Q&A: Sinning for Another Person and Permission for Me
Sinning for Another Person and Permission for Me
Question
Hello, Rabbi, and good afternoon.
What do you do in a situation where something is a sin for the other person but permitted for me, and when I act toward my friend in a way that is fundamentally permitted to me under Jewish law, for my friend that very act is considered a sin—am I myself sinning? Or from another angle, is it דווקא more reasonable to say that neither of us is sinning, because my friend falls under the category of one under compulsion? Or could it be that it is not a sin for me and I am not punished, but my friend is? (Which seems unlikely to me, and that is why I am asking.)
First radical example: accepting converts who are undesirable in general, and from Amalek in particular:
I thought about the following situation. Every person ought to recognize the kingship of the Holy One, blessed be He, and carry out His will—the more, the better. The descendants of Noah also have this, namely their commandments that they are obligated to keep. And a Noahide who draws close to seek shelter under the wings of the Divine Presence is praiseworthy and exalted—and in my own reasoning, even if he will not succeed in keeping everything in the proper way.
A gentile who is trying to draw close befriends a Jewish community, asks it to teach him basic concepts, participates in its activities, and so on. It may be that from his own side he is doing very positive things, but from the side of the people of Israel who bring him close, they are violating the prohibition of “you shall not show them favor,” the prohibition on teaching Torah to a gentile, and the like.
And what about an Amalekite who wants to convert? There is, after all, a view according to which the commandment to blot out Amalek applies even to an Amalekite who converted. And on the other hand, on the level of honoring Heaven, it is clear that the Holy One, blessed be He, wants even the Amalekite to recognize Him—and if he, on his own initiative, converts and tries to escape a death sentence, then even if we assume that the law applies to him everywhere for reasons bound up with motives beyond reason and understanding—it is hard for me to imagine that he would be considered as adding to his wickedness by the very intention to repent.
In your opinion, are these two converts liable to punishment because of their actions and intentions, etc.?
Example B: forbidden sexual relations—between my bodily anatomy and that of another person.
There are three cases in which I see how prohibitions of forbidden sexual relations can clash with a situation of compulsion. That is, a retrospective allowance, and even full permission, but a prohibition on the other side: a resident alien with same-sex orientation, and a person whose sex was changed, or who changed his sex himself and later repented.
A resident alien is, by obligation, only under the seven commandments, and perhaps is also obligated regarding the Sabbath according to most halakhic decisors, while according to a minority only obligated in all the commandments. According to the first view, from the resident alien’s own side there is certainly no prohibition of hugging, kissing, and affectionate touch that does not lead him into sexual sin in the severe sense (that is, intercourse with another man’s wife, which is adultery also for Noahides). If he behaves with affectionate touch toward Jewish daughters, but does not have intercourse with them, is he punished because he causes them to sin, and is this equivalent to adultery and intercourse with a betrothed woman?
Likewise, a person who underwent sex-reassignment surgery while secular, or who was castrated in childhood, and has now repented, and cannot return to a biologically normal state, and in certain respects already behaves as a woman, and spends time in the company of women and feels no sexual urge toward them—it may be that from his own side he is under compulsion. But at the point when he repented, so long as he continues to behave as he had behaved, is he considered to be causing the public to sin?
And similarly regarding a person with same-sex orientation who does not come to sinful thoughts through contact with the opposite sex and does not avoid physical contact with them—does reason suggest that he is punished for putting a stumbling block before the blind?
Example C: someone under compulsion in matters of faith and ideology.
Suppose I made a great effort to acquire the correct views, and I reached a certain conclusion (for example: that one should study Torah at least 7 hours a day, and 15 hours as an ideal starting point; but on the other hand I found secular studies beneficial for Torah study, and leisure culture for some reason seems to me to be a very desirable thing). If I am Haredi or “Hardali” and live among them, and let us assume that I am also a famous kollel head—does a change in my lifestyle, if it causes cooling-off and even abandonment of the yoke of Torah and commandments because of the impression it creates in my students, make me one who causes the public to sin?
Answer
I didn’t really understand the question. If halakhically you are doing a forbidden act, then it is forbidden. Are you asking whether it is possible that a moral value or a value of closeness to God, in your opinion, would override the halakhic value? Maybe. Such situations are possible, as I have written more than once. But I do not see here a general question, rather a collection of questions, each of which has to be discussed separately.
