According to your last paragraph, there was no halakhic problem burying her in a Jewish section ("from the standpoint of Jewish law, in my opinion there is no real impediment"). So in your view, "they could have waived it for them," just as I, a nobody who understands nothing about Jewish law, assumed from the outset. The fact that the rabbis think differently from you no longer matters in your view, since they are mistaken… And since I also detect in Your Honor a human and sensitive side (I regret the insult I had to convey to you in these words), you take the trouble to add a moral statement about consideration for the family. To sum up: you determine that there is a moral issue and not a halakhic one, and you think it would have been right to act according to the gut feeling that I myself had. Now you surely also understand why I see religious people like you as hope for a shared future with secular Jews. You made me happy.

I do have a human and sensitive side; I’m just not prepared to let it dictate my positions. I try to place it under rational control. Consideration for those who suffer is not an emotional matter but a moral one. The fact that we also have such a feeling does not mean it is based only on feeling. We have moral feeling, but morality is not a matter of emotion.
Unfortunately, in the religious world there is more willingness to place feeling (moral feeling and feeling in general) under control, because there is a habit of thinking rationally and critically according to halakhic principles. In the secular world there is a very troubling identity between morality and feeling (the belly), and that is how all the emotional monsters are born that are destroying every good thing here. That is how absurd moral principles are created out of thin air, straight from the gut.

And that is how the shallowness of moral discourse is created, along with the chasing after slogans and fashions.

I didn’t understand. I showed you that you begin your response by disagreeing with me and then contradict yourself and claim that you actually agree with me (because in your opinion too there isn’t really a halakhic problem here, just as I assumed from the start).
And now in your last two replies you completely ignore my substantive argument against your words and make do with general remarks about the "shallowness of moral discourse"?

If I didn’t explain myself clearly enough, then I’ll say it this way: I have no doubt that you are a sensitive and moral person, just as I have no doubt that on this specific point you hold a confused view entirely lacking in self-awareness. Just read again your first reply to me and the gap between its beginning and its end.

I can only copy your last paragraph:
If I didn’t explain myself clearly enough, then I’ll say it this way: I have no doubt that you are a sensitive and moral person, just as I have no doubt that on this specific point you hold a confused view entirely lacking in self-awareness. Just read again your first reply to me and the gap between its beginning and its end.

My claim was that there is no real moral problem at all in burial in the section for those of doubtful status rather than in a Jewish section. I also argued that as a matter of fact the mother was hurt (because of secular brainwashing. There is no real reason for it). And therefore there is room to take her suffering into account.
However, those whom you criticized believe there is a halakhic problem here, and therefore they are right not to take that into account. True, if we add to this my own position that there is no substantive problem here, then yes, I would take her into account.
But I added that the mother’s baseless hurt and the hysterical discourse around this issue express secular belly-morality (which has penetrated religious liberal circles). They conflate two different claims (and apparently you do too): the obligation not to hurt the mother; the obligation to bury the deceased as a Jew. The first definitely exists (within the limits of Jewish law, of course), and the second is a secular gut feeling.
If you can teach me where the contradiction is here, and perhaps also clarify where I did and did not agree with what you said, I’ll be more grateful than anyone.

I have no intention of teaching you understanding, only of pointing out what I think is simply a mistake.
Since you agreed with me that morally it is preferable not to hurt the mother (I did not go as far as you and call it an "obligation"), all that remains is to clarify whether there is a halakhic problem here, that is, a clash between a moral value and a religious value. You answered me that in your opinion there is not. From here it follows that it makes no difference "what the rabbis think" (whether religious or secular) but what the truth is, and regarding that you expressed yourself explicitly. So there you have it: not only is there a real dilemma here (contrary to your claim), but you yourself provide the solution to it — she should have been buried in the Jewish section.

So far you’ve just repeated what I said. Nice. I’m still waiting for an answer to my questions.

You wrote:

"So why should they give in to her whim of being buried as a Jew when she is not one?! This is bizarre and detached morality"

That is, in your opinion the rabbis’ decision is correct (and is not "bizarre and detached morality").

And then you wrote:

"From the standpoint of Jewish law, in my opinion there is no impediment here"

And you took care to add that in practice they should have taken the family into account (a moral consideration).

Now please explain to me in your great kindness what should have been done in practice (a binary answer, if you please), and whether you thereby find fault in the rabbis’ action.

