#Jewish ethics

[etz-ashashiyot]

So what’s the modern interpretation of the laws about keeping slaves? I’ve heard that said laws where a lot more kind to slaves then the surrounding nations but, like, it’s still slavery?

Hi anon,

With Pesach coming up, I'm sure that this question is on a lot of people's minds. It's a good question and many rabbanim throughout history have attempted to tackle it. Especially today, with slavery being seen as a moral anathema in most societies (obviously this despite the fact that unfortunately slavery is still a very real human rights crisis all over the world), addressing the parts of the Torah that on the surface seem to condone it becomes a moral imperative.

It's worth noting that the Jewish world overall condemns slavery. In my research for this question, I came across zero modern sources arguing that slavery is totally fine. I'm sure that if you dug deep enough there's some fringe wacko somewhere arguing this, but every group has its batshit fringe.

Here are some sources across the political and religious observance spectrum that explain it better than I could:

Chabad (this article is written by Rabbi Tzvi Freeman, a wonderful rabbi whose words I have learned deeply over the years. He is one of my favorite rabbis despite not seeing eye to eye with a lot of the Chabad movement)

Conservative (to be clear: this is my movement; it's not actually politically conservative in most shuls, just poorly named. We desperately need to bully them into calling themselves Masorti Olami like the rest of the world. It's [essentially] a liberal traditional egalitarian movement.)

Conservative pt. 2 (different rabbi's take)

Reform (note that this is from the Haberman Institute, which was founded by a Reform rabbi. Link is to a YouTube recording of a recent lecture on the topic.)

Chareidi (this rabbi is an official rabbi of the Western Wall in Israel, so in a word, very frum)

Modern Orthodox

I want to highlight this last one, because it is written by the Rosh Yeshiva of Yeshivat Chovevei, which is a progressive Modern Orthodox rabbinical school. They work very hard to read Torah through an authentically Orthodox lens while also maintaining deeply humanist values. As someone who walks a similar (if not identical) balancing act, this particular drash (sermon) spoke very deeply to me, and so I'm reposting it in its entirety**

[Edit: tumblr.hell seems real intent on not letting me do this in my original answer, so I will repost it in the reblogs. Please reblog that version if you're going to. Thanks!]

Something you will probably notice as you work your way through these sources, you'll note that there are substantially more traditional leaning responses. This is because of a major divide in how the different movements view Torah, especially as it pertains to changing ethics over time and modernity. I'm oversimplifying for space, but the differences are as follows:

The liberal movements (Reform, Renewal, Reconstructionist, etc.) view halacha as non-binding and the Torah as a human document that is, nevertheless, a sacred document. I've seen it described as the spiritual diary of our people throughout history. Others view it as divinely inspired, but still essentially and indelibly human.

The Orthodox and other traditional movements view halacha as binding and Torah as the direct word of G-d given to the Jewish people through Moshe Rabbeinu (Moses) on Mt. Sinai. (Or, at a minimum, as a divinely inspired text written and compiled by people that still represents the word of G-d. This latter view is mostly limited to the Conservative and Modern Orthodox movements.)

Because of these differences, the liberal movements are able to address most of these problematic passages by situating them in their proper historical context. It is only the Orthodox and traditional movements that must fully reckon with the texts as they are, and seek to understand how they speak to us in a contemporary context.

As for me? I'm part of a narrow band of traditional egalitarian progressive Jews that really ride that line between viewing halacha as binding and the Torah as divinely given, despite recognizing the human component of its authorship - more a partnership in its creation than either fully human invention or divine fiat. That said, I am personally less interested in who wrote it literally speaking and much more interested in the question of: How can we read Torah using the divinely given process of traditional Torah scholarship while applying deeply humanist values?

Yeshivat Chovevei does a really excellent job of approaching Torah scholarship this way, as does Hadar. Therefore, I'm not surprised that this article captures something I have struggled to articulate: an authentically orthodox argument for change.

[phoukanamedpookie]

Azula through a Jewish lens

What is Azula halachically responsible for?

