חדש באתר: עוזר בינה מלאכותית המבוסס על כתביו ושיעוריו של הרב מיכאל אברהם

Q&A: Persecuted by the Authorities

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Originally published:
This is an English translation (via GPT-5.4). Read the original Hebrew version.

Persecuted by the Authorities

Question

Is it permissible to fight a law-enforcement agent when I know and am certain (like all my knowledge in life) that he was sent out of hatred and antisemitism—even to the point of killing him in order to save myself from him? For example, I am very dark-skinned black and he is pale white-skinned.

Answer

This is a general and undefined question. What is the nature of the regime? What decision are we talking about? What are the alternative ways to act and to file a complaint?
 

Discussion on Answer

The Persecuted One (2025-08-08)

I gave an example about Blacks and whites in America back then, but that is not necessarily the case, so let me now try another example and be more specific. Suppose I am in a country where the government’s attitude toward Jews is one of abyssal hatred, like in Nazi Germany, and supposedly in the name of the law they can send a government agent to arrest you on all kinds of strange pretexts, while you know that the basis of all this harassment is hatred and antisemitism. Even if they excuse it and dress it up with all sorts of laws no one has ever heard of, and no one will admit that the basis is hatred, that is obvious—but you know the truth, that it is not the law that underlies their harassment but their hatred toward you as a Jew. And I have the power and ability to get rid of that law-enforcement agent by using physical force, and if necessary even to break all his bones, without being discovered, and I have no fear of his superiors—is it permitted to do anything to him as with any pursuer who is pursuing you? Meaning, the fact that he is sure he is just carrying out the law and does not understand that they are using him as a useful idiot and a long stick is not my concern. Even a fetus that endangers its mother is not guilty.

Michi (2025-08-08)

Obviously. What is the question?!

Andrei (2025-08-09)

According to your approach, only considerations of hatred and antisemitism lead to the conclusion that you must be drafted? And if some average secular person thinks that only coalition politics and the prime ministership are what exempt you from the draft, would you agree that he should conscript you by force for three years on his own initiative? To me you seem like the biggest fool of fools.

The Persecuted One (2025-08-10)

As for Andrei’s actual claim: yes, I would agree that according to his approach that is what he should do, but if I have the power, I would kill the one conscripting me, as I explained in the question. Here everything is a matter of “might makes right,” and I am speaking in a case where my force is more violent than his. Is that permitted? And the Rabbi ruled that it is obviously permitted (if I truly reached the conscious conclusion that this is indeed the case, and I examined myself as to what brings me to that conclusion, just as with any other reasonable conclusion I reach in life).

serene3baac7ccac (2025-09-04)

In my opinion, the best thing is simply to sit and study Torah in front of him, and then he will be destroyed without being able to harm you.
That worked throughout history. (That is what did (not) save the Jewish people during two thousand years of exile, and it is certainly what will save you.)

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