I explained twice and can only repeat again: in my opinion she can be buried with Jews. In the opinion of the rabbis who objected, she cannot. According to their view there is no reason at all for them to give in to that demand. That is bizarre and detached morality.

I’ll add my meager help as I understand it. You used the term morality in this context to mean that the act is morally right in itself, irrespective of consideration for the family’s feelings. That if a woman died as a soldier (and in the process of conversion, though I heard claims that she had dropped out), then she deserves to be buried with everyone else. About that, Rabbi Michi argued that there is no morality in it.
Afterward Rabbi Michi added another moral consideration (the family was insulted), and on that basis said that perhaps it really would have been appropriate to take that into account, which rests on his view that there is no halakhic problem here.
Finally, Rabbi Michi wrote that in the opinion of the other rabbis there is a genuine halakhic problem here (that is, it is not just conservatism), and therefore what the burial society did is legitimate, because Jewish law overrides the consideration of avoiding unpleasantness.

So in your view the rabbis are both halakhically mistaken and causing moral harm (hurting the family’s feelings), but at the same time their ruling is correct. Why? Because they are acting "according to their own view." In other words, your criticism and mine of their ruling changes nothing. You would rule differently, I would rule differently, but that isn’t what really matters. What matters is that they ruled "according to their own view." I assume that in your opinion, if they had decided that this unfortunate woman should be buried on the moon, you would justify that too — provided, of course, that it was according to their own view.

Yishai, as usual, you invent things out of your own thoughts and insist on attributing them to me. I mean what you said as though I referred to the fact that she died as a soldier and not to the matter of her family.
In general, I suggest you reread the three arguments — mine, Michi’s, and yours — and tell me whether you can fit even a pin between them. You can’t. They are identical. Even so, Michi calls my description "bizarre and detached," "gut feelings," and so on and so forth.
At this point an interesting question arises: does a moral description that is acceptable to me (I am Michi for the sake of the point) become invalid and "bizarre" when it is spoken by someone else? Food for thought.

Doron, an accurate summary. More power to you.
What I called bizarre is the moral criticism of the rabbis. If you share that, then yes, you are bizarre and are basing yourself on gut feelings and the like.

Well, the big problem in your position is really not that it is outrageous morally, and not even that it is absurd theoretically. The problem is that it is skeptical, and skepticism is a really boring approach.

Doron,
I wanted to jump in and try to provide yet another explanation on top of the many explanations Michi, for some reason, bothered to provide you for what he says are his already-clear words.
But your great confidence, which stands in inverse proportion to your reading comprehension, creates a somewhat embarrassing situation for both sides, and I’d rather not get into that…
By the way, despite the moral scandal of it, the Dalai Lama doesn’t consider you part of Tibetan Buddhism. Simply outrageous.

David, I very much appreciate your good will to help and your description of your inner struggle over whether to intervene or not. Your psychological analysis of me also speaks to me. Regarding Tibetan Buddhism, you lost me there. In any case, if you think you can overcome the temptations and still bring a substantive argument I haven’t yet heard, you’re welcome.

I already noted my concerns:
Quite a few arguments have already been said and still it isn’t enough for you. As for Buddhism, for some reason I’m not surprised that I lost you there.
I’ll try anyway in a few words:
The discussion about her burial place is halakhic, and the arguments need to be halakhic technical factual arguments, not sentiments or morality (unless we’re talking about the rare cases in which morality overrides Jewish law).
Michi added that in his opinion, considering the sensitivity of the situation, there is room to permit it (consideration of the sensitive situation does not change the Jewish law! It pushes you to find a leniency that is not obvious). The rabbis who actually dealt with the issue disagreed with him (I assume you allow them to think differently from him), and therefore no matter how sad it is for the family, technically, in their opinion, it is not halakhically possible… Similarly, the Dalai Lama may be very sorry, but you still won’t get voting rights regarding the new Tibetan building in New York.)

