in Israeli society. The feeling of many is that we are approaching, in small but sure steps, becoming an integral part of the Middle East, where murder is a characteristic part of the culture (see the events of recent days among our cousins).
More power to Rabbi Michi for his forthright words about Yigal Amir, as opposed to the character assassination they carried out against him.
The points concerning analogy in the case under discussion are correct, fine, and I would even say courageous, but the repeated claim that the Bible is irrelevant to our lives is incorrect, for a simple reason:
Indeed, the field of values is different from the field of law.
Sources of values enrich our perspective, and if we are good and attentive students, we can certainly advance in this field. It is absurd to claim that values always precede sources, and do you really believe that a person lives his whole life with the values he was born with? Is he even born with a set of values?
Just as the environment assimilates values, so the texts to which a person is exposed assimilate values in him; and if he chooses sacred texts, and relates to them as such, then the values in them will be assimilated more strongly in him.
For this purpose you make an analogy between the relevance of the Talmud to our lives and the relevance of the Bible, and this is exactly the kind of analogy a jurist would make between his field and the field of ethics, and would therefore dismiss all of ethics because everything there is question-begging—and that is not so.
Law is external to a person and imposes itself on him, insofar as he accepts it in principle, and that is the Talmud; whereas ethics is trial and error and not external coercion, and that is the Bible.
There is no sense at all in the conclusionymhyavets@gmail.com that therefore yit is irrelevant.
It is relevant in its own way.
True, because of the different character of the field, the ethicist can juggle his sources more than the jurist can, though the latter does so too if he is a bit more manipulative—see quite a few examples in today’s headlines, all the way to Salah al-Din—but an upright and sincere ethicist will make very useful and relevant use of his sources, and the believing Jew will do so with the Bible.
Gavriyahu’s article is moralizing, and as such suffers from a certain condescension—“Few are those who fast on this day. And among those who fast, few are those who remember. And among those who remember, few are those who take it to heart.” A. It is not clear where these data come from and on what they are based—about exactly which community? B. How exactly can one diagnose and quantify those who “take it to heart”? What exactly is the content of this taking to heart? Is the content of the fast only one possible content?
From Yisrael Rozenson I learned about the use of the midrashic technique of “five things happened to our ancestors on such-and-such a day” in the context of Rabin’s murder and the Fast of Gedaliah. This is a use that has a good deal of logic. The individual and the community seek ritual and meaning, a way to preserve memory. The calendar already provides a memorial day for a political murder—why not use it for updated and new purposes suited to our generation? This is not biblical interpretation, but rather projection and adoption of a biblical pattern—an easy, available, and also quite fitting adoption. I’m attaching here a link to an article on the subject that Rozenson published in Akdamot ten years ago.
https://www.bmj.org.il/userfiles/akdamot/23/Rozenson.pdf
The article is sociological, not biblical. He analyzes there the mechanism of memory and its preservation—the ritual components needed to preserve it, the movement of preference between Rachel our Matriarch’s memorial day and the Fast of Gedaliah. (In my own somewhat blunt phrasing: tell me where you prefer to channel Rabin’s murder, and I’ll tell you who you are, and what ballot slip you most recently put in the ballot box.) In short, in my decidedly non-objective humble opinion, it is an article worth reading.
At the end of the day, a criminal may think that killing another criminal is an exalted and hugely important thing—whether to preserve honor, or simply to win a fight or a contest, which for him are important and sacred values. But we would dismiss the motives and be appalled by the results of his backwardness. So too with regard to Yigal Amir and terrorists. True, it is the result of something value-laden for them, but the assumption is that if the consequences are so severe, then presumably this comes from a distorted morality and flawed education more than from an agenda. Beyond that, I think one must also take into account the consequences that come after the murder and the sense of chaos, fear, shock, and trauma that follow it. The measure is not only the act and the intention behind it, but also the results. As someone once put it: there is no problem with lighting a cigarette; the problem is lighting a cigarette at a gas station.
Everything has been explained. All these are arguments irrelevant to the discussion here. Are you claiming that one can derive from the murder of Gedaliah the conclusion in the dilemma I described? I’d be happy for you to show me that.
This is already an old dispute between us. I see no point in pouring content into given dates if I am not convinced that this is in fact their content. Ritual games do not speak to me, though of course each person to his own taste.
You are returning to the question of consequences that I remarked on. From my point of view, the consequences are not nearly as severe as they are made out to be. Nothing irreversible happened here. No more than in any other murder.
Your remarks bring me back to the aforementioned columns. In my opinion I showed there that we do not learn values from the Bible. Sacred or not, important or not—all these are declarations. To the best of my assessment, this is a fact that is hard to dispute. The example of the Fast of Gedaliah that I brought here illustrates this well.
The damage is reversible? The harm to the Israeli social fabric that this murder shattered and crushed—is that reversible? I am astonished.