Azula and the awakening of the yetzer-hatov

And a follow-up post.

The evil impulse as redeeming trait

[mental-mona]

Judaism is a complex and subtle faith, yet it has rarely lost touch with its simple ethical imperatives. We are here to make a difference, to mend the fractures of the world, a day at a time, an act at a time, for as long as it takes to make it a place of justice and compassion where the lonely are not alone, the poor not without help; where the cry of the vulnerable is heeded and those who are wronged are heard.

Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks z"tl, To Heal a Fractured World p.5

[gunstreet]

sorry I'm not a photoshop master but would someone mind hanging this up in the SNW writers' room because I think we have all had enough

[edenfenixblogs]

New Pinned Post: How This Blog Approaches The Conflict

I am not normally a politically-focused blog. I am normally a personal blog that enjoys fandom and occasionally processes my own past trauma. As this war goes on, I am finding that it is against my personal ethics and morals to stay silent when I have the ability to educate and remain more patient than most. (My patience is not endless. I’m still human). So, while disinformation/misinformation, and propaganda abound on all sides. I feel like the best way I can help lower the temperature is to put my skills to use.

Primary Political Goals:

1. Emphasize humanity above all and use verifiable information and good faith education and discourse to reduce tension.

2. Do my absolute best to move the conversation away from polarizing, accusatory discourse that forces Jews, Muslims, Arabs, Israelis, and Palestinians to play a desperate game of defense and toward a shared mutually beneficial peace that honors each grouped indigeneity culture, and connection to their ancestral homeland.

3. Demonstrate and emphasize both Jewish-Muslim solidarity and Israeli-Palestinian solidarity.

Primary Blogging Goals:

As a diaspora Jew, my primary goal is threefold

1. Educate about antisemitism and Islamophobia—including calling it out and explaining it to the best of my ability.

2. Elevate responsible, verifiable voices—regardless of religion or nationality—and information to the best of my ability.

3. Demonstrate effective activism and provide insight and encouragement for other to find their most effective way to contribute to fostering peace.

Elaboration:

1. I have the most experience with an understanding of antisemitism. I am more of an expert in antisemitism and have more ability to identify and educate about it. That said: I will not tolerate any Islamophobia or racism and if I don’t have the ability to educate about it, you will be blocked. If I have the ability to educate about it, I will do so and give you the chance to read about it and adjust your behavior. If you do not do so, I will block you.

2. This does not mean equal representation of all nationalities and religions. It means the best informed and most reliable voices AND the voices I personally have the best ability to vet, verify, and substantiate. This will often mean Jewish voices and Israeli voices. This is me staying in my lane, not choosing to suppress any voice. I will not elevate purposefully divisive, tokenized, or uninformed voices. This does not mean that I won’t elevate Palestinian, Muslim, and Arab voices as well. I will. But my primary goal here is responsibility. To do that, I have to stay in my lane.

3. I am most effective as an educator on this matter, a guide to finding reliable peace-oriented voices, and an example of patience. There’s a great desire among many to protest or create videos detailing their opinions and stances. Not only is this primarily performative—especially among non-Muslim/non-Palestinian goyim—it has the potential to be extraordinarily damaging to Jews both in Israel and in Diaspora as well as to Arabs, Muslims, Palestinians, and South East Asians worldwide. If you truly desire to help and not just feel like you’re helping, the best thing you can do is follow the lead of much more experienced activists with a demonstrated track record of effectiveness and good faith in their areas of expertise. As I stated: mine is primarily education and greater than average (though not limitless) amounts of patience. If you want to donate money or engage in more direct action and aid, I suggest finding pro-Palestinian Israeli voices and peace oriented Muslim, Arab, and Palestinian voices as well as organizations with experience in this conflict that do not rely on eliminating any population or erasing anyone’s connection to the Levant. Follow their lead on that matter. If you are only just engaging in this conflict for the first time due to current events, you likely do not know nearly as much as you think you do about any of this. Being uninformed and spouting disinformation has actual dire consequences that can get Jews, Muslims, Palestinians, Israelis, and Arabs killed. It is vital that you’re responsible in your engagement on this matter. Learning dogwhistles and how to spot bad faith arguments is a must. And to be effective, you should spend more of your time learning than you’re doing protesting or arguing. This is a 2000+ year old conflict. There is a lot to know and understand. And there are a lot of people willing to prey on your newcomer status and manipulate your existing beliefs to use you as a pawn to further their bad faith aims. The only consistent, trustworthy principal is to trust those who repeatedly affirm their goal as peace and shared prosperity and who reject any form of demonization based on ethnicity or religion. This is not a game. This is not the west’s fight. This is a conflict between two horribly oppressed, traumatized, and nearly exterminated ethnoreligous groups.