P.S. If it bothers you that consideration for their feelings does not instantly erase the doctrine most precious to them all (the doctrine from which the whole unnecessary business of burial arose in the first place), then perhaps you are among those who think feelings and individual rights have the power to dictate facts (like transgender people), and the whole discussion is pointless from the outset…

I’m glad you overcame your inner struggle and managed after all to provide a substantive answer. What you were less successful at, in my opinion, is understanding Michi’s answer, which states that the rabbis were halakhically mistaken ("from the standpoint of Jewish law, in my opinion there is no real impediment") and apparently you did not manage to understand how their mistake changes the whole picture. For if the religious-halakhic consideration falls away, all that remains is the question of consideration for the family’s feelings (which is a purely moral question, not a halakhic one!). To everyone’s surprise, Michi also thinks sensitivity should be shown on that issue — that is, he thinks like me — so you would expect him to find fault in those rabbis’ ruling. That did not happen. Instead he claims that I hold a moral position that is "bizarre and detached" (even though it is identical to his own…).
I hope this time you’ll read more carefully what was written.

Read again one of Michi’s countless explanations.
Maybe you simply weren’t familiar with the concept of a dispute. So here goes: Michi thinks A, those rabbis think B. Michi argues that they have every right not to be taken captive by "bizarre and detached" morality and to act in accordance with their halakhic understanding (B). Of course, he would have been happy if they had consulted him, in which case he would have explained to them in no uncertain terms that not A but B.
Got it?

Doron,
I’ll quote your words and then decide for yourself who is right. "Needless to say, there is a conflict between this ruling and natural morality (*as understood by* her family and many others)." That is, your moral claim was not that the family was insulted, but that they have an independent moral claim here. As you wrote, the moral claim is from the perspective of how people understand it. True, I also need to correct one detail (but not the main point): the claim was that she was murdered as a Jew, not that she was a soldier. But the essential point is that there is a moral argument here that because she was murdered because they murdered Jews, therefore she too is Jewish. https://news.walla.co.il/item/3622311 That is how it seems from here, and that is the claim in whose name you spoke. For you spoke about the moral claim of her family and of many others.
That is what Rabbi Michi was mainly addressing in his answer.
Besides, it seems you do not accept the position that the judgment of whether an act is moral or not is not determined according to the other person’s positions. On that it seems you and Rabbi Michi disagree.
(By the way, I really am waiting for a response on the Yom Kippur column.)

David,
I see that you’re working on your character traits and slowly, slowly managing to move in the direction of being substantive. You’re not there yet, but where penitents stand…
As for "dispute" (in life generally, and even in Jewish law itself), it seems you have a methodological problem very similar to the one Michi displays in this discussion — namely the hidden assumption that there is no objective truth and no more or less successful ways of approaching it. Despite your failed assumption, reality and Jewish law apparently work differently. Michi actually claimed — only he didn’t understand his own claim… — that if those rabbis had made more of an effort (if they had been more open and sensitive, if they had not been bound by the fossilized religious establishment, etc.), they too could have reached his own conclusion — the one closer to objective truth. In such a situation they would have understood that the dispute had left the halakhic realm and settled in the moral arena. I would add here a few more methodological remarks about the connection between consistency and truth and skepticism, and about what I think is Michi’s basic fallacy on this matter, but as stated you are still in the process of repentance and I have no wish to burden you with all these troubles.

Yishai,
You continue to treat the text as though it were your own. That may be a very Jewish approach, but it does not contribute to attempts to get closer to reality.
I did not claim that the murdered woman was properly Jewish according to Jewish law. I dealt solely with the question of her burial place (in a Jewish section or not).
In your second remark you touched on a half-truth: the principle of consistency ("according to their own view") is an a priori necessity for every moral decision, but unlike Michi I think it is not sufficient. Whoever thinks it is sufficient empties morality of all content and in effect leads himself to an irrational position, to "boring" skepticism.
As for the Yom Kippur column… come on. You have a habit of trolling me on various topics, putting words in my mouth (even now), and when I do formulate a response for you, you disappear and don’t reply. You talk to me about Yom Kippur and I don’t remember what I did yesterday.

I was right in my concerns when I didn’t want to get into this discussion.
Eliezer Yudkowsky once wrote a wonderful post called "The Grey Fallacy" — I recommend it to you.
In any case, the fact that there is objective truth certainly doesn’t mean it’s with you.
In any case, you completely missed the point, perhaps out of fear of being a skeptical postmodernist. In your view, are democracy, pluralism, and the like totally passé?
It is also important to note that in opinions about facts you are not willing to give any weight to the other person’s opinion, but feelings have a place of honor אצלך and are preferable to factual claims..
By the way, thinking that Michi is post-positivism is a great joke, so thank you for that.

