The Sceptic Blog

It is a recurring current theme of politicians and social commentators that modern Britain is seriously deficient in the matter of respect.  So much so that “respect” is increasingly used as a political tag designed to attract automatic approval and has in at least one case been incorporated into the title of a political movement.
But while everyone can agree that respect, like apple pie and motherhood, is a good thing, unlike apple pie and motherhood it is difficult or impossible to define what is meant by respect; and one suspects that it means very different things to different people, and is often used as a conveniently empty label to attach to a person’s individual desiderata.
The Torah is very strong on manners generally.  The rabbis even ventured the radical Talmudic assertion derech eretz kodmo laTorah which can be roughly rendered into English as good behaviour precedes, and is a prerequisite of, Torah observance.  Radical, because it appears to suggest not merely that good behaviour between humans is a crucial part of the Torah – a concept with which we are all familiar – but actually that good behaviour is a value which exists outside and independent of the Torah.  Which would be radical indeed, and even blasphemous, were it not for the other rabbinic assertion histakel b’oraisoh u’boro olmo – that God looked into the Torah and created the world.  In other words, the world was created to reflect and implement Torah values, rather than the Torah being created to make sense of the world.  Derech eretz kodmo laTorah is therefore an assertion that the requirements of derech eretz belong in some ineffable way to that part of the Torah which exists independently of the world, and is not merely a terrestrial detail provided to further implementation of the underlying Torah values.
The Torah does not offer us anywhere a compendious definition of derech eretz.  But it does offer sufficient instances and examples for us to be able to construct a workable set of guidelines.
One example occurs in this week’s parashah.  A person who finds that he has a tzora’as patch on the walls of his or her house, is required to send for a Cohen to pronounce whether it is or is not actually tzora’as.  And the Torah prescribes the words to be used in asking the Cohen – “k’nega niro li baboyis” (“there is something on my house that appears to me like nega tzora’as”) (Vayikro 14:35).  Rashi brings the Talmudic explanation that the owner of the house may be more of an expert than the Cohen in the appearance of tzora’as – but nevertheless out of derech eretz he or she is to say to the Cohen no more than “I think I may have a problem – what do you think?”.  The Cohen may have to ask the house owner for expert guidance on the matter, but in this way the decencies are preserved and the separate roles of each, Cohen and expert, are acknowledged.
And that is a major key to a practical meaning of respect, although doubtless there are other important facets of it too.  Respect is, at least in part, about acknowledging other peoples’ roles, and not trying to usurp them.  The Pirkei Ovos remind us that everyone has a unique task to perform, even if not everybody’s hour has yet arrived, so to speak.  The Chofetz Chayim reminds us that in asking for peace we mention the peace of the heavens (oseh sholom bimromov …) not because the heavens are a field of inactivity but because each celestial body appears to know and rigidly stick to its allotted path, even if it passes within inches of another’s.
There is much wrong with today’s society, and also much right.  Those who are continually searching for ways of improving the nation’s general well-being are certainly right to emphasise the importance of respect in so far as it amounts to an appreciation by each person of everybody else’s unique roles: each person should recognise his or her own limitations as well as his or her own abilities, so that we can draw on others’ potentials to reflect our own limitations.

