It is a well-known and almost instinctive response to attack the messenger when one feels that the message being delivered is incorrect, unwanted or unfair. The poor messenger usually finds one’s self in a hapless and hopeless predicament. It then becomes a contest of personalities and not of ideas, a shouting match instead of a reasoned debate. A seasoned American political leader once...
There is an eternal debate amongst philosophers and criminologists as to whether the mob boss or the actual hit man is most culpable in the murder of a rival gang leader. Though both are certainly morally guilty, the question as to which one bears the legal onus for the crime, absent statutory law on the matter, is an issue of discussion and differing opinions. In Judaism there is a concept...
שליחות לדבר עבירה יש ויכוח נצחי בין הפילוסופים והקרימינולוגים בשאלה מי אשם יותר, בוס המאפיה שהזמין את הרצח, או המתנקש עצמו שירה בראש הכנופיה היריבה. אין ספק אמנם ששניהם אשמים מבחינה מוסרית, השאלה מי נושא באחריות...
זאת תגובה מוכרת וכמעט אינסטינקטיבית לתקוף את השליח או נושא המסר כשמרגישים שהמסר שהוא מביא איננו רצוי, נכון או הוגן. השליח המסכן לרוב מוצא את עצמו סובל וחסר ישע. כך חילוקי הדעות הופכים לקרב בין אנשים ולא בין רעיונות,...
This past June 6 marked the sixty-ninth anniversary of the invasion of continental Europe by Allied forces in World War II. There has been much discussion over the past few decades as to the strategic and true military importance of that great amphibious landing operation. However for all those who were alive at that time it was an event of almost messianic proportions. All felt that here at...
The Torah interrupts its narrative of the events that befell the Jewish people in the desert with the description of a commandment that admittedly has no rational human understanding in logical terms. Even the great King Solomon, the wisest and most analytical of all humans, was forced to admit that understanding this parsha of the Torah was beyond his most gifted intellect and talents. If...
Rabbi Moshe ben Nachman (Ramban) is of the general opinion that events, as recorded in the Torah, occurred in a linear timeline. This is in spite of the maxim that there is no late or early in the Torah. He limits that rule to certain halachic instances as they appear in the Talmud. Thus the story of Korach and his contest against Moshe that forms the central part of this week’s parsha occurred...
Almost all of our telephones today, whether they are landlines or mobile phones, are equipped with a “leave a message” answering service. Like all of our modern technological wonders, this telephone answering service has a darker side to its apparent sunny convenience. When I arrive home late at night after attending an event or a celebration and I see that red light flashing on our...
This week’s parsha raises the age-old issue of human behavior – altruism over personal interest and gain. While we all pay lip service to the concept and ideal of altruism when dealing with public affairs and the general good , we all remain human beings and the Talmud long ago posited that “a human being is first and foremost closest and prejudiced to one’s own self and interests.” ...
More than seventy years have passed since the onset of the Holocaust and the destruction of most of the Jews of Europe. Any objective observer will have to agree that almost all of the perpetrators, planners and collaborators who participated in that heinous stain on the civilization and culture of the Western world were never punished for their behavior and crimes. Even those who were tried...
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