Maybe if I phrase it this way, you’ll understand:
The rabbis were mistaken (I assume you agree they are allowed to be mistaken). The question now is: because they were mistaken, did they commit a moral wrong by not considering the feelings?
Because after all, if they were right, they behaved correctly… and how do you expect them to know they are mistaken?
Human beings are often confidently mistaken. Maybe you and Michi and I are confidently mistaken right now (you must agree to at least some measure of skepticism).

In your first response you continue the glorious tradition of ad hominem to which you have bound yourself, seasoning it with all kinds of irrelevant guesses about "democracy" and "pluralism" that supposedly I oppose, and more of the same.
By the way, what is "post-positivism"..?
As for your second response: if you had read my words carefully already in the question I raised to Michi at the start — which you still haven’t bothered to do — you would have seen that I left open the possibility that the rabbis were halakhically correct. If that had been the case, I probably would not have held it against them, as I explicitly said there ("who is the villain here?").
I’d be happy to answer you also on the question of how I expect them to know they are mistaken, but you’re not there yet. You’re still arguing with a straw man in your head (though from your last reply I do see that something new is beginning to glimmer there… compare its content to your first reply to me). To sum up: if you’re interested in a critical, open, and fair discussion without psychological descriptions of your fellow or of yourself, the door is still open. If not, off you go to Yudkowsky.

This argument keeps repeating itself and will never end. It seems to me that the dispute is about a case like the following:
Reuven takes his weapon and runs to Nir Oz to fight the terrorists. He sees from afar a man with a keffiyeh aiming a weapon at a group of people and immediately shoots him under the law of a pursuer. A few minutes later it turns out that it was one of our own, and the people were Gazan civilians who had come after the terrorists to loot.
Doron claims that there is no one who disagrees that Reuven is a despicable murderer. David and I argue that absolutely not. He erred in understanding reality and the result is tragic, but he is not an immoral person. On the contrary.
That’s all, or, as the late Winnetou of blessed memory used to say: Howgh.

The example you gave serves me well because it exposes the connection between the moral skepticism (and really the epistemic skepticism) that you hold here and an important, and in my opinion even necessary, component in every moral position: common sense. Common sense also deals with contents, with reality itself, and not only with the formal procedures that eventually lead to skepticism as well. In your example you emphasized the common denominator between the two cases (the burial and the mistaken killing of a Jewish soldier), that is, you emphasized the procedure, but for now ignored reality. A halakhic interpretation carried out from the armchair of the interpreter/halakhic decisor while books are laid out before him, he is expert in the rules of Jewish law and understands the possible range of play within it, and also understands that he is dealing with fundamental social questions — is not the same as a split-second decision in the reality of a battlefield (especially if the soldier standing before him, for some reason, bothered to wear a keffiyeh, as in your example…). Another difference has to do with our familiarity with the corrupt religious establishment (about which you yourself wrote at length in the past) and with the low intellectual integrity that characterizes its representatives. I, apparently unlike you, see the capacity for continual self-criticism, carried on the back of intellectual honesty, as a necessary condition for moral decision-making.
And I haven’t even said anything yet about the principle of interpretive charity and what I think is your mistaken view of it (see my comment on the column that appeared long ago on this topic).

A: Sorry for the mockery. It’s a shame I entered the discussion in the first place, and if I already entered, I should at least have stayed substantive. I was wrong. It isn’t ad hominem. I never meant for the mockery to form part of the arguments, and as you noted, in my first response there were no arguments at all (except for a hint at one).
B: There were no guesses, only questions — very relevant ones when it seems that you are not exactly thrilled about a person’s right to act according to his own understanding even if it differs from yours or mine or Michi’s.
C: You again "guess" that I didn’t read, when the simple truth is that regardless of what you did or did not argue in your first response, the later responses under discussion (truthfully not only the later ones, but never mind for now) attribute decisive weight to the fact that the rabbis are mistaken, and that is what I was responding to.
D: One can read that you often psychoanalyze and belittle the various people arguing in the discussion, and considerable arrogance is apparent. That is what pushed me to respond as I did, and my recommendation is: adorn yourself first.
To sum up:
I am very interested in a critical, open, and fair discussion. I am less interested in this discussion — which is leading nowhere, or as Ehud Barak said, "there is no partner."
Sorry for everything; safe travels.

