Drashot for Shabbat Mishpatim/Shekalim

Staying in Touch

A Drash for Friday, 8 February 2013

I’ve said before that our ability to communicate instantly – including such media as e-mail and social networking – is largely a blessing.  I know that spending time on line can be tedious.  It can also become all-consuming.  If we allow ourselves to become addicted to the virtual world, we might be too busy to enjoy the real world.  That’s a real danger, and for many younger adults it is very real.  For me, I’m happy to wade through what my ‘friends’ have posted when I have time.  When I don’t, I simply ignore them.

More than a few people have gotten in trouble for the things that they’ve said, or revealed about themselves, on Facebook and other networking sites.  There have been a few spectacular cases of ‘cyber-bullying.’  And people have had crimes committed against themselves because they trusted someone they ‘met’ on Facebook or elsewhere.  So one must be careful on line – just as with any other kind of encounter with someone you don’t know well.  There is no shortage of malefactors out there, looking for their next victim.

And then there’s the problem of spouting off too quickly, and then regretting it.  Once you’ve said something you regret, you can’t un-say it.  When it’s something you said in a face-to-face conversation or on the telephone, then one person has heard it.  But if you write it, especially in electrons, then ultimately the entire world can and will ultimately see it.  Just ask Anthony Weiner, the former congressman from Queens, New York.  So one must not get caught up in the immediacy of firing off a passionate e-mail, text, or IM.

Those who have a past that is questionable, or suspicious, should probably be extra-careful about their online presence.  You folks here at Temple Shalom know what I’m talking about here, so I’ll say no more.

But for the rest of us, one’s ability to find someone out of one’s past is a great blessing.  So I like Facebook.  And I wonder how we managed to live before it…and Google.

                Thanks to Google, one of my Navy shipmates from the 1980’s located me a few years back.  Thanks to that contact, and to Facebook, I became plugged in to a network of my colleagues from a time of my life when we were all young and stupid…a time that we shall always remember and cherish.  It’s great to be plugged in in this way, to keep the memories alive by reminding one another about our antics then – and keeping up with one another’s antic now.

                Another example.  Just the other day, I received a surprise e-mail.  It was from the daughter of old friends whom I have not seen in almost 30 years.  I was godfather to this girl at her christening, but I have been out of touch with her parents for a long, long time and never got to know their daughter.  But thanks to the internet, she suddenly tracked me down.  She had often been curious about the Jew who had an affectation for argyle socks and French cuffs, who was her godfather, so she took the initiative and found me.  Now I have found out that she’s a successful career gal, AND that she became a Jew five years ago.  And that she’s getting ready to make Aliyah to Israel later this year.  And that her mother studied for the Lutheran ministry at about the time I was training to be a rabbi.  And she’s now pastor of a small church in Wisconsin.  All this was in my in-box when I awoke on Thursday morning and opened my e-mail!

                So for me, as someone who doesn’t always work as hard as I should to keep in touch with friends from whom I’ve moved far, the internet and social networking are most definitely a blessing.  But what about those who have experienced trauma as a result of contacts made on such media?  I would say this:  keep your vital personal information as close to your vest as you can.  And never completely trust someone whom you don’t already know – unless they have references from others whom you trust.  And even then…be wary.  When I get ‘friend’ requests from people I simply cannot identify, I always question them.  Do I know you?  If it turns out it’s someone I indeed know, but forgot, I’m willing to ask forgiveness.

                But why not just eliminate the risk by staying away from the cyber-world?

                Of course, that’s a valid approach.  But unless you have something to hide, it’s better to enable others to find you.  A few years ago, I was looking for someone out of my past.  I wasn’t doing so with any malicious intent; I wanted to repay an old debt.  A letter came back to me, and an extensive search online turned up nothing.  I thought she had died!  But she was very much alive; she simple had no online presence.  No e-mail, no Facebook, no Google hits.  Several years later she contacted me.  And how did she find me?  Through my online presence, of course.

                So the electronic media present us with incredible opportunities – along with some danger.  And the way to account for the danger is the same wisdom that we should already be applying to every way that we communicate.  Learn to step back.  Consider.  Let the passions die down.  Communicate rationally.  Think about what we’re exposing of ourselves.  Avoid saying things we’ll regret later.  And be ready to ask forgiveness if we end up sending something we shouldn’t have sent.  But since we’re following all these caveats already anyway – aren’t we? – then we should not fear the electronic or mass media.  We should allow them to bless us with the possibilities of maintaining, or renewing, old connections.  With the possibility of forming new connections.  Because our connections are what make the difference between a life and an existence.  They make life worthwhile.  Connections are why most of you are here in shul tonight.  So, connect away!  Even in the cyber-world.  But after Shabbat!

 Murder---or Killing?