The recent incident in which a comedian performing at a Jewish charity event gave offence by a particularly tasteless routine prompts me to offer a few thoughts about the Torah’s attitude towards humour in general.
Maimonides declares that laughter or merriment (s’chok) will have no place in the world to come (Hilchos Teshuvah 8:2).  But its inhabitants will feel a contentment described by some of the prophets as happiness (simchah).
And yet there is no general sense in Jewish thought that laughter is in itself evil.  Indeed, in a number of places in aggadic literature God is metaphorically depicted as laughing.
Koheles, typically, reveals the ambivalence of the Torah towards humour.  In one place laughter (s’chok) and even pleasure (simchah) are completely dismissed as futile (2:2).  Later it is asserted that there is a time for laughter (3:4).  And later still great emphasis is put on the positive effects of joy – 8:passim).
There are thousands of Biblical and rabbinic statements regarding different kinds of emotion to which humour may contribute or be relevant, and it would be more than a lifetime’s work to construct a completely balanced view of the Torah’s attitude to these.  What is clear is that humour, levity and light-heartedness have an approved place, but they are also associated with a number of dangers (some kinds in particular – most notably flippancy or scoffing (leitzonus)).
The best overview that I have ever found of the various distinctions comes from a Christian theologian, C S Lewis.  In The Screwtape Letters he writes a series of letters of instruction purporting to come from a senior devil to a relative novice, instructing him in how to lead human beings away from the paths of virtue.  His passage on joy and humour is so powerful and brilliant an exposition of what I believe to be the Torah attitude on the subject that I think it worth quoting here at considerable length (although not quite in full).
“I divide the causes of human laughter into Joy, Fun, the Joke Proper, and Flippancy.  You will see the first among friends and lovers reunited on the eve of a holiday.  Among adults some pretext in the way of Jokes is usually provided, but the facility with which the smallest witticisms produce laughter at such a time shows that they are not the real cause.  What the real cause is we do not know.  Something like it is expressed in much of that detestable art which the humans call Music, and something like it occurs in Heaven – a meaningless acceleration in the rhythm of celestial experience, quite opaque to us.  Laughter of this kind does us no good and should always be discouraged. …
“Fun is closely related to Joy – a sort of emotional froth arising from the play instinct.  It is of very little use to us.  It can sometimes be used, of course, to divert humans from something else which [God] would like them to be feeling or doing: but in itself it has wholly undesirable tendencies; it promotes charity, courage, contentment, and many other evils.
“The Joke Proper, which turns on sudden perception of incongruity, is a much more promising field.  …  The real use of Jokes or Humour is in quite a different direction, and it is specially promising among the English who take their ‘sense of humour’ so seriously that a deficiency in this sense is almost the only deficiency at which they feel shame.  Humour is for them the all-consoling and (mark this) the all-excusing, grace of life.  Hence it is invaluable as a means of destroying shame.  If a man simply lets others pay for him, he is ‘mean’; if he boasts of it in a jocular manner and twits his fellows with having been scored off, he is no longer ‘mean’ but a comical fellow.  Mere cowardice is shameful; cowardice boasted of with humorous exaggerations and grotesque gestures can be passed off as funny.  Cruelty is shameful – unless the cruel man can represent it as a practical joke.  A thousand bawdy, or even blasphemous, jokes do not help towards a man’s damnation so much as his discovery that almost anything he wants to do can be done, not only without the disapproval but with the admiration of his fellows, if only it can get itself treated as a Joke. …
“But Flippancy is best of all. … If prolonged, the habit of Flippancy builds up around a man the finest armour-plating against [God] that I know, and it is quite free from the dangers inherent in the other sources of laughter.  It is a thousand miles away from joy: it deadens, instead of sharpening, the intellect; and it excites no affection between those who practice it.”

We sometimes tell the children that on seder night we are celebrating being free.  That is not quite true.  In fact, we are commemorating three different things in three different ways: the fact that we were slaves, the process of becoming free and the fact that we became free.
The maror commemorates our slavery.  The matzoh commemorates the process of becoming free, leaving Mitzrayim too fast to stop to let the dough rise.  And the mitzvoh of haseivoh – leaning – commemorates being free.
As we say at the start of the seder (ho lachmoh anyo), although the slavery of mitzrayim is past, in each generation there are other things to which we become enslaved.  Sometimes it is a physical slavery forced on us, as Pharaoh did.  Sometimes it is a seductive culture to which we enslave ourselves, with even greater spiritual danger than the physical slavery (tze ul’mad – Pharaoh only threatened the males while Lovon threatened everybody).  We need to work out each year whether we are facing a Pharaoh-kind of slavery or a Lovon-kind of slavery: coercion from without or temptation from within.  As HaRav Lord Jakobovitz z’tzl used to put it, some generations have to learn to survive adversity, our generation’s principal challenge is to learn to survive relative prosperity.
Of these three mitzvos of the seder, the one which we perform most closely to the mitzvoh as performed in Pesach Mitzrayim, the mitzvoh which everybody agrees is mid’oraisoh bizman hazeh – Biblically required even when we do not have the Temple – is matzoh, which commemorates the process of becoming free.  It commemorates the fact that while we could have strolled leisurely away from Egypt, confident in God’s protection from our enemies, we rushed out without time for the dough to rise, desperate to leave behind a culture of greed and materialism and to put ourselves in a simplistic and trusting way (chesed n’urayich) under the protection of God in an environment of material difficulty but spiritual purity.  That is the essence of the seder, reminding ourselves that what the Jewish people have achieved once we can achieve again, and that we can free ourselves from all those influences and habits which are contrary to Torah values.
And all the time that we are making that commemoration, we have the message of the four/five cups confronting us on the table.  The Talmud records a dispute over whether we should drink four or five cups.  The long-accepted custom is to drink four but to acknowledge the other opinion by having a fifth cup, Elijah’s, on the table.  Why not ordain five cups, on the grounds that by drinking five cups we would certainly satisfy both opinions?  Because the cups commemorate the expressions of redemption used in the Torah: the fifth expression, “and I will bring you in” is a promise yet to be fulfilled, with the establishment of the third Temple.  When we have completed the process of becoming free from today’s slavery, and the third Temple is up and functioning, then we will be able to drink the fifth cup of redemption together and look back upon all kinds of spiritual and physical slavery as things of the past.
I wish everyone a happy and liberating yom tov.