He who confesses and forsakes obtains mercy.
With that said, I don’t know where you saw arrogance in me, I don’t know why you think I’m "not thrilled" about the right of the other person to express his opinion (and therefore also be open to criticism), and I certainly don’t understand why you think I "often engage in psychological analyses" when all the time I’m trying to get to the principled, substantive philosophical argument.
"The rabbis are mistaken" is the working assumption of this entire discussion — of Michi’s and therefore also of mine. It may be that both of us are mistaken, and then the discussion will change. In any case, I explained what the conditions are under which it makes sense to have a moral discussion of an error (and as a result to render judgment), and when it does not.
All the best.

Doron,
You are latching onto a side issue instead of addressing the main point. What I said is very simple. Let’s use different terminology. Rabbi Michi, in the opening, addressed the question whether there is a moral problem here in essence, as arises from the arguments of Alina’s family and the other people discussing the issue (and therefore also it sounds like that is what you are talking about), whereas in the end he addressed the question whether there is a moral problem here in the case.
The distinction between essence and accident, as far as I know, comes from the ancient Arab philosophers such as Ibn Rushd and his colleagues. I hope you are familiar with the terms.

I don’t understand your examples. I really tried. I’ll allow myself to quote what I answered Michi above; this is the essence of my position, and I have no other.

"Michi’s answer, which states that the rabbis were halakhically mistaken (\"from the standpoint of Jewish law, in my opinion there is no real impediment\")… changes the whole picture. For if the religious-halakhic consideration falls away, all that remains is the question of consideration for the family’s feelings (which is a purely moral question, not a halakhic one!). To everyone’s surprise, Michi also thinks that sensitivity should be shown on this matter — that is, he thinks like me [that the deceased should be buried in a Jewish section] — and so you would expect him to find fault in those rabbis’ ruling. That did not happen. Instead he claims that I hold a moral position that is \"bizarre and detached\" (even though it is identical to his own…)."

Doron,
I indeed disagree with you about the judgment in this case, but I also probably don’t really identify with Rabbi Michi either; I’m somewhere in the middle. But that is not what I came to discuss.
All I came to say was one very simple thing. You argued that Rabbi Michi contradicted himself in his first answer. To that I say that at the beginning of the answer he was talking about the question whether there is a moral problem here in essence, and at the end he was talking about the reality that perhaps there is a moral problem here in the case. It seems you are insisting on not understanding.

I think I finally understood what you meant by the terms essence and accident. You probably mean the distinction between the principled discussion and the discussion of the specific case. But all that changes nothing. I asked only about the specific case, and here, as stated, Michi agreed with everything I said and then made a strange U-turn and condemned my "bizarre and detached" morality (which he too holds).

Indeed, it’s good that you understood. That was regarding the stage of addressing the question whether there is a moral conflict here.
I’ll just say here where I think you are mistaken regarding judgment, and then I’ll probably leave the discussion for the near future.
If we take, for example, an engineer who makes an error in his calculations and causes the Versailles disaster, it may be that the engineer really is morally at fault. In what case? In a case where he got a result so absurd (relative to the standards of the profession) that he should have checked himself again. And because he didn’t do that, there is also a moral problem here. That is, only in a case where the halakhic ruling truly contradicts common sense (not in terms of the moral criterion but the halakhic one) can one come to them with complaints. But on this Rabbi Michi says that their ruling is within the bounds of reason and therefore is legitimate. And therefore they are supposed to conduct themselves accordingly. (Maybe this will be easier to understand through psychology: even if in truth there is only one psychological approach that should be practiced, one can still tolerate other psychological approaches, while there are some that are simply beyond the pale.)

I am definitely willing to soften my position, and if necessary to retract it completely, if I am persuaded that the rabbis’ mistake was within the bounds of reason. I have not yet been persuaded. I have already noted several reasons for that.
I suspect — and this really is only a suspicion — that what happened there was not far from what happened with the female spotters in Gaza. According to what is being published today (and one must wait for the commission of inquiry to verify it), for many long months these girls warned their commanders about suspicious activity beyond the fence, and the commanders ignored them, dismissed them, and there was even one who told one of them that if she kept it up she would be court-martialed.
The common denominator: a clique into which arrogance seeped, intellectual laziness, unwillingness for self-criticism, a political mechanism tying hands, and perhaps a bit of chauvinism as well.
From an "epistemic" standpoint, these are among the characteristics of the skeptical position that I attacked.

https://www.inn.co.il/news/620287