FANATICS-THEN AND NOW

 

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  Rabbi Rifat Sonsino, Ph.D

 Moses Maimonides (1138-1204) of Spain was one of the greatest Jewish thinkers of the Middle Ages. He was a physician and philosopher, a rationalist. There is a statue of him in downtown Cordoba that I saw a few years ago. He was the author of The Guide of the Perplexed (he wrote it in Arabic) on theology, and Mishne Torah (“The Second Law”-he wrote it in Hebrew) on Jewish law.

 But he was also controversial, because of his advocacy of Aristotelian philosophy. Some people did not like him. And in 1233, in a public square in Paris, a group of Dominican monks set fire to a huge pile of his books. The sad part was that they did this at the instigation of some fanatic Jews who had accused him of heretical views.

Every religion has its own fanatics who think they have the truth and cannot accept a diversity of opinion. Christians have them- look at the fights between Catholics and Protestants.  Moslems have them- look at the enmity between Sunnis and Shiites. We Jews have them too. In fact, right now, there are a number of Haredim, members of the right-wing Orthodox movement, attacking Reform Jews at the Western Wall in Jerusalem, who are celebrating a Bar Mitzvah!!! What a shame!

 No one has an exclusive key to the truth. It is by an open and respectful discussion of issues that we can learn from one another and reach an understanding of the mysteries of the universe.

 

WHOSE LIFE COMES FIRST?

 Rabbi Rifat Sonsino, Ph.D.

 The topic of whose life comes first has exercised the imagination of many ancient Rabbis. One scenario was debated in a Jewish legal commentary called SIFRA (on the Book of Leviticus, 4^th cent. CE). Here, we find the following dilemma (See also a parallel discussion in the Babylonian Talmud,BM 62a, 6^th cent. CE).

 “The following was expounded by Ben-Petura (a 2nd cent. CE rabbinic scholar): Two men are traveling through the desert. One of them has a flask of water. If he alone drinks the water, he will reach the town but if both of them drink, they will both die. Ben-Petura expounded the biblical text (in Lev. 25:36) “That your brother may live with you” to mean that both should drink and die (rather than one should live while the other dies). But Rabbi Akiva (a 2^nd cen. CE scholar) said to him: “That you brother may live with you” means that he may live WITH YOU , not instead of you, namely that your life takes precedence over the life of your friend. Rabbinic law accepts this approach.

This dilemma sounds very much like “the Plank of Carneades,” namely , Carneades of Cyrene,  a Greek philosopher who lived in 2^nd cent. BCE. Here, instead of a desert, the event takes place in water:  There are two shipwrecked sailors. They see a plank that can support both of them. Sailor A gets to the plank first. Sailor B , who is about to drown, pushes A off and away from the plank and, thus causes A’s death. Sailor B is later saved by a rescue team. The question is whether B should be tried for murder?

The similarity between the two cases, though not completely parallel to one another, shows that the ancient Rabbis were aware of the popular ethical debates that took place in the Greco-Roman world.

Obviously, the tension here is between self-preservation and personal sacrifice. Many ancient Greek thinkers argued that one should die rather than deprive the other of his or her means of survival. The Rabbis, however, gave self-preservation the upper hand. (See, the detailed discussion by K. Berthelot, “A Classical Ethical Problem in Ancient Philosophy,” Harvard Theological Review 106/2, 2013, 1-29).

 I would argue that it depends on who is the “other”? If it is my child, I would be ready to give him/her a chance to survive. Otherwise, if it is a stranger or if the other has a lesser chance of survival, I will save myself.

Your opinion?