A man who spent time in prison having been convicted of financial wrong-doing is to provide money and other assistance for a major new communal project.
A number of Torah concepts come immediately to mind:
(1)    Mitzvoh haboh ba’aveiroh eino mitzvoh.  Robin Hoodism is contrary to the Torah.  Money that is acquired wrongly does not become purged by being given to a good cause.  Indeed, if I have reason to believe that money has been dishonestly acquired I may not receive it, whether for my own use or for anyone else’s.
(2)    Hatovel v’sheretz beyodo.  To build a communal institution designed to spread Torah values using money acquired by their breach is like, in the symbolism of the Talmud, someone who goes to the mikveh while clutching a source of tumoh in his hand.  Better not to build than to build with tainted money.
(3)    Teshuvoh.  Any criminal can repent and become rehabilitated.  But it requires not mere regret and good intentions, but an active attempt to compensate for the harm done.  In the case of gezel min horabim – theft from a class not all of whose members can be ascertained – it is very difficult to make any meaningful reparation.  But there are ways that one could try.  Giving to a parochial and sectarian institution, having caused monetary loss to members of the wider community, is clearly insufficient.
(4)    Ma’aris ho’ayin.  We must be seen to act properly, as well as acting properly.  The criminal in question may have tried to make effective reparation to the wider community.  But unless his attempts are made as public as his involvement in the communal enterprise, the latter will be tainted by the appearance of profiting from the loss caused to the wider public.
(5)    Chillul hashem.  Anything which makes it appear that the Jewish community is prepared to honour and to be lead by dishonest people brings discredit on the name of God, to glorify which is our only communal responsibility.

The last post, Passive Smoking, attracted some interesting questions and comments (by email), including one asking whether the fact that the Pnei Yehoshuah thought that smoking was good for you suggests something about rabbinic infallibility, or rather the lack of it.
The position in Torah thought about the status of rabbinic pronouncements is clear in principle, although not always easy to apply in practice.  The essence of the approach is to determine which of many possible functions a particular rabbi is performing when he speaks or writes.
At one extreme, the rabbis may expound the meaning of the written Torah or the latest developments of the oral Torah (in accordance with the exegetical principles given to Moshe Rabbeinu on Har Sinai) or enact decrees to reflect the needs of their time.  We have an express biblical obligation to observe the Torah in accordance with the rabbis’ pronouncements and decrees which are therefore, if not exactly infallible, certainly beyond challenge (whether by reference to objective accuracy or to any other matter).
So, for example, the Talmud records that when the rabbis made an objective error in calculating the dates of Yom Tov and the angels objected to God, He told them not to interfere (and there are other similar Talmudic passages).  Similarly, until the Cohen pronounces that a house is affected by tzoraas, it is not affected and vessels may be removed from it, but once the pronouncement is made any remaining vessels become affected: illogical, given that the nature of the tzoraas has not changed during the process, but explicable by reference to the power that the Torah gives to the pronouncements and decisions of the rabbis (originally, the Cohanim).
At the other extreme, the rabbis sometimes speak or write merely to record or transmit information.  If the information is wrong, either because the rabbi in question was supplied with deficient data or because his techniques of observation or calculation were limited or faulty, there is nothing heretical about disregarding the information when its deficiencies become apparent.  So, for example, early parts of the Mishneh Torah record certain astronomical information which has been shown by later techniques of observation to be erroneous: the Rambam thought it would be helpful to record the latest scientific understanding of these matters in the Mishneh Torah, but that does not give them any kind of Torah authority or infallibility.
Between these two extremes is an important grey area.  In particular, where the rabbis give halachic decisions which are expressly based on stated information, the decision will be open to challenge if it is shown that the information is flawed.  (See, in this connection, Rav Moshe Feinstein’s introduction to the Igros Moshe, where he explains why he gives his reasoning in full in each decision.)  In the case mentioned in the last issue, the Pnei Yehoshuah gave a decision about smoking on Yom Tov expressly based on the best medical evidence available to him at the time as to the beneficial effects on the digestive system of smoking.  Now that the medical evidence has changed, there is nothing heretical in disregarding the Pnei Yehoshuah’s psak halochoh and asking the rabbis of today to start again to determine the halochoh based on the present state of medical evidence; indeed, any other approach would be to ascribe to factual statements of the rabbis an infallibility and authority that could itself be seen as heretical.