For example, regarding the Amalekites: if you think it is proper to draw him close and convert him, then do not rule in accordance with the halakhic opinion that requires killing him.
The last question is simply about your conduct potentially causing harm to others. That is an entirely different question, and here too the various situations require a lot of discussion. On a basic level, a person should act as he himself thinks, and if that causes harm to others, that is their problem. But it depends on the question of how responsible he is for them (for example, if he is their teacher), how important this is to him, how severe the harm to others is, and so on. And especially if the others live within a mistaken and distorted system (like the Haredi system), it is a big question how much you need to take into account the harms they bring upon themselves.
Discussion on Answer
The first questions are just straightforward halakhic questions. There is a prohibition of “do not place a stumbling block,” and therefore it is forbidden to cause another person to stumble even if you yourself want to do something. When you come to convert, you violate “do not place a stumbling block” with respect to the person converting you, because this is a case of “two sides of the river.” And if you say that a gentile is not prohibited in “do not place a stumbling block,” then there is no problem. Likewise if you are a gentile causing a Jewish woman to sin.
Causing another Jew, who thinks differently from you, to commit what is for him a transgression according to his own view is a topic I have discussed at length. See, for example, Column 503 and the article here: https://www.google.com/url?client=internal-element-cse&cx=f18e4f052adde49eb&q=https://mikyab.net/%25D7%259B%25D7%25AA%25D7%2591%25D7%2599%25D7%259D/%25D7%259E%25D7%2590%25D7%259E%25D7%25A8%25D7%2599%25D7%259D/%25D7%259E%25D7%2597%25D7%2599%25D7%25A8%25D7%2594-%25D7%25A9%25D7%259C-%25D7%2594%25D7%25A1%25D7%2595%25D7%2591%25D7%259C%25D7%25A0%25D7%2595%25D7%25AA&sa=U&ved=2ahUKEwjxgdPMs6n_AhXNTaQEHUjSDZMQFnoECAUQAQ&usg=AOvVaw02iKdh_oN8vjiBpW32ZKVQ
Thank you, Rabbi—very enlightening. I’ll read the article. I hope it will clarify a few concepts for me.
I specifically used the category of Jew versus gentile in the first examples, because it seemed to me that there the situation is more confusing. Since I assume that a gentile is forbidden to cause another gentile, even indirectly, to violate the seven commandments, because both are warned regarding the same commandments. That is not the case with a Jew and a gentile, where the gentile is not warned regarding the same transgression as a Jew, and therefore if the gentile caused the Jew to commit that transgression unknowingly (such as affectionate relations with an unmarried Jewish woman who does not know her obligations, or the conversion of an Amalekite without the religious court knowing that he is an Amalekite), then according to my reasoning I thought it might be possible to say that the Jew enters the category of inadvertent sinner / one under compulsion in such a case (and so too in other topics where the two people are not in the same category, such as a Hebrew slave, a person with same-sex orientation, a deaf person, and so on), and consequently neither of them bears sin. But from your answer it seems that this is not so.
Have a good holiday, and thank you!
Warned / commanded*
Hello Rabbi.
The first questions were from the standpoint of halakhic permission. It could be permitted for me, but forbidden for others.
If theoretically I am an Amalekite and wish to convert, it may be that from my own side I am allowed to convert. But I am causing the Jew who converts me to sin, because he is forbidden to do that, for example.
Or if I am a resident alien / a person with same-sex orientation,
it may be that the prohibitions of forbidden sexual proximity do not apply to me if they do not lead me to sexual arousal, but I am causing the Jewish woman who has physical contact with me to sin, because for her it is forbidden.
I can give an easier example based on the same principle: if I follow a halakhic ruling that permits eating legumes on Passover, but my friend follows a different halakhic ruling because of “the teaching of your mother—do not abandon it,” for example—it may be permitted for me and not forbidden. Am I causing him to sin if I host him in my home and serve him a dish of legumes? (That is, I am talking about a situation where Jewish law gives me permission to act in a certain way but forbids it to my friend. Through my actions, am I causing both of us to sin, or putting both of us into the category of those under compulsion?)