Just people’s hysteria. There is no objective damage here. Because tendentious people fan the hysteria, hysterical discourse is produced, and that is all.
What consequences does this murder have? “Social fracture” is just a slogan. What is the problem? That people are a bit hysterical and pathetic? What really happened to our society? In my opinion, nothing. The rift between right and left is not because of the murder. At most it is connected to the process that led to it (Oslo and what followed). The murder is an expression of it, not what caused it. What happens today? They set up a few tents once a year and babble at each other, and that’s all. Even this Gavriyahu fears that in another 15 years everyone will forget everything. There you have it: nothing of real social or public significance happened.
Hello, Rabbi. Regarding the comparison between Rabin’s murder and a murder over money: true, the second is despicable because of the base motive. But it seems to me that the great fear from Rabin’s murder is because of its result. I agree with the rabbi that in this case the result is not as grave as people imagine, but there is future fear of murder (not necessarily) on an ideological basis. Once ideology enters, there are no restraints and the sky is the limit. As one wise man said about the saying of Hazal, “Any dispute that is for the sake of Heaven will in the end endure,” and therefore it is very dangerous.
With God’s help, 4 Tishrei 5779
The Men of the Great Assembly, who instructed that the chapter on Gedaliah’s murder be included in the Holy Scriptures, surely held that this was “a prophecy needed for future generations.” Likewise, the prophets who included “the fast of the seventh month” among the four fasts of destruction surely held that in this remembrance there is a lesson for future generations, as Maimonides explained in the Laws of Fasts: the fasts come to remind us of the sins that caused the destruction and to obligate us to examine our deeds to see whether there is within us even a trace of the roots of those sins.
On the fourth, fifth, and tenth fasts, we mark calamities that came upon us from enemies outside, such as Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon and Titus and Hadrian, kings of Rome; and the sins connected with them are sins between man and God—the making of the calf on the seventeenth of Tammuz and the sin of the spies on the ninth of Av, which expressed lack of faith in God’s promise to us.
In contrast, the Fast of Gedaliah expresses the terrible calamity that we may bring upon ourselves because of hatred that leads to bloodshed, hatred that may even clothe itself in an ideological guise and appear as “zealotry for the sake of Heaven.” And all of us—right and left, religious and secular—must examine ourselves, to what extent we are careful that a sharp and justified ideological dispute not spill over into baseless hatred, but rather be conducted with understanding and respect, as the prophet says: “Do not devise evil in your hearts against one another” (Zechariah 7).
And through this self-examination we will merit the prophet’s promise (ibid.): “The fast of the fourth month, the fast of the fifth, and the fast of the seventh shall become for the house of Judah joy and gladness and happy festivals; therefore love truth and peace.”
With blessings, Shatz
1. I have a neighbor who put a cellular antenna on the roof. I believe it endangers me and my whole family. True, he brought experts who say it is not dangerous and poses no risk, but I was not convinced and found other smart people who agree with me. I think he is a pursuer. Maybe I’ll kill him.
“On the one hand stands the fate of all the residents of my building and the surrounding buildings, and on the other stands the democratic fabric and the rules of the game (not the destruction of democracy). Is anyone prepared to sign for me that this dilemma has a simple and unequivocal answer?”
Alas! I used… an analogy to illustrate my words. I don’t know whether they can be accepted.
2. Gavriyahu’s claim is simple: “Gentlemen, history repeats itself!” I didn’t understand what your argument against him was—that history cannot repeat itself, or that in principle history does repeat itself but not in this case.
3. After I killed the neighbor with the antenna, a man moved in who plays the piano loudly every morning at exactly six o’clock. I went to speak with him and complain about the noise. At first I thought he would say that this is the only time in the day he has to play and he really loves playing. But no. He argued: it’s not healthy to sleep past six in the morning! Better to go to sleep early and get up early.
I relaxed—after all, that is an argument far less reprehensible than the plain argument “I like to play.”
Ugh! Again I used an analogy!
Is there any source whatsoever from which values can be learned, or are values by definition not something learned?
The analogy between Gedaliah and Rabin teaches nothing but misunderstanding.
Completely agree. And that is what I wrote too.
You didn’t use an analogy but demagoguery. If you are indeed convinced that a danger to life awaits you, even if in my opinion that is a mistake, I would not be able to blame you on the personal plane. Perhaps I would punish out of considerations of consequences and deterrence.
But it is never too late to improve your reading comprehension (and here’s a free tip: I did not make even the slightest argument here against using analogies).
And here is another tip from an expert and lover of cynicism: cynicism is a nice seasoning when one uses it to present a good argument. But it is not a substitute for an argument. Again, free of charge.
This is a difficult issue for which I have no general answer. In any case, as a matter of fact, the Bible carries no significant weight in this process.
Wouldn’t similar things also be said regarding Palestinian terrorists who murdered soldiers and even civilians?
