Rabbi Arthur Segal www.jewishspiritualrenewal.org
Via Shamash Org on-line class service
Jewish Renewal www.jewishrenewal.info
Jewish Spiritual Renewal
Jewish Spirituality
Eco Judaism
Hilton Head Island, SC, Bluffton, SC, Savannah, GA
Thank you, R ' Arthur . What great material you sent me! Your Talmudic knowledge and intrinsic sense of Justice is a blessing to our people. Just so we all have this valuable source easily available, I'm sending it to everyone. Shalom:
תלמוד בבלי מסכת שבת דף נד עמוד ב-שבת דף נה עמוד א
כל מי שאפשר למחות לאנשי ביתו ולא מיחה - נתפס על אנשי ביתו, באנשי עירו - נתפס על אנשי עירו, בכל העולם כולו - נתפס על כל העולם כולו. אמר רב פפא: והני דבי ריש גלותא נתפסו על כולי עלמא. כי הא דאמר רבי חנינא: מאי דכתיב +ישעיהו ג+ ה' במשפט יבא עם זקני עמו ושריו, אם שרים חטאו -זקנים מה חטאו? אלא, אימא: על זקנים שלא מיחו בשרים
''Chevra, can you help me with a quote and citation? Where in the Talmud is the teaching that if we can stop our community from sinning and we don't do it we bear their guilt?
I want to include that Torah in a piece I'm writing right now about why my synagogue joined in the protest – but haven't been able to find it.''
David SHALOM RABBI___ V CHAVERIM:
The concept starts in the Torah in Deut 21. It deals with an unsolved murder. Someone who has been slain is found lying between towns. No one knows the identity of the murderer or of the victim. What is to be done if the crime cannot be solved?
The elders (we had no ''rabbis'' then), from the nearby towns must go and measure the distance from the corpse to each of their towns. Then the elders of the closest town must perform a ritual to remove the guilt from the land and from their town. They must take a young heifer, break its neck, and wash their hands over the heifer and make this statement: "Our hands did not shed this blood, nor did our eyes see it done. Absolve, Eternal One, Your people Israel whom You redeemed, and do not let guilt for the blood of the innocent remain among Your people Israel."
Only then, Deuteronomy states, will the elders and the town be absolved of guilt and "thus you will remove from your midst guilt for the blood of the innocent, for you will be doing what is right in the sight of the Eternal."
An unsolved murder in the open countryside, yet the elders of the closest community must accept responsibility and perform a ritual to remove their guilt. What was their guilt? How are we to understand this ritual?
The rabbis of the Mishnah first tried to understand these verses 2,000+ years ago. They asked, "Are we supposed to assume, in the absence of a perpetrator, that the elders of the community actually shed this blood, that they were the murderers? Of course not. The text must mean something else."
The rabbis of the Mishnah and the Babylonian rabbis after them understood the text to refer to the slain victim. They said it means: "There was no one who came into our community seeking shelter or food or protection whom we turned away to wander the land."
The Gemorah goes on to say the rabbis are responsible for the sins of their community. All of them. Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel wrote in 1971: "Some are guilty; all are responsible… O Lord, we confess our sins, we are ashamed of the inadequacy of our anguish, of how faint and slight is our mercy. We are a generation that has lost the capacity for outrage. We must continue to remind ourselves that in a free society all are involved in what some are doing. Some are guilty, all are responsible."
Talmud Bavli Tractate Sotah 9:6
The elders of that town washed their hands in water at the place where the neck of the heifer was broken, and they said, "Our hands have not shed this blood neither have our eyes seen it." But could it be that the elders of a Court were shedders of blood? But, "He came not into our hands that we should have dismissed him without sustenance, and we did not see him and leave him without escort!" And the priests say, "Atone for your people Israel whom you redeem to God and do not allow for there to be innocent blood spilled amongst the people of Israel."
The rabbis of the Mishnah then wrote – prophetically – that this ritual was discontinued when there were too many crimes of murder. There were so many murders that the community was no longer able to respond as it once could!
We of course know from the Talmud :All Israel is responsible for one another, [Talmud Bavli Tractate Shavuot 39a ], as well as R' Shimon's parable [Vayikra Raba 4: . ] of the Jew drilling a hole under 'his' seat in the boat, and hence how the sins of one, effect us all. And of course: When the community is in trouble, a person should not say, "I will go into my house and eat and drink and be at peace with myself." [Talmud Bavli Tractate Ta'anit 11a.]
Talmud Bavli Tractate Shabbat 54b
Whoever can prevent his household from committing a sin but does not, is responsible for the sins of his household; if he can prevent his fellow citizens, he is responsible for the sins of his fellow citizens; if the whole world, he is responsible for the sins of the whole world.
The concept of Jews and our rabbis taking action when sins of man to man are being done, and being held all liable if we do not, stems back to Moses and Sinai.
Many blessings, R'Arthur
Rabbi Arthur Segal www.jewishspiritualrenewal.org
Via Shamash Org on-line class service
Jewish Renewal www.jewishrenewal.info
Jewish Spiritual Renewal
Jewish Spirituality
Eco Judaism
Hilton Head Island, SC, Bluffton, SC, Savannah, GA
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