Q&A: Greater is one who causes him to sin than one who kills him
Greater is one who causes him to sin than one who kills him
Question
With God’s help,
Hello Rabbi,
On Independence Day, it’s hard not to talk about the question of our attitude toward the state, and especially toward its Zionist leaders, in the campaign of spiritual destruction against members of their people—the persecuted and the returnees from the exiles—whom they secularized, each in his own way, by force.
I wanted to ask what your opinion is on this matter.
And do you think the saying, “Greater is one who causes him to sin than one who kills him,” should be taken literally?
For example, I heard a sermon in which the rabbi made an a fortiori argument about secular people from the law of a pursuer, saying that if he weren’t afraid of sitting in prison, he thinks they would have that status. It’s just that nowadays there is no Sanhedrin to rule that way in practice.
Answer
This is a collection of stupid nonsense. You don’t need a Sanhedrin to determine the law of a pursuer. Anyone who sees a pursuit can and should decide whether the law of a pursuer applies or not. There is no campaign of spiritual destruction here by the leaders of the state, and certainly not by force. Israeli society is secular, and the government here is simply a reflection of the people. That’s all. If anything, the opposite is true: in my opinion, the state preserves the religious character far more than what would happen without it. It seems to me that if there is anyone contributing to the secular character of the people, it is the religious establishment and the religious public, who make every effort to secularize the public.
Discussion on Answer
If he is only persuading and not doing it by force, then the law of a pursuer does not apply here. Anyone can try to persuade someone else of his views. If he does it by force, it may depend on the dispute between Tosafot and Rashba regarding desecrating the Sabbath for spiritual life-threatening danger (see Rabbi Israeli’s article in Techumin 1 or 2). Although, logically, it seems that one should not compare permission to desecrate the Sabbath with permission to kill the pursuer.
The beginning of the state was not “through” massive secularization. On the contrary, secularization made the beginning of the state possible, because the religious crowd don’t know how to do anything on their own except criticize and get angry at others who actually succeed.
As for the immigrants, naturally every party wants to attach the immigrants to itself. Just as the religious wanted to make everyone more Jewishly observant, the secular wanted to secularize them. The power was in the hands of the secular, so that’s what happened. Otherwise, the opposite would have happened. We know how to whine very well when someone does something to us, and when we do the exact same thing to others, everything seems perfectly fine to us.
Obviously, secularity is against God’s will. But what does that have to do with the state? The state is the work of our hands, not the work of God’s hands. Secularity too is the work of our hands. If we looked better, then maybe it wouldn’t exist, or it would exist to a lesser degree.
The childish Haredi claim that because of the state’s character there is no reason to thank the Holy One, blessed be He, for it, is suitable for third-grade children (like almost the entire Haredi worldview). The Holy One, blessed be He, helped us (according to the accepted assumption; personally I’m not at all sure of that), and we ruined what we received. So we shouldn’t thank Him? If someone gave you a gift of a million dollars and you threw it into the sea, then there is no obligation to thank him?
The spiritual destruction that is happening today abroad, and that would have happened there if not for the state, would have been thousands of times worse than what happened here and there with the establishment of the state. So again I say that the state has no significant part in this. On the contrary, it makes a significant contribution to preventing assimilation and spreading Judaism.
The Haredim tend to get upset because they have a natural and understandable frustration over the fact that they are incapable of doing anything, while the secular built here an enormous enterprise beyond belief, thanks to which all of us live well here. And now the wicked secular people also allow the Haredim to live here comfortably with abundant budgets and discounts, and in addition to impose their norms on all of us. That is definitely frustrating, and it is no wonder that the Haredim develop all kinds of childish arguments and get upset.
I agree that it also wasn’t clear to me from the sermon.
But you can’t ignore the fact that if there is someone we know is trying to spiritually destroy someone else, then the law of a pursuer applies to him.
As for your comment that the state preserves the religious character, that may be true to a certain extent nowadays. But you can’t ignore the fact that the beginning of the state involved the massive secularization of most of the immigrants who arrived as religious Jews.
And the Haredim get very upset about this, but why is that not justified? Isn’t that enough to see it as something against God’s will—the preservation of Torah and commandments?
In your opinion, is it possible to thank God for a physical miracle when on the other side there is spiritual destruction?