All in all, the act is wrong, but from a personal standpoint they agreed to sacrifice themselves for the collective. Or something of that sort.
Absolutely. This was already raised above, and I said the question is flawed from the outset. Completely obvious. I have written this here several times in the past.
I agree that the analogy between Rabin’s murder and Gedaliah’s murder is absolute nonsense, and there are mountains of additional differences that were not mentioned. For example, the great idealist Ishmael son of Nethaniah left alive several dozen people who paid him a handsome ransom, whereas Yigal Amir went in with the clear knowledge that he would be killed by the bodyguards and that even if he remained alive he would spend the rest of his days in prison under harsh conditions.
But the total negation of the Bible as a source, or at least a support, for moral discussions is difficult. Are you one of those who believe in an “independent” morality that has no divine source? Moreover, Hazal say (in tractate Megillah, if I recall correctly around pages 14–15) that there were among Israel prophets double the number of those who left Egypt, but “a prophecy needed for future generations was written down, and one not needed for future generations was not written down.” This statement can only mean that future generations have something to learn from the Bible. Maybe not morality, but something at any rate. Otherwise the difficulty returns to its place—why would the Holy One bother not only to reveal Himself to a prophet but to command him to publicize his prophecy and write it down? Is the word of God less than the word of Aristotle? Shall a priestess be no better than a prostitute?
As far as I am concerned, there is certainly much to learn from the Bible in every field, and certainly in the field of morality—but on condition that one studies it according to the interpretation of the Oral Torah and the tradition of Hazal. Otherwise, certainly one can take it in any direction one wishes, as Maimonides notes in the Epistle on Resurrection: whoever wants can derive from the Torah a commandment to worship idols (“and you shall turn aside and serve”) or a commandment to be insane (“and you shall go mad”), etc. Or like a reservist once told me on a boring Sabbath on base, that there is a commandment to smoke drugs, since it says “Take for yourself spices”…
Mordechai, you are again returning to principled declarations, whereas I am speaking about facts. Factually, in my opinion, people do not learn values from the Bible, whether we like it or not. As I explained in the aforementioned columns, in the past people probably did learn values from it, but today almost not at all. And even according to the tradition of Hazal, in my opinion it is hard to derive clear conclusions from it (and in my opinion they too usually did not derive their values from the Bible). I discuss this at length in my trilogy.
By the way, precisely the examples of “and you shall turn aside and serve,” or taking drugs, or “and you shall go mad,” and all the other jokes, are examples to the contrary. Clearly we do not reject them because of the tradition of Hazal and the Oral Torah, but because a reasonable reading of the text teaches that this is not the meaning. At most this proves that interpretation, even plain-sense interpretation, is not purely literal. But that is a known fact (I am always reminded of Rabbi Weitman’s article in Hama’ayan 5737, responding to Henshke’s articles, where he brings quite a few nice examples of this).
If I understood you correctly, you are not claiming that there is nothing to learn from the Bible, but that we do not know how to do so. If that is what you meant, I can agree. But if you insist that there is nothing to learn from the Bible, then what was it written for? It is hard for me to accept that the Holy One revealed Himself to 48 prophets and 7 prophetesses over a period of thousands of years only so that we should learn nothing from these revelations, and labeling the claim as a “principled declaration” does not add any understanding (at least for me).
The jokes (as you call them) were brought only as an amusing illustration, but the claim is serious, in my humble opinion. After all, Maimonides wrote the Epistle on Resurrection as a response to claims raised against him that he did not believe in the resurrection of the dead, and those who made those claims (at least some of them) thought they were honestly inferring this from his writings. To this day there are scholars who claim that Maimonides did not believe in creation and deliberately obscured his words in the Guide in order to conceal this; and at least regarding some of those I know personally, they apparently believe this sincerely—which, in my humble opinion, proves that because one can interpret a written text in different directions, one needs the tradition of Hazal and the Oral Torah. As stated, it may be that in our day we do not know how to interpret the Bible properly (after all, it is the word of God and His thoughts are higher than our thoughts), but from this, and from the fact that in every generation there were those who used the Bible as a spade to dig with the foundations of their beliefs (see Christians), one should not conclude that we have no obligation to try honestly to learn something from it in the service of the truth of Torah. This is the Written Torah, and it is an integral part of the Torah.
By the way, if the “jokes” had been backed by support from the Oral Torah, we would accept them. The classic example is the law of “as he plotted, and not as he did,” which without the Oral Torah we would never have thought of, although many commentators later exerted themselves to prove that this is really the plain meaning of the verse. Another example is “and the two men shall stand,” from which Hazal learned that a woman is disqualified from testimony; without the Oral Torah we would never have thought to expound it that way. And there are more examples. The upshot of all this is that one must be very careful in drawing conclusions and analogies from the Bible, but when we have Hazal’s interpretations in hand, then the Bible together with Hazal’s interpretation certainly does constitute support. By the way, there were great decisors, medieval and later, who even ruled halakhically on the basis of their own independent interpretations of verses. For example: I once asked R. Asher Weiss where the medieval authorities derived the law of “completeness” in counting the Omer, and he answered that he knows of no source for it in the Talmuds or in the tannaitic halakhic midrashim, and apparently it is an independent halakhic interpretation of the medieval authorities. Of course, not everyone is qualified for that.