Last night the House of Commons voted to ban smoking in public places including all pubs, clubs and restaurants.  In effect, while smoking tobacco remains lawful in the United Kingdom, we are moving towards a position in which to expose others to what it is known as passive smoking is unlawful.
The rabbis once thought that smoking was good for you (Pnei Yehoshua Shabbos 39b).  Even since everyone has known that it is harmful, the rabbis have consistently refused, for sound reasons, to declare a general prohibition against smoking by those already addicted (Igros Moshe Yoreh Deoh 2:49 and Choshen Mishpot 2:76), although they have consistently decalred it forbidden to begin to acquire the habit.
The halachic line on passive smoking is, in the state of medical evidence available today, absolutely clear.  Even if there remains some room for a person to choose to continue to expose himself or herself to the certain harm that results from smoking, there are no possible grounds on which I can choose to inflict harm on someone else.  Since even in small measures there is actual and quantifiable harm caused by inhaling tobacco smoke, it is forbidden to expose a non-smoker to smoke.
At least one rosh yeshivah of world-wide fame moved several years ago to ban smoking from his beis midrash (Harav Moshe Sternbuch, Teshuvos v’Hanhagos 1:159).
If in any community smoking is openly tolerated, and youngsters are permitted or even encouraged to acquire the habit, one can be certain by this that the community in question does not conduct itself entirely in accordance with the laws and principles of the Torah, whatever other appearances may be to the contrary and whatever other merits and virtues the commnunity may have.

The present discussions about Iran’s nuclear ambitions are just the latest aspect of a continuous stream of international tension over the development of particular military technologies.  There is a generally shared international concern about the proliferation of weapons of various kinds, including chemical, biological and nuclear technology.  But one factor that complicates that concern is the fact that every developed country profits considerably by providing other countries, and particularly less developed countries, with weapons and military equipment of every kind.  The international arms trade is so vibrant and profitable that it may appear to the politicians of many countries that they have as much to lose economically by its reduction as they have to gain in other terms.  That may be less true of nuclear weaponry, where the potential losses are so cataclysmic, but it is certainly true of conventional weaponry.
With this in mind, a few thoughts about the Torah view of the international arms trade.
It is clear halochoh that it is forbidden to sell weapons of any description to anyone who is likely to use them to attack others.  It is irrelevant for this purpose whether the assailants, or their potential victims, are Jewish or non-Jewish.  The halochoh is of universal application in both respects.
The prohibition extends beyond the sale of actual weaponry, and is expressly applied to the sale of articles designed to be used in warfare for the restraint of prisoners or other purposes, to the sale of raw materials which are exclusively suitable for military purposes, to the provision of services in repairing or improving weapons and to the provision of expert advice in relation to munitions.
There are only three classes of exception or qualification to this very general prohibition.
First, there is a generally (although not universally) accepted exception in the case of articles which are exclusively of defensive use; and the exception may include articles which are primarily defensive but which could be used, perhaps in a last resort, also for aggression.
Secondly, the prohibition on the sale of materials applies only to those relatively few instances of materials that are exclusively applied to military purposes: so, for example, the Gemoro concludes that to sell ordinary metals to people who might use them for military purposes is permissible, but to sell a kind of Indian iron that is in practice acquired exclusively for military purposes is forbidden.  As to the sale of multi-purpose raw materials in circumstances that suggest a military purpose behind the purchase, this will be a question of fact and degree.
Thirdly, it is expressly permitted to supply weaponry to an actual or potential protector.
As is so often the case, one can more easily isolate these relatively simple halachic principles than one can apply them with certainty to any particular case.  For the present, a few thoughts at a general level-
(1)    It can be difficult to determine whether something is primarily aggressive or primarily defensive.