I am begging you to think, listen, and learn before joining the fray.

Note: I also don’t claim to be perfect. If I mess up or reblog something that causes unintended harm (which is very easy to do when engaging in discussions and activism about this conflict), I will say so and issue a correction. There’s no need to be hostile in informing me about this. Just message with your concern and I’ll evaluate from there.

Additionally, I will not interact with Hamas apologists. Hamas is a terrorist organization.

Anyone trying to make me feel like this is an Us vs. Them situation will be blocked.

[hinotorihime]

i think that even beyond the complexities of halachic nuances, my biggest problem in regards to writing jewish characters is that: it is important to me that i actually put thought into their relationship with judaism and the way that they would engage with it on a practical level—i don't want to just decide to slap "oh they're incidentally jewish" on them and then decide they're secular for my own convenience as an author, you know? but also, there's a spectrum between "totally secular" and "100% observant orthodox", and i feel like i just don't know enough about how people make those decisions, what they prioritize and what they don't and how their background and surroundings affect that

[ceaseless-exhauster]

So I got a lil gross feeling while reading Ki Teitzei today when I hit the whole “A woman must not put on man’s apparel, nor shall a man wear woman’s clothing; for whoever does these things is abhorrent to your God יהוה. https://www.sefaria.org/Deuteronomy.22.5”

Religious trauma was fixing to be Activated(TM) but I decided to go looking through the commentary and I found Acharonim’s Nineteen Letters section about it: “The same thoughtful regard which you show to [other people], show as well […] to your own mental faculties, to your ‘ego,��� that which is most of all your own. […] Finally, respect yourself in your purest emanation, your word.”

https://www.sefaria.org/Nineteen_Letters.11.4

Acharonim said trans rights, have an excellent evening

[dionysus-complex]

.

[sopranoentravesti]

Man it’s really fun when goyim just cannot cannot resist letting rightful criticism of Israel descend into the whole “Jews control the media.”

Take it from someone who has bitched about Hasbara for longer than you’ve known what it was. Please stop saying shit about “Israel’s PR Army.”

[zebratoys]

וְהִגַּדְתָּ לְבִנְךָ  (שמות יג, ח)

[phoukanamedpookie]

Alright, where's my Judge Judy post?

To me, the idea is simple: our thoughts and feelings are our thoughts and feelings; it's our actions which we are morally and legally accountable for. I have less than zero interest in adjudicating whether a fictional teenager is guilty of thought crimes.

Here's a fun homework assignment: look up General MacArthur's proposal for dropping over 30 nukes on Korea and China. That was an actual plan, not some shit he blurted out at a meeting. And he never saw the inside of a jail cell because he didn't act on it.

Azula did the equivalent of shouting, "We should use nukes!" That's not a crime. She didn't give any orders, sign any paperwork, or oversee any preparations required to make any of it happen. But Ozai did. The generals and admirals at that war meeting did. Y'know, the grown-assed men who definitely knew what it meant to commit to Ozai's clean, concise description of how the Fire Nation would pull off such a feat.

As a matter of fact, she was excluded from the entire operation. Would she have gleefully participated? More likely than not. But she's not legally or morally responsible for hypothetical actions, even if they seem nearly certain, because what people do in the moment when faced with the reality of a situation isn't always what we assume they'd do in theory.