Obviously. My claim is practical-factual. I cannot seriously claim that there is nothing to learn from the Bible. At most, that I (and others as well) do not know how to do it.
One can also interpret the tradition of Hazal in many ways.
Clearly, Hazal’s own methods have been lost to us (I worked quite a bit trying to reconstruct them), but I at least believe that they had such methods. Therefore I would not bring proof from there. People nowadays use tools that are familiar to me, and therefore those I can criticize.
(It’s a shame one can’t continue a reply to a reply; that way the conversation gets cut off.)
As long as you have not answered the question, “Is there any source whatsoever from which values can be learned, or are values by definition not something learned?”, your statement that the Bible has no significant weight in this process does not really mean anything.
Your general statement here and in previous columns can be understood in two ways, and the difference is dramatic.
A. The Bible has nothing to teach us because it is not a legal text whose nature is binding, since most of the Bible—more precisely, the Prophets and Writings—is a more “ethical” text, meaning it deals mainly with morality rather than law. If this is the claim, then it is not about the Bible but about the entire field of ethics and morality: in your view they require no sources at all, but are given over solely to intuition. Needless to say, if this is your claim, it is not accepted by the overwhelming majority of humanity, from Plato until today. You may of course continue to argue this, but things should be put in their proper place.
B. It may be that you are making a point specifically about the Bible: that even if morality and ethics have need of and reason for sources of authority or inspiration, the Bible does not deliver the goods. If that is your claim, one must understand why and how this happened. After all, the Bible says things of the utmost importance in this area, so how does it fail to hit the mark even once and penetrate our ears? This is a terrible failure, and it is very strange that it should happen to a work that, on the other hand, constitutes the legal infrastructure of the Talmud—at least that is what the Talmud thinks, as it exerts itself to interpret every letter of the Bible where halakhah is concerned. I cannot think of a reason for such a bizarre gap within the same work.
Now you are claiming that in the past people learned from the Bible but today they no longer do, apparently because the ancients already did the work for us and drew from it the values needed. If that is the claim, then today people also no longer really learn from the Talmud either, but from the medieval authorities and later decisors who have more or less already exhausted the Talmud for halakhah, even if it still contains much value for every learner and a few practical halakhic ramifications for a handful of courageous decisors. The Bible is no less than that, for those who engage in this field seriously certainly learn much from it; and if you do not like it, that is already a matter of personal taste. One person likes juridification and another ethics.
Precisely a Torah scholar engaged in Torah ethics can learn from the Bible much more than a Torah scholar engaged in Torah law can learn from the Talmud, because the field of law is by nature precedent-based, and it is difficult to overturn precedents on the basis of an earlier foundational canon; whereas the field of Torah ethics and morality is much more flexible, and its precedents are not binding to the same degree.
From here to the claim that every man will learn and expound according to what is right in his own eyes and his prior inclinations—the distance is very great. Every speculator in his field may do that; but a person of intellectual integrity, attentive to the source he honors, will strive humbly to examine his views in light of the text. There is no reason in the world that someone who approaches Bible study this way should not receive much from it, including revolutions in his personal life.
You can continue. You need to click “reply” after the first message in the sub-thread, and the response you write will appear at the end.
You are opening a discussion that has already been conducted to exhaustion. I will only tell you that your remarks are a priori declarations, whereas I am making a practical-factual claim. After the aforementioned columns, several proposals were offered to learn this or that value from the Bible (and there too I explained the matter of sources of authority for values), and to the best of my judgment they did not succeed. See the discussion there.
I thought you were the one reopening the discussion, at least from the title of this post. If it is important to move it there, no problem.
Briefly, exactly the same claim is also true of the Talmud, and you are welcome to offer here one practical conclusion you derived from the Talmud and validated against accepted halakhah.
And since you want an example, I’ll give one:
What do you think about a public leader who sinned with a married woman and fully repented—would you restore him to public leadership?
What is really your a priori position on the subject, and does the story of David and Bathsheba challenge you on this?
It doesn’t matter. We can discuss it here too. I do not agree regarding the Talmud, and this was spelled out there at length (and also in the trilogy). There is a way to derive halakhic conclusions from it, though of course not only one way. But there it is not true that we impose our views on our learning. Not at all. Especially since on halakhic topics, unlike moral ones, we have fewer a priori positions.