(2)    For example, the United Kingdom possesses what it describes as a nuclear deterrent.  The deterrent is composed of munitions which are designed entirely for aggressive purposes.  But the argument for describing them as a defence is that there is no actual defence against a nuclear attack, except for the deterrent effect produced by a potential aggressor’s knowledge that a potential victim has the capability of a nuclear response.

(3)    To take another example, anti-aircraft weaponry might legitimately be sold to a sovereign state on the grounds that in normal military circumstances it is exclusively a defence.  But to sell the same item to mercenaries who do not have a legitimate defence-role in respect of any particular territory would enable them, and would seem likely to be intended to enable them, to commit an act of aggression in someone else’s territory.

(4)    The sale of materials that are particularly suitable for nuclear research or development would not come under the prohibition where there is a reasonable likelihood of their being intended for use in relation to nuclear power for civil purposes.

(5)    The role of actual or potential protector is necessarily a vague one.  The Rabbis suggest that the existence of a formal covenant of protection is significant in this respect.  Today, NATO would be an example of a group of nations who have entered into a formal defensive alliance and who thereby become entitled to supply each other with munitions and other military equipment, provided that it is of a kind and in a quantity which is consistent with use for the common defence.  And the United Nations appears to have the status of a universal protector, so that the provision of military services or equipment to forces operating under the authority of the United Nations would be likely to satisfy the criteria of protection.

This morning the American State of California executed a murderer. This is a comparatively rare event in America, and in most Western countries the death penalty is no longer used at all.  Around the world 122 countries have either renounced the death penalty or allowed it to become de facto obsolete: and the list of countries abandoning the death penalty grows at an average of 3 each year.  But in 74 countries and territories around the world the death penalty is used, with varying degrees of frequency: in 2004, around the world 3,797 people were executed and another 7,395 sentenced to death.  97% of the executions took place in China, Iran, Viet Nam and the United States of America.  Most countries use either hanging, shooting, electrocution or lethal injection.  But Saudi Arabia and Iraq use beheading and Afghanistan and Iran use stoning.  (The figures in this paragraph were taken from the website of Amnesty International – I have not attempted to verify them.)

There is a distinct ambivalence in the Jewish approach to the death penalty.  On the one hand, our religious and natural principles of kindness and humanity cause us to recoil in horror from the idea of deliberate and cold-blooded killing of a human being, however guilty.  On the other hand, we cannot forget that the Torah prescribes the death penalty for certain crimes, and that while this is not administered at a time when there is no Sanhedrin in the Temple precincts (Rambam, Hilchos Sanhedrin 14:13), it remains as much a part of Torah thought as any other mitzvah which is in temporary abeyance during the absence of the Temple and its attendant institutions.

It is clear that the same ambivalence is not only encountered but encouraged during times when the Sanhedrin is in place and the death penalty administered in accordance with Torah law.  The Rabbis describe the degree of reluctance with which the dayonim approach the application of the death penalty, and condemn as “bloodthirsty” the hypothetical court that passes the death sentence as often as once in each seven years (Rambam, Hilchos Sanhedrin 14:10) (the Talmud records other opinions varying this period).  And the halochoh of the imposition and administration of the death penalty shows many details designed to ensure not only that it is reserved for cases in which there can be no doubt as to guilt (and it is a staggering fact, again according to Amnesty International, that since 1973, 122 prisoners have been released in the USA after evidence emerged of their innocence of the crimes for which they were sentenced to death) but also that it is administered in as humane a way as possible.  In particular, the modern pharmaceutical methods of ensuring insensibility prior to the act of killing find their counterpart in the halochoh (Rambam, Hilchos Sanhedrin 13:2) and would, were the death penalty reintroduced today with the re-establishment of the Sanhedrin, be one aspect of the halochoh that certainly both could and would be developed to embrace modern technological improvements.  And the halochoh requires that once the judicial process is entirely concluded beyond all reasonable chance of reopening, administration of the death penalty is not delayed even by a single day, so as not to prolong the convict’s period of suffering waiting to die (Rambam, Hilchos Sanhedrin 12:4).