What is you take on Azula being held accountable for doing (conquering cities[omashu_ba sing sa],day of black sun holding prisoners,and her idea of burning everything to the ground,...etc)

That’s always been kind of a tough question for me. I don’t think Azula is completely innocent, but at the same time, I don’t think she should be tried as an adult. Azula was still 14, a young teenager, and no matter how mature she acted, I don’t think she can or should be held completely responsible for her actions.

Azula is the product of abuse and propaganda, that can’t be ignored. If anything, Ozai should be held most accountable for her actions. Also, Azula is often acting as a soldier of the Fire Nation, a child soldier. A lot of the violent things she does, like killing Aang, could be considered self-defense or just furthering the goals of the Fire Nation, which is what every FN soldier would also be guilty of.

Conquering Ba Sing Se is one of the most efficient and least violent accomplishments of Azula, and if the same thing had been done by the heroes to the Fire Nation it wouldn’t be considered a bad thing. The same thing with Day of Black Sun, it’s just Azula being a soldier and completing her mission.

Honestly, a lot of the really “bad” things Azula does is when she’s just being mean to her enemies, like to Sokka and Zuko. It was bad when she was willing to let Zuko fall to his death in the Boiling Rock, but at that point, he was a traitor and betrayer and Azula had no more desire to try and keep him alive like in s2.

Suggesting to Ozai they should burn the Earth Kingdom down is pretty bad, but again, it’s not something she ever actually got to do. It’s really troubling, but you can’t hold her too accountable for just having the idea. It’s also something Ozai likely would have decided to do on his own anyway, a big display of force, and Azula mainly suggested it to win points with her dad and get one over on Zuko again (in addition to saving Zuko from embarrassing himself).

So in conclusion, Azula should be held accountable for a few of the things she did, but since she is a kid, not very much. Clearly, something needs to be done about her, but it should be focused on rehabilitating and healing her instead of punishing her. Punishment is for adults with full agency over their lives, not a fourteen-year-old girl who was groomed and used as a tool by an abusive father.

[mental-mona]

One of Judaism’s most distinctive and challenging ideas is its ethics of responsibility, the idea that God invites us to become, in the rabbinic phrase, his ‘partners in the world of creation’. The God who created the world in love calls on us to create in love. The God who gave us the gift of freedom asks us to use it to honour and enhance the freedom of others.

Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks z"tl, To Heal a Fractured World, p.3

[nando161mando]

[magnetothemagnificent]

Very interesting article with a lot of discussion points and a lot to think about.

(If you're wondering about the context of gladiators- many Jewish men were enslaved as gladiators, and that's why the Rabbis discuss "witnessing the death", since in Judaism physical confirmation of death is important for mourning and for allowing a woman to not be considered still married.)

[phoukanamedpookie]

☝️☝️☝️

Furthermore, Judaism cares less about your private thoughts and feelings than that you fulfill your obligations. This leads to a moral outlook in which it's more praiseworthy to do something because you're obligated to than because you're emotionally moved to do so. A concrete example: paying your fair share taxes in full and on time versus a single act of charity or generosity.

What gentiles imagine vs. what Jews actually are

Culturally Christian Gentiles: The Judeo-Christian concept of original sin

Jews: Huh?

Culturally Christian Gentiles: The Abrahamic religions’ belief in heaven and hell

Jews: Say what now?

Culturally Christian Gentiles: The Judeo-Christian religions emphasize obedience over asking questions and debating ideas.

Jews: *spit coffee laughing*

[lynchiangf]

it's so frustrating to see the ease with which people take israel to be representative of all jewish people somehow. like yesterday I was reading the news and it said something like 'the jewish and the palestinian side of the conflict' as if jewish people are a hivemind and universally support israel. ultimately I think that's a narrative that just benefits israel and if you buy it I'll conclude you respect neither jewish people nor palestinians, you just respect colonial interests