As for the example, it requires a detailed analysis and this is not the place. So I’ll answer briefly. Such a discussion requires us to consider several aspects:
By virtue of his being a penitent, clearly there is no obstacle to restoring him to his role (as long as it is clear that he indeed is such, and has been completely cleansed). There is the matter of deterrence for others, and perhaps also for himself, and that may exist even if he has repented. And there is the concern that the repentance is not genuine. There are surely other aspects too, but this is not the place.
In my opinion the main consideration is the concern that his repentance is not complete and that he may return to his crimes. Deterrence is secondary, and it is easier to achieve if one punishes those who did not repent. Moreover, there is value in encouraging penitents, and rehabilitation does that.
Of course one must also distinguish between different types of sins (perhaps sinning with a married woman does not impair his public functioning but only makes him wicked, but this is not the place).
Hence, if indeed the main reason not to restore him to office is the concern that his repentance is not genuine, then nothing can be learned from King David. There there was a prophet who could determine (or convey God’s determination) that David was indeed a true penitent. Therefore there they restored him to office by divine instruction. Nothing can be learned from this in any way regarding a person in our time.
And again, anyone who expresses a different position will not be able to support it from the biblical story. He will use the Bible rather than learn it. And anyone who tastes that he is learning this from the Bible is deceiving himself. He is finding in the Bible his own position.
Regarding the difference from the Talmud, as stated above, this is an inherent difference between the field of law and the field of ethics. To say that the Bible is irrelevant because it is not a legal canon but a moral one—that is a puzzling statement.
You can certainly say that the Bible does not deal much with halakhah; that is completely obvious, a trivial statement. But there is no reason to turn that into a value judgment and disparage this mode of study.
As for the example, I do not understand how you can determine that I personally did not change my position בעקבות the study of the passage.
My a priori position certainly was that a penitent, even if complete, carries a stain with him, and should sit honorably in his home and not stand at the head of the people; but I honestly admitted that the prophet comes to teach us that the Holy One does not see it that way, and He expects the people to bow their heads before the penitent.
This is a very meaningful lesson for me, and I am convinced I am not the only one, and that this is not a unique example.
That is exactly what I said. Even if you yourself learned this from the passage, it does not really come out of it. And if on your own you do not think that way, then you are mistaken if you changed your mind because of the study.
On the other hand, the story of Gedaliah teaches us that excessive trust in another person’s goodness and purity of intention is also improper. When Gedaliah was warned by Johanan son of Kareah that Ishmael son of Nethaniah wanted to kill him, he indeed should not have accepted Johanan’s advice, “Let me go and strike down Ishmael son of Nethaniah, and no one will know”; rather, he should have rejected him firmly: “You are speaking falsely about Ishmael.” But he should at least have taken the possibility into account—“one should have been concerned”—by increasing security or disarming Ishmael and his men.
As in many things, Scripture conveys to us a complex message. Zealotry that judges a person unfavorably is dangerous, but the tendency always to judge favorably can also be dangerous. One must find the golden mean of “respect him, but suspect him.”
With blessings, Shatz
I find this nothing short of astonishing.
The starting point is that the Bible teaches nothing and is irrelevant; I claim that it teaches me, and you respond that I was mistaken in learning from it.
So it certainly does succeed in bringing me to conclusions, except that in your opinion the mode of inference is mistaken.
It turns out that the Bible succeeds in being relevant despite teaching nothing, by bringing people to important conclusions through faulty inferential methods.
Well then, it seems more logical to me to say that my methods of inference, and those of other Bible students, are indeed not identical to your methods of inference from the Talmud, nor even to my own methods from the Talmud; but that does not define them as mistaken, only as different.
Apparently there are in the world some additional methods of inference besides the legalistic-literal one.
It seems bitter to me like the people of the “the whole earth is full of law” school, whose honor would have remained in its place had they known not to disqualify their counterparts in adjacent and parallel fields—and comparisons to current affairs are, of course, not my responsibility.
I find this nothing short of astonishing.
The starting point is that the Bible teaches nothing and is irrelevant; I claim that it teaches me, and you respond that I was mistaken in learning from it.
So it certainly does succeed in bringing me to conclusions, except that in your opinion the mode of inference is mistaken.
It turns out that the Bible succeeds in being relevant despite teaching nothing, by bringing people to important conclusions through faulty inferential methods.
Well then, it seems more logical to me to say that my methods of inference, and those of other Bible students, are indeed not identical to your methods of inference from the Talmud, nor even to my own methods from the Talmud; but that does not define them as mistaken, only as different.
Apparently there are in the world some additional methods of inference besides the legalistic-literal one.
It seems bitter to me like the people of the “the whole earth is full of law” school, whose honor would have remained in its place had they known not to disqualify their counterparts in adjacent and parallel fields—and comparisons to current affairs are, of course, not my responsibility.