Incidentally, one of the most contentious aspects of the debate about whether one can ever be sufficiently sure of a person’s guilt to justify his or her execution concerns the use of confessions.  While some regard it as an essential prerequisite of certainty, those with knowledge and experience of the processes of criminal law even in civilised countries that do not routinely interrogate by torture, regard confessions as sufficiently unreliable, for a variety of reasons, to make it unthinkable to rely upon an uncorroborated confession.  And this receives interesting Biblical support: in Yehoshua (7:21) we find that Achan admits his guilt on a charge of plundering and goes on to mention the order in which the spoils were hidden; and the Torah records (7:22) that on investigation the order  given was found to be correct – possibly the earliest recorded instance of what is now the modern practice of regarding a confession as inherently unreliable unless it contains details of a kind that could not reasonably be expected to be known to anyone other than the criminal.

It is not the purpose of this short message to debate the issue of capital punishment in detail or at any length.  But I wish to offer one observation, based on this week’s parashah Vayishlach.  When Yaakov struggles with and captures the angel, there is a puzzling passage in which he refuses to release the angel “unless you bless me” (Bereishis 32:27).  This can be understood in a number of ways: one involves approaching the entire episode as an internal struggle of Yaakov with the evil inclination inside him (the “ish” that is always “imo” – 32:26).  The rabbis (see, in particular, Michtav Me’Eliyahu volume 2, essay on parashas Vayeitzei) explain that Avrohom became expert in diverting his evil inclination, Yitzchok went further and became expert in confronting and destroying it, but Yaakov went further still and became expert in the even more demanding enterprise of converting his evil inclination into a positive influence.  Hence the idea that he would not release the angel – end the struggle – until it had ceased to be a curse or threat and had become a positive influence or blessing (a thought which occurred to me and which I record here with the express approval of Rabbi Dovid Cooper shlito).

It is this idea of reclamation rather than destruction which colours the whole Torah approach to the treatment of offenders.   Our starting point is always to aim for spiritual rehabilitation of even the worst criminal.  Sometimes, the matter is taken out of our hands – where the Torah prescribes the death penalty and we are obliged to apply it as unquestioningly as we perform any other Divine commandment.  But the cases in which the circumstances and evidence are such as to require the application of the death penalty in accordance with halochoh will necessarily be very few and far between.  In the normal instance we are left with considerable discretion as to the treatment of an offender, and in such cases our aim will always be to improve and reclaim, rather than merely to punish and to protect society (both of which are also duties).  (Hence the well-known story in the Gemoro (Brochos) where B’ruria reminds her husband to pray not for the downfall of sinners but for the downfall of sin – and the sinners’ rehabilitation.)

With this in mind the following comments of the Governor of California in relation to this morning’s execution are particularly interesting: “After studying the evidence, searching the history, listening to the arguments and wrestling with the profound consequences, I could find no justification for granting clemency.  Stanley Williams insists he is innocent, and that he will not and should not apologise or otherwise atone for the murders of the four victims in this case. Without apology and atonement for these senseless and brutal killings, there can be no redemption.”  So the Governor appears to have been significantly influenced by his assessment that the murderer did not have a sufficient appreciation of and remorse for his crimes to provide a foundation for spiritual reformation.  Without that remorse – which in Torah thought also is an essential ingredient of teshuvah (Rambam, Hilchos Teshuvoh 2:2 and 3) – it will be impossible for the criminal to begin the three-stage process of diverting, confronting and finally transforming his evil inclination, and society will be unable to assist him in that process and will be able to address only the necessary duties of protection and punishment.