Ethical and Moral Society
The Mishna in Avodah Zara 22A States "A Jew shall not put himself in a situation where he is alone with a gentile for (the gentiles) are suspect of murder."
The question that we must all ask ourselves is how can we understand this halacha in its simple context knowing gentiles the way we do. We do business with gentiles, we buy from them, sell to them, and generally interact with them on a regular basis. Any Jew honest with himself knows that there is much a chance of that gentile killing him as there is of his wife killing him at home.
The answer is that of course today in America in our current setting there is no chance of this happening and that is because most people (besides a few crazy ones) live within the guidelines of a moral code hardwired into our society. However, without getting into a major philosophical discussion we must understand that there is one caveat to this moral code. The caveat is as previously mentioned the word society. Any way you wish to describe this moral code one thing is obvious, it is defined by society. Even if you subscribe to theories regarding absolute morals those absolutes have to be defined and somebody has to do the job of defining them. For example, everybody is against murder. Abortion however, will be considered a noble act of defending a woman's right to choose because society has defined murder to exclude abortion. The other extreme will be animal rights activists that would consider murdering animals an act of murder on par with killing a human being because they have expanded the definition of murder. So although we all seem to agree on certain fundamental morals it is only the words we agree on but not the definition of these words.
Being that there is no absolute arbiter on definitions and it is societies job to define terms there cannot be a real moral code that people follow other than what society has defined. This will go a long way in explaining the Nazi killing of Jews. Nobody seems to understand how such a cultured nation could go about butchering humans in such a barbaric way. However, we must understand that once society decided to exclude the murder of Jews from their definition of murder it became socially acceptable and even noble. That same Nazi that killed 200 Jews in one day would never shoot another German for that would be Murder and he is no murderer.
The Mishna in Avodah Zara is telling us that every gentile is suspect of murder because he has no inherent moral issue with murdering. Today killing Jews is unacceptable in certain societies but that can change tomorrow or if that specific gentile is in a different circumstance. The Mishna is telling us that that a moral code defined by a society is not enough to trust your life with. Only someone who has a defining deity that he follows can be sure that his definitions will not change.
The question that we must all ask ourselves is how can we understand this halacha in its simple context knowing gentiles the way we do. We do business with gentiles, we buy from them, sell to them, and generally interact with them on a regular basis. Any Jew honest with himself knows that there is much a chance of that gentile killing him as there is of his wife killing him at home.
The answer is that of course today in America in our current setting there is no chance of this happening and that is because most people (besides a few crazy ones) live within the guidelines of a moral code hardwired into our society. However, without getting into a major philosophical discussion we must understand that there is one caveat to this moral code. The caveat is as previously mentioned the word society. Any way you wish to describe this moral code one thing is obvious, it is defined by society. Even if you subscribe to theories regarding absolute morals those absolutes have to be defined and somebody has to do the job of defining them. For example, everybody is against murder. Abortion however, will be considered a noble act of defending a woman's right to choose because society has defined murder to exclude abortion. The other extreme will be animal rights activists that would consider murdering animals an act of murder on par with killing a human being because they have expanded the definition of murder. So although we all seem to agree on certain fundamental morals it is only the words we agree on but not the definition of these words.
Being that there is no absolute arbiter on definitions and it is societies job to define terms there cannot be a real moral code that people follow other than what society has defined. This will go a long way in explaining the Nazi killing of Jews. Nobody seems to understand how such a cultured nation could go about butchering humans in such a barbaric way. However, we must understand that once society decided to exclude the murder of Jews from their definition of murder it became socially acceptable and even noble. That same Nazi that killed 200 Jews in one day would never shoot another German for that would be Murder and he is no murderer.
The Mishna in Avodah Zara is telling us that every gentile is suspect of murder because he has no inherent moral issue with murdering. Today killing Jews is unacceptable in certain societies but that can change tomorrow or if that specific gentile is in a different circumstance. The Mishna is telling us that that a moral code defined by a society is not enough to trust your life with. Only someone who has a defining deity that he follows can be sure that his definitions will not change.
posted by funnyfundamentalist at 7:53 PM
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