633squadron:
Excuse me? Even those who believe the Torah is an amalgam of oral traditions later compiled into one book would (I imagine) agree that the traditions and rules that the Torah and Tanach describe existed before it was written.
That’s right, they’re commentaries. That means the Rabbis in question didn’t create these rules out of thin air, but that they actually come from the Torah itself, and the Rabbis are merely pointing out the source.
Derived directly from a Biblical verse.
AFAIK, this is covered by the concept of pikuach nefesh, which says that you’re allowed to do pretty much anything to preserve human life. This would also cover things like organ donation, which might otherwise not be allowed. But individual mileage may very depending upon who your controllling religious authority might be.
Generally speaking, all Jewish adults over the age of majority (12 for girls, 13 for boys) must fast.
One is not permitted to fast if his/her life would be in danger.
Pregnant and nursing women are generally required to fast. However, each case really requires a case-by-case ruling from a competent rabbi.
My oldest wanted to fast this year (he’s 12 Gregorian, will turn 12 Jewish this coming week) and we decided to let him try. However, at about 3:00, he felt he had to eat.
As far as organ donation goes, there is one major obstacle to permitting it on a general basis - that being that organs may be taken from people who are halachicly dead. Taking organs from such persons would either be tantamount to or directly murder - and that does NOT override the prohibition to save a life. Rulings in such cases MUST be made on a case-by-case basis.
Zev Steinhardt
The OP asked about exceptions for fasting on YK, and 633Sq says the exceptions are not mentioned in the Bible. I would point out that nowhere does the Torah even explicitly enjoin fasting or prohibit eating on YK.
The Torah says, “you shall afflict yourselves” or “afflict your souls” (depending on how you translate “nafshoteichem”).
The Hebrew verb is “l’annot”, and rabbinic analysis established the meaning of “afflict” as fasting, etc., in the Talmud, Yoma 74b, through typical rabbinic dialectic and argumentation. It other words, it does not seem to have been perfectly obvious to the rabbis what “afflict” means (e.g., they did not provide a mere gloss or a commentary), but they had to arrive at the answer through sophisticated hermeneutical analysis.
Just in passing, the Christian churches which mandate fasts for their members, or have done so in the past, preserve the same exception. In fact, the canons used to specifically spell out that a laborer required to perform physical labor on a Lenten fast day was specifically excepted from fasting.
I think there’s a passage someplace where God says something like, “Follow My teachings, that you may live by them.” Hurting yourself sort of misses the point.
When I was just a little chocolate milk kitty, what I learned at my mummie’s knee was that God loves life, so He doesn’t like when people hurt themselves and say it was His idea, because He never said anything of the kind.
The verse you’re looking for is Leviticus 18:5. And you’re correct in that the Talmud teaches from this verse “that you may live by them, but not die by them.”
In any event, that rule is not absolute. Firstly, when describing Yom Kippur, the verse explicitly states that you must afflict yourself.
Secondly, the Talmud derives three exceptions to the above rule and that in these cases, a Jew must allow him/herself to be killed rather than violate them. Those exceptions are mudrer, sexual crimes and idolatry.
Zev Steinhardt
Quick question- what does “halachicly dead” mean?
PS- I always learn a ton from your posts, Zev. And your son is already 12? Whoa.
Jewish law defines death as the absence of respiration and heartbeat. You could saw off the top of a person’s skull and remove their brain with a grapefruit spoon. So long as that person is breathing and their heart is beating, Jewish law considers them to be a living person. Thus, cutting out their heart or other vital organs is murder. There are scholars who maintain that even turning off the respirator of a brain dead person is murder. For the past few decades the debate has raged between scholars who want to change the halachic definition of death and scholars who feel that changing anything will start us on a slippery slope that ends with pork being made kosher.
We should emphasize here, that one is *permitted * to die “al kiddush ha-shem” “for the sake of the Divine name”. If one chose not to become a martyr, and instead killed another, committed incest or adultery, or worshipped an idol, one is not criminally liable, as the act was not done freely, but under coercion. The major source for “one should die, and not transgress” is Sanhedrin 74a.
Back to the OP’s question, I’l respond with what I did for Yom Kippur.
I have a blood sugar problem, and its aggrivated if I do not eat. So on Yom Kippur morning I had a small meal, just enough to make sure that I would not start feeling woozy or faint in the middle of services. Same for my grandparents (early and mid 80’s), due to their age and physical weakness, they were both explicitly forbidden to fast by my rabbi.