You are locked into your assumptions. I explained why this does not emerge from there. So how do you derive it from there? Especially if your prior position was different (by your own testimony), how does a conclusion that does not emerge from the sugya persuade you? That is no less astonishing to me.
According to the lessons we learned—that one must beware of murderous zealotry, and on the other hand of excessive trust leading to refusal to believe intelligence information—it can be said that the resemblance to Gedaliah (not a full comparison, as Rabbi Michael Abraham noted!) in the matter of Rabin’s murder has two sides:
(A) Yitzhak Rabin, of blessed memory, resembles Gedaliah, in that he was a leader who tried to save the people of Israel by cooperating with a former enemy and was murdered for this by a zealot.
(B) People who received information about Yigal Amir’s intention to murder Rabin—such as the Shin Bet personnel and Margalit Har-Shefi—resemble Gedaliah in their refusal to believe the intelligence information they received regarding the murderous intent.
Clearly, the resemblance to Gedaliah is in a certain aspect, from which a lesson can be learned, and not a complete comparison!
With blessings, Shatz
In the comment “And the other side—one should have been concerned,” paragraph 1, line 3
…but he should not have rejected him…
I thought it proper to sharpen and spell this out further.
We have before us a moral dilemma: whether to restore to office a person who went astray and repented. To summarize what I wrote above, the core of the dilemma is the question whether one can be sure that his repentance is indeed complete (the assumption being that if we truly know he is a complete penitent, then by all views there is no obstacle to restoring him to office, and indeed it is very fitting to do so).
Now you come to examine the story of David and Bathsheba and extract a conclusion from it. As I showed, it can be interpreted in two ways and one can derive from it two opposite conclusions regarding the case at hand: 1. Such a person should be restored to office, as with David. 2. Such a person should not be restored to office, but David is different because his repentance was complete (there was a prophet there, and Scripture and Hazal testify to this).
My claim to you is the following: if you come to the sugya with the a priori notion that such a person should not be restored to office (as you testified about yourself), then that is how you will also read the biblical passage (you will choose interpretation 2). And vice versa (1). I see no logic in coming with one approach and changing it by force of the passage, when the latter can easily be interpreted in a way that fits your a priori approach. So why change it? Why choose specifically the interpretation that seems unreasonable to you, when a reasonable interpretation exists?
The only possibility I can see for this is that you have interpretive considerations tied to the text itself (not on the plane of values) in favor of interpretation 1—that is, that the text itself instructs you (despite your a priori conceptions) that in David’s case this was not done because of the prophet’s diagnosis but as a sweeping rule applicable to all situations and all people. Specifically here, as in most places, I see no such consideration whatsoever.
Therefore, from my point of view, the necessary lesson from the story of David is indeed that a complete penitent should return to his office, and we learn from here the greatness and importance of repentance (which in my opinion is clear even without this). But in practice this has no moral implication whatsoever regarding what to do in such a case. At most, the greatness of repentance has here been sharpened (and again, that seems to me fairly obvious).
[By the way, David was not removed and then restored to office. He simply remained there, and one can discuss whether this is not merely a fact and not a value to be learned. But that is a different discussion.]
Good week.
A clarification in its place, because it lets me be brief.
Indeed, for me the important discussion is this one [quoting your words]: “The assumption is that if we truly know he is a complete penitent, then by all views there is no obstacle to restoring him to office, and indeed it is very fitting to do so.”
Well, my a priori position was not that at all, but rather that the stain on the leader’s past does not allow him to return to stand at the head of the people; one might call it a consideration of public honor. There are enough leaders with a clean past, and it is not fitting that a man who failed with a married woman and stole the poor man’s ewe should reign over Israel. It is not dignified. The people, too, would find it hard to respect him, and there is in this an injury to the principle that “his awe should be upon you” (which Hazal describe as indeed having existed there—that until the end of his days he had opposition because of this story, and this also emerges from the verses to one who studies them carefully).
I permit myself to doubt your emphatic statement that the position of restoring the person to office, provided his repentance is complete, is accepted today, and I am not even sure that you personally would support this candidate in practice. Of course, the public would probably hang everything on lack of trust in the person’s complete repentance, but no one would really be comfortable restoring him to office even if we were convinced that he had indeed repented and would not return to his folly.
In any case, I return to my own position, which the Bible changed, and even you agree that if there is indeed such an a priori position, the Bible ought to change it—so here there is one, or more precisely there was one, and now there is not, at least for me.
So perhaps the conclusion is that you do not need the Bible because you have a priori biblical positions, but I do need it and it is truly beneficial for me. I allow myself to assume that there are a few others like me, so the statement you keep repeating, that the Bible no longer has a role, is simply factually incorrect.
