Q&A: Hamas and the Authority of the Tannaim
Hamas and the Authority of the Tannaim
Question
Hello Michi,
A. As every beginner in the study hall knows, one may not move away from anything ruled in the Talmud. My question is: what actually obligates us to obey the words of the Tannaim and Amoraim? “Do not veer aside”? Why, just because they said various laws—for example, the rabbinic enactment to recite a blessing before eating—is there an obligation to listen to them? In the end, they too were born of woman… Hope I made myself clear.
B. At the beginning of the war, Hamas atrocity videos were published, and, God forbid, I watched them. Is there any halakhic or moral problem with that? And what is it?
C. On that same topic (roughly), what is the difference between the four death penalties of the religious court that the Hebrew Bible commands—for example, to stone a Sabbath desecrator—and what Hamas did? Is there not something cruel in taking a person’s life just because he went out from his house to the public domain with a tissue?
Answer
- I’ve written about this more than once. See, for example, here: https://mikyab.net/%D7%A9%D7%95%D7%AA/%D7%A1%D7%9E%D7%9B%D7%95%D7%AA-%D7%94%D7%AA%D7%9C%D7%9E%D7%95%D7%93-4/
- I don’t see such a problem.
- A foolish question, pardon me (and I’m trying here to use gentle words). The difference is heaven and earth. In Jewish law, this is a theoretical law that was not implemented in practice (either not at all, or at most very rarely), whereas here they do it in practice, and moreover without even having such a “law.” In Jewish law there is execution of the offender, but no rape, abuse, and kidnappings—and certainly not of children. In Jewish law there are witnesses, deliberate action and intent, prior warning, and it is required that the defendant acknowledge the warning, plus many other conditions that make this a declarative law that is not really carried out—unlike Hamas. In Jewish law we are talking about someone who committed a specific transgression and all the conditions were fulfilled in his case (and he knew in advance that he was subjecting himself to the death penalty), whereas with Hamas we are talking about murder and abuse of a person (a Jew/Israeli) simply because he is such a person. And finally, even if there were no difference, one still has to kill them. Not because they are cruel or guilty, but in order to defend ourselves and also to eradicate evil.
Discussion on Answer
I don’t have Facebook and can’t see it. What did you see there?
Now I’ve seen it (on the phone it does open). This is of course nonsense. Some of the cases are the killing of enemies and not punishment (as one of the commenters there wrote, the State of Israel has killed a thousand times more Palestinians than Judaism has in all its history). Another part is punishment, but not according to Jewish law. A Sanhedrin that executed, he doesn’t bring there. When you total up all those cases over the entire period, you’ll see these are very few cases. And beyond that, all my other distinctions still stand.
And of course his opening, from the words of Rabbi Yehuda Halevi, that throughout most of the period we had no sovereignty—logically that is true, but it is irrelevant. After all, the Palestinians also do not have a sovereign state, and that does not in the least stop them from murdering thousands of their own people and people from other nations. What room is there for comparison here at all?
Honorable Rabbi, see here that this is not accurate:
https://www.facebook.com/share/p/sBt2pd7GxuusSHVi/?mibextid=xfxF2i