Come now. The fact that we call something a “commentary” does not mean that the rules that it puts forth are really contained in what it comments on. There is plenty of room for disagreement, and the “commentaries” sometimes disagree with each other. Reasonable people might believe that the Rabbis were influenced by their time and personal beliefs. Some Jews believe that the Rabbinic writings must be correct, but that’s in the same category as any other religious belief.
Directly? Have you read much Rabbinic reasoning? 633squadron was making a distinction between, for example, 1. the Torah saying clearly that people should fast on Yom Kippur (which it doesn’t), and 2. the Torah saying that people should “afflict” themselves on Yom Kippur and the Rabbis arguing about it and looking at other passages and deciding that it implies that people should fast. Surely there’s a difference, even if the Rabbis have it right.
No, one is required to martyr oneself rather than transgress one of those crimes.
Nonetheless, you are correct that if one violates the law and transgresses anyway, they are not liable to any punishment that a rabbinical court would mete out.
Zev Steinhardt
Actually, decapitation is a sign of death. So, even if a decapitated person were (somehow) breathing and had a heartbeat, he would be considered dead. Some authorities (and the law is far from settled on this matter) consider brain death an actual death on the grounds that it is akin to decapitation.
Zev Steinhardt
Yes, but you must consider the fact that cmkeller (like myself) is an Orthodox Jew and was speaking from the Orthodox perspective.
Time for some Orthodox Judaism 101.
Orthodox Jews maintain that God gave the Torah to the Jews on Mt. Sinai. Along with the written text of the Torah, He also gave to Moses an Oral tradition that explains the mitzvos (commandments) and how they are to be observed. Evidence for this can be seen from the fact that the commandments as written in the Torah are vauge and undefined, and one cannot reasonably be expected to keep it without this oral tradition.
The present case is a prime example of this. The Torah says that on Yom Kippur we should “afflict” ourselves. But what does that mean? Should we fast? Should we whip ourselves? Should we all march into large freezers? What does it mean?
Rosh HaShannah is described as a “day of blowing.” Blowing what? What are we to blow? And for how long?
On Sukkos we are commanded to take the “fruit of a good tree.” What tree? What fruit? And what are we to do with it after we take it? Should we eat it?
Dueteronomy 6:9 and 11:20 command us to write “these words” on the doorposts of our houses and our gates. What words? How are we to write them? Can we write them on a scroll, or do they have to be written directly on the gates and doorposts? Do we have to write the whole Torah?
The same paragraphs tell us to bind “these words” to our arms and between our eyes. Which words? How are we to bind words to our arms? Which arm? The right? The left? Both?
On the Sabbath we are commanded to refrain from work. One example explicitly given in lighting a fire. But what else consititutes work? Cooking? Posting on the Internet? Re-arranging furniture? Carrying the mail? Going for a jog?
There are numerous other examples where the mitzvos as written in the Torah are unclear or unintelligible without an oral tradition. If one wants to, one can posit that God gave a Torah that was unintelligible, but that is highly unlikely.
Laws that come from these traditions have the full status of Biblical laws. They are not rabbinical laws. Rabbinical laws are laws that are enacted later by the Rabbis for the public good or to protect a biblical law from being transgressed. Since the five categories of affliction come directly from the oral tradition, they are considered full Biblical laws, not rabbinic ones. As such, a Jew who engages in any of the five categories (absent a life-preserving reason, of course) is in violation of the Biblical command to afflict oneself.
Zev Steinhardt
Question-when you say murder, you’re not just talking about killing, but actual murder. So self-defense wouldn’t be considered murder, would it?
Correct. Self-defense is not murder.
The difference, of course, being that one (in the case of self-defense) is actively doing something to harm you (or someone else) and the other (organ donation from a live donor) is not doing anything to you.
Zev Steinhardt
So that our erudite Zev Steinhardt can continue with his able exposition of Orthodox thought, I’ll ask:
The case for an oral transmission of law given at Sinair would be significantly enhanced if the Mishnah and Talmud were actually in the forms of biblical commentary, or Midrash Halakhah, to put it precisely. (Midrash Halakha is legal exegesis of the Torah).
The links of the Mishnah to the Torah are usually weak and often non existent. Many of the arguments in the Gemara (the learning out of the Mishnah) have to do with this topic precisely – what verses from the Torah are the sources of Mishnaic law? There is typically no agreement here, rather we see extended debates.
These discussions are not commentaries, they are arguments. If there was an unbroken oral tradition from Sinai, why is the tradition characterized by such dissent in the Mishnah itself, and even moreso in the Talmud?
And further: we clearly see in some cases that the law changes over time. If the Oral Law were stable set of laws handed down from Sinai, how could the law shift over time?
(Perhaps this question should be moved to great debates)