Tuesday, September 27, 2011
How is this fair?
In the article from last week, it mentions that if one is presumed to have violated a commandment for he sole purpose of disobeying G-d, then they are immediately punished, no questions asked. How is this fair? We know that the Torah tries to be as fair as possible, but this does not seem right. Perhaps it was accident, or it wasn't what it looked like? A case of mistaken identity? The witness heard wrong? At least give them a trial, right? Nope. This person's fate is set in stone. While this may be a challenging concept to grasp, there are some possible explanations I can come up with. Flat out disobeying G-d is not tolerable, and so harsh punishment is neccesary so behavior like this does not become acceptab;e. If people see Jews acting in this way, what does that make them think? definitely not making a good name for themselves. this seems like a reasonable explanation for such a harsh judgement.
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I totally agree with Emma. I think that the article was a little too harsh. I think that it is necessary to punish people who clearly and openly violate Hashem's commandments. I also believe that the Torah tries to be as fair as possible. If the alleged sinner had a fair trial to be sure that they actually sinned intentionally, then unjust punishments would be avoided. The fact that the "trial" is skipped causes many problems. If the Beit Din in charge of punishment simply took precautions so that innocent people weren't punished, then we would be teaching other Jews that defying Hashem will only get you punished AND show the rest of the world that Jews can control their own and commit to their religion. This would be a "Kiddush Hashem" rather than a "Chilul Hashem".
ReplyDeleteIf you look at the article, the punishment is really for an inciter, not just anyone who wants to go against 'ה. There are a couple reasons why we don't give an inciter the benefit of the doubt, but I think that the main reason is that the inciter could just say that the other person didn't have to listen to him. Like it says in the article, "If the teacher says one thing and the student says another, who do you believe?" Other than that I agree with you completely.
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