A Drash for Friday, 8 February 2013

                When I served as a military chaplain, people often asked me a question that threw me for a loop at first, until I was used to hearing it.  The question was, how a rabbi can serve in a war-making organisation.  This, since the Torah outlaws killing.  I mean, doesn’t it?  Thou shalt not kill; it is one of the Ten Commandments, or as I like to call them, ‘The Top Ten.’  Some of you have long known that ‘Thou shalt not kill’ is an inaccurate translation of the Hebrew Lo tirtzach.  Some of you know that the better translation is, Thou shalt not Murder.  Perhaps obviously, all murder is killing…but not all killing is murder.  The generally accepted definition is murder is, Unlawful killing, with malice aforethought, of another person.  That definition obviously excludes unintentional killing.  Or killing that’s intentional, but not with malice, as in for self-defence.  Although perhaps not so obvious, it also excludes some killing in battle, of enemy combatants.

                It also excludes the prescribed killing of a convicted murderer.  That is to say, killing carried out by order of a court of law.  Otherwise known as capital punishment.  Killing for capital punishment is not only allowed, but sometimes required by Jewish law, as we see in today’s Torah reading.  The reading gives the three offences, for which capital punishment is prescribed:  murder, abuse of one’s parents, and kidnapping.

                The death penalty for cases of Murder and kidnapping is logical.  Even those who don’t agree with capital punishment for any crime, would agree that these two crimes particularly stand out in their severity, especially when committed under what we now call ‘aggravated circumstances.’  A murdered person has, after all, been deprived of his life permanently by the killer’s malicious forethought.  The victim of a kidnapping has by definition experienced liberation, unless kidnapping is combined with homicide.  But the victim will likely be scarred for life by the brutality of the crime.  We don’t often think of one who has insulted or injured his parents as being quite on the same level as a murderer or kidnapper.  But think about it:  in Jewish law, one is commanded to have reverence for one’s parents, as for G-d.  That’s because your parents have literally created you as partners with G-d.  That makes the office of parent a lofty office indeed!  Therefore, insult and abuse to one’s parents is considered a particularly serious offence.

                Now, some people who oppose all capital punishment do so on moral grounds.  That is to say, they find the idea of state-sponsored killing of even the worst offenders to be anathema.  But many people oppose capital punishment on more pragmatic grounds.  This argument says that, no matter how long and drawn-out the process of executing the convicted criminal, it is possible that someone may be mistakenly put to death.  After all, we have seen cases where a man’s conviction for a crime has been overturned because of new, or previously-suppressed evidence, many years after the verdict.  It’s true that someone thus freed can never get back the years they were wrongly imprisoned.  But had they been executed instead, there would be no redemption at all possible.

                This is certainly a valid concern, and Jewish law accounts for it as well.  According to Halachah, one can only be sentenced to death on the testimony of two eye witnesses.  But the Rabbis put a further safeguard into the process.  The killer must have been warned that he faced death of he went through with the commission of his crime.  Some would say that these safeguards made capital punishment in Jewish law a near-impossibility.  It would have made it a theoretical threat for certain crimes, but almost never carried out.  And this is for some, the reasoning behind making executions so difficult for the state to seek and achieve, even in countries that do have capital punishment such as the USA.  That it would serve as a theoretical deterrent to certain crimes, even when rarely carried out.

                To those who suggest that capital punishment provides no proven deterrent to the crimes for which it can be applied, Dennis Prager offers a suggestion for an elegant test of this theory.  It should be decreed, and widely publicised, that capital punishment will be applied to murders that take place on odd-numbered days of each month – and the state will vigorously pursue executions for murders committed on those days.  Meanwhile, the state cannot pursue executions, only life imprisonment as a maximum, for such crimes committed on even days.  If the public is convinced that the state will, in fact do as stated, within half a year there should be a clear trend of higher incidence of murders on even days if capital punishment is indeed a viable deterrent. Obviously it isn’t going to happen!  Unworkable though it is, I think it is elegant in its logic and would likely show some result.

                When criminologists interview convicted criminals in prison or on death row, they often ask why the threat of prison or death did not deter them from their crimes.  And their answers most often fall into one of two categories.  The first is that the passions that led to the crime overpowered any logic as to the consequences.  The second is that so many convicted criminals escape either fully or in part from paying commensurate to their crimes, that there was no real deterrent.  This suggests that extreme punishments – whether death, or locking-them-up-and-throwing-away-the-key, can indeed serve as deterrents to extreme crimes.

                The Torah is sometimes accused of being a brutal document.  Passages like today’s reading often serve as fodder for thinking this.  As we also see in this week’s reading, the Torah puts limits on slavery.  Yet it does not take the position of completely outlawing slavery or capital punishment.  The wisdom of the Torah lessens the probability of killing for purposes of extraction of justice.  But it leaves the possibility intact.  I would argue that this is evidence of the Divine Wisdom that the Torah reflects.  Because remember, the conversation that Torah engenders is traditionally considered as Divine as the text of the Written Torah itself.  So the limits that the Rabbis placed on the extraction of the Ultimate Penalty, should be seen as a natural outcome of the Written Torah’s prescription.  The conversation, extending over the centuries and continuing even today, is what defines Jewish tradition.  So even as we debate and argue the morality of capital punishment in our day, we should understand that as part of G-d’s intent.  Shabbat shalom.