It should be added that it is very possible that your own a priori position too was not born in a vacuum, and quite likely comes by force of a post-biblical environment, so that the Bible created the values, and today perhaps one no longer needs to learn this from the source because it has already been learned and internalized. But to argue that therefore it is superfluous is exactly like saying this about the Talmud, because we already have Maimonides and the Shulchan Arukh and so there is no real need to learn directly from the source. But of course a Torah scholar will not allow himself to learn only the later layers of halakhah, but will begin from the source itself; and therefore you, who forgo the Bible, are settling in ethics for learning from fourth- and fifth-order sources instead of going to their source. Why do you do that in Torah ethics but not in jurisprudence and not in lomdut? What is the difference?
I completely disagree. First, even in those columns we noted that in the past the Bible may indeed have had influence. My discussion is about the meaning of study today.
But even according to your description, I do not agree that this can be learned from the Bible. If I thought that restoring the leader to his position was inappropriate, I would not restore him. I would say that at that time the situation was such that it did not trouble the public, or that it was perceived differently. In short, I do not believe you learned this from there.
Do you want to say that in your opinion such a leader truly is not fit to stand at the head of the public, but because that is what is written in the Bible you retract your view? With all due respect, I do not believe you.
You don’t believe me because you think differently?
What can I say—sad!
Not at all. Not because I think differently, but because I assess that you are an intelligent person who does not make such foolish mistakes.
As stated, my claim is not factual (that no one learns from the Bible) but normative (that no one ought to learn from the Bible, unless he made a mistake in his study).
Y.M.Y. is simply reading you the way he reads Scripture—he assumes you are right, and therefore that you think as he does.
What is amusing here in the comments is that you were accused of closed-mindedness, when Rabbi Michael Abraham is indeed open in principle to other ideas; he just cannot see them, because it cannot be that someone with intelligence actually argued them.
Thank you for the compliment, but it is more important to me to be credible than intelligent, and therefore I would be happy for you to believe me even if from that you infer that I am less intelligent than you thought.
But the truth is that the problem is neither this nor that, but rather that you are unwilling to accept a mode of study other than the one in which you study Talmud, and my way of inference from the Bible is “softer” and yet still valid.
For example, I am not especially impressed by poetry, and it does not have a significant effect on me; but I accept the claim that there are people whom it affects greatly and may even change their lives.
They are not less intelligent or less trustworthy; rather, the structure of their soul is different, and sometimes even more developed than that of those who do not have that.
So it is regarding the difference between “hard” analytical study and perhaps more emotional study.
And in truth it is not so dichotomous.
Even in Talmud, with my intelligence I can cast doubt on almost any Talmudic conclusion of yours, as Nahmanides wrote in his introduction to Milchamot, that the wisdom of the Talmud is not like the wisdom of mathematics. So you too require a personal evaluation of the weight of the arguments and evidence, and although distinctions can always be made and objections raised, you decide that the conclusion is correct.
That is how I proceed with the Bible as well. Despite the distinctions from the story of David, my final judgment of plausibility determines that it is similar enough and there is no point in distinguishing. You may think otherwise, but that is just a disagreement over where the line of plausibility lies.
That is exactly the point: it is not a subjective matter. Your conclusion does not arise from the text. If you infer it, then you made a mistake. That is all.
To Hayuta
The rift has existed from time immemorial. Arlosoroff’s murder? Emil Grunzweig’s murder? Altalena? Simply the same baseless hatred that has not ceased since the Second Temple. There are reds and blues (or greens and blues). Each time new people man these two positions because of lack of meaning, boredom, and shortage of adrenaline. A kind of Barcelona versus Real Madrid. All this whining about the rift (like the left’s crying against Bibi for splitting the nation) is itself part of this war. The left worships idols exactly like the right and the religious, and has found itself a new martyr saint and renewed prayer assemblies and memorial and fast days of its own for the death of its king and the desecration of the name of its idol (Molech peace).
I disagree, Eilon. When bloodshed is involved, the usual argument stops being academic and sportive. That is exactly the claim against the Oslo Accords: they were not Real versus Barcelona but playing with fire, with blood.
Whether it is reversible or not—history will judge. There are scars that heal with the years, but the ugly scratch remains.
But here is a factual claim (in your opinion) that can be learned only from the Bible: once, God supervised the world.
There are many more factual claims that can be learned from the Bible: that the angels told Abraham he would have a son at this season next year; that Joseph interpreted dreams. I’ll leave it to you to complete on your own the rest of the facts one learns from the Bible.
In the columns on the Bible, you wrote that one cannot learn historical factual claims from the Bible either.
I do not remember writing that. I would be happy for a quotation (with the context). After all, there are quite a few facts one can learn (unless you interpret them allegorically and metaphorically). What I remember writing is that I do not see much value in learning facts, and that it is hard for me to understand what Torah value they have.
It is worth paying attention to the date of Amit Gavriyahu’s article (5763/2003) and to his age at the time (about 20).
