Re: Jewish Attitudes to Dresden Bombing

On 2007-04-29 22:51:54 -0400, hrubin@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (Herman Rubin) said:

In article <f11vk7$at5$1$8300dec7@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
Fiona Abrahami <fiona@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

"Damien Sullivan" <phoenix@xxxxxxx> wrote
"Fiona Abrahami" <fiona@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

You are just plain wrong, Matt. The Torah has been around for some three
thousand years, and in it there are included a whole series of plainly
written explicit moral benchmarks. Over the intervening millennia these
codified and the codes discussed and refined, but the explicit moral
standards of the Torah remain unchanged - e.g. just weights (cheating is
wrong), false witness (lying is wrong), seek justice (applying justice is
right), don't favour the rich or the poor (equality before the law is
right), etc. - and together this body of morality can be justifiably
identified as Jewish morals. The Torah IS the source of an absolute
Jewish

Jewish morals, but not uniquely Jewish; everything you listed is pretty
common.

And? Because others have adopted and adapted a moral code codified by Jews,
that somehow stops those morals being Jewish?

Oh, and btw, the list above is not exhaustive...


Fiona


Not all of these are in other sets of morality. Not favoring
the rich or poor is almost nowhere; while the rich can get
better lawyers in criminal cases, juries are quite often out
to get the rich in civil cases (the "deep pockets" doctrine).

Nor do most countries observer the death penalty for murder
or idolatry. And few attempt to provide compensation for
the victim in crimes, preferring prison to recompense. It
is now, "Put the criminal in jail; maybe the victim can sue."

Last shabbos I noticed the following from a footnote in Etz Chaim, the C tannach for K'doshim

"Conservative Judaism tends to give the tradition the benefit of the doubt when it baffles us but does not morally offend us. When the tradition asks us to do something that does offend us morally, Conservative Judaism claims the right to challenge and, if necessary, change the tradition, not because we see our judgments as superior to that of the Torah, but because our judgment has been shaped by the values of the Torah and we are in effect calling the Torah to judge itself."

That implies there is a morality outside Torah but shaped by it.

j

--
Joel Shurkin
Baltimore, Maryland
----------------------------
"Science without religion is lame; religion without science is blind." Albert Einstein
.

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