I do not agree at all. First, a government and its head can have the law of a pursuer, for example Hitler (forgive the Godwin). I intentionally did not write Stalin and Kim Jong-un, who were not elected democratically. Beyond that, if his actions are irreversible, and by the time one waits four years for elections the train will already have left the station, then there is no way to be saved without this.
He also did not write that the murder could not save the situation. Such a process does not depend on one person alone.
And I also do not agree with the comparison made at the end and with the conclusion drawn from it. The girl had no evil intent and no understanding. Therefore there there is certainly regret after the fact. Rabin was perceived by him as wicked by decision. In Rabin’s case this was a way of life and not a single tragic event.
In short, in my opinion not a word of it is correct.
I agree that a government can have the law of a pursuer, and that is also the starting point of the article. On the other hand, one cannot declare every prime minister a pursuer, and therefore I propose several criteria and requirements to prevent such a state of affairs.
A. First criterion: that such an act be effective and influential. I quote you from the article:
“I also do not think that such a political murder can change anything, and in fact it changed nothing (on the contrary, it only caused damage).”
On this point I would note that a prime minister usually represents an entire camp, and harming him or the government will not cause his camp to disappear.
B. Second criterion: that a government usually needs some room for maneuver to implement its policy, even if that room for maneuver leads to the death of people. This claim seems correct to me by reason, but it also has support from the Gemara in Shevuot with Samuel permitting the monarchy to kill up to one-sixth. It cannot be that every time the government builds an interchange that in some person’s opinion increases traffic accidents and bloodshed, we declare the prime minister a pursuer. In this context I again quote what you wrote:
“There was certainly foreseeable danger from Rabin’s actions to many people who would pay a heavy price, for which there is support at least in hindsight, but I do not think there was an existential danger to the public there.”
C. The third criterion is, of course, the ability to reverse the policy without bloodshed. The whole institution of repeated elections answers this need, and therefore one cannot automatically come and say that this is an irreversible policy.
On the question of Rabin’s wickedness, the easiest thing is to come and claim that the other person is wicked and therefore let’s kill him. Still, one expects people to pay attention to the different sides of the person before them (for example, the fact that Rabin built the bypass roads to protect the settlers) before putting him in the category of wicked. And even if Yigal Amir decides that he has the law of a pursuer, one would have expected him to mutter “a cruel necessity” rather than rejoice over his death with a satisfied expression.
A. Obviously; after all, that is what I wrote. When the murder is of no use, there is no permission to carry it out. But in your piece this is not mentioned.
B. Same.
C. I wrote why I do not accept this. Sometimes the policy will bring the problematic results within the four years.
Even if one sees him in a complex way (and I think he has merits beyond bypass roads for settlers), when the fellow is now perceived as wicked and as deliberately threatening the public, I see no necessity whatsoever in your conclusion. And certainly not in the absurd comparison to that girl in hiding.
With God’s help, eve of the holy Sabbath, Bereshit 5781
Any application of the law of “pursuer” to a decision made by an authorized governing authority by virtue of the discretion entrusted to it is completely absurd. After all, every governmental decision involves taking risks and is subject to controversy.
For example, the decision whether to impose a lockdown or not always involves taking a risk. One person will say that imposing a lockdown endangers life because harming the livelihood of the population increases suicidality and weakens immunity against disease; another, by contrast, will argue that imposing a lockdown increases the danger of infection.
So in every discussion in which the government rules one way or the other, will someone come whose opinion of the government’s judgment is unfavorable and claim that the ministers are “pursuers,” while conversely the government will determine that the opposition people are “pursuers”? Shall we then have “each man swallowing his fellow alive”?
With blessings, Shatz
And in general, what is the basis for thinking that the law of “pursuer,” stated of one who kills with his own hands, also applies to one who causes an increased risk? Is a cigarette seller a “pursuer” because the smoker is in a higher-risk group? Or perhaps a car dealer is a “pursuer” because he increases the risk of traffic accidents? 🙂
Paragraph 3, line 2
…does not seem right to him and he will argue that the government ministers are “pursuers,” and conversely, the government will determine…
C. In my opinion this is fit to be joined together.
When I see the rabbi’s response and that of other people, I understand that I did a good thing with this comparison.
And in general, any ruling in complex capital cases cannot be entrusted to just anyone, even if he has a little Torah knowledge. A halakhic ruling on such questions must be in the hands of outstanding halakhic authorities who are fit to judge and rule in the entire Torah, and who clarify the law in its truth, both in terms of halakhah and in terms of clarifying the complex reality.
With blessings, Shatz
As is known, and as has recently become clear, outstanding halakhic authorities are more ignorant oddballs and babblers than an average student.
Is your claim that we have nothing to learn, morally speaking, from the Bible a reasonable one? After all, we believe that the Bible is the thing closest to the word of God (more so than the Gemara, for example). Is it possible that God reveals Himself to us and there is nothing whatsoever in the moral sphere that can be learned from that revelation? I am astonished.