Welcome Information Connoisseurs

Welcome Information Connoisseurs
Showing posts with label Gemara. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Gemara. Show all posts

Sunday, March 18, 2012

The Other Side of the Talmud Debate

Michael Hoffman Refutes a Defense of the Talmud


Unless (or until) it is removed by Chabad.org, as of March 18, the following link will take you to a  20-minute video of a lecture given at Oxford University by Dr. Asaf Yedidya: “NAZI ATTACKS ON THE TALMUD: ANTI-SEMITIC READINGS OF JEWISH TEXTS.” 


Dr. Yedidya is "lecturer in Jewish History at the Center for Jewish Studies at Bar-Ilan University." 


You should watch Dr. Yedidya's lecture first, and then the following 19-minute response to the lecture by Michael Hoffman.



Christian scholar Michael Hoffman’s response to Dr. Asaf Yedidya’s lecture

In his reply, Hoffman points out the use of misdirection and censored texts in the Oxford lecture and the inaccuracies and omissions employed in order to demonize Talmud critics and uphold the alleged benevolence of the Talmud Bavli. Hoffman documents Talmudic racism and homicide by quoting from the Gemara itself, as well as rabbinic authorities having the status of Posek Ha-dor and Gadol Ha-dor.

 Michael Hoffman is the author of the Amazon Kindle book, Judaism Discovered and a condensed paperback version for the general reader, Judaism’s Strange Gods. For more information visit www.revisionisthistory.org


***

Friday, December 30, 2011

Orthodox Judaism treats women like filthy little things

If a man and a woman are drowning in a river, first they'll save the man, 'who is obligated to perform more commandments,' whereas a woman's 'wisdom is only in the spindle.' In fact, 'words of Torah should be burned rather than being given to women.'

By Yossi Sarid (Israeli writer) • Haaretz newspaper: December 30, 2011

Read this article in Hebrew: http://www.haaretz.co.il/opinions/1.1604955

"We will direct your attention to (Talmud) Tractate Shabbat, which does a good job of summing up halakha's attitude toward women: 'a sack full of excrement with a bleeding hole."

If you would like to know the source from which your brothers derive their brazen behavior, go over to the study hall and open a page of Talmud. It's true that the Torah has 70 faces, but the trend of these faces is clear: The source of the pollution is in halakha (Jewish law) itself. 

What is happening in Beit Shemesh and its satellites is not "contrary to halakha," it is mandated by halakha. And the rest will be told to the grandmothers, daughters and granddaughters. 

Anyone ignoramus knows that the Torah's "ways are ways of pleasantness," that "the honor of a king's daughter is within," and that "proper behavior comes before the Torah," but it's worth knowing more. It's worth knowing that a woman is unfit to be a judge, and is also unfit to give testimony. She is unfit for any public position with authority. "Thou shalt appoint a king over thee" - a king and not a queen. A daughter, commanded the sages, must not be taught Torah, because "the mind of woman is not suited to be taught, but [only] to words of nonsense." Women are light-minded and have little knowledge. 

And if a man and a woman are drowning in a river, first they'll save the man, "who is obligated to perform more commandments," whereas a woman's "wisdom is only in the spindle." In fact, "words of Torah should be burned rather than being given to women." 

A man must say three blessings every day during morning prayers: He thanks God "that He didn't make me a gentile, that He didn't make me a woman, that He didn't make me an ignoramus." And it's not proper to speak to a woman too much, since "all her conversation is nothing but words of adultery," and whoever talks to her too much "causes evil to himself and will end up inheriting hell." And let's not even talk about the fate of someone "who looks even at a woman's little finger." 

The extremists who spit at women, who call themselves Sikarikim, learned their lesson 101 times and learned it well: A husband would do well not to let his wife go outside, into the street, and should restrict her outings "to once or twice a month, as necessary, since a woman has no beauty except by sitting in the corner of her house." Because inside the house - very deep inside - her glorious honor awaits her: "Every woman washes her husband's face and feet and pours him a cup and prepares his bed and stands and serves her husband. And any woman who refrains from doing any of these tasks that she is obligated to perform - is forced to do them." Some recommend forcing her with a whip or by starvation "until she gives in." And needless to say, she is at her husband's disposal whenever he is overcome by a desire "to satisfy his urges with her." And if she continues to rebel, he always has the right "to divorce her without her consent." 

And there are many similar halakhot, only a few of which we have collected here. Nor have we cited everything in the name of the ones who said them, for lack of space. The readers are invited to find the references on Shabbat - and to browse around - on their own; this is a good opportunity for study. 

We will direct your attention to Tractate Shabbat, which does a good job of summing up halakha's attitude toward women: "a sack full of excrement" with a bleeding hole. Some people will seek to console themselves: It's true that this is the halakha both m'doraita (from the Torah ) and m'drabanan (from the rabbis ), but that is not what is taught nowadays. 

But it suffices to listen to the sermon the sage Rabbi Ovadia Yosef delivered five years ago, based on the well-known halakhic work Kitzur Shulchan Aruch:  "A man must take care not to walk between two women or between two dogs or two pigs, and men should also not allow a woman or a dog or a pig to walk between them." 

Treating women as impure and filthy begins with halakha and continues with actions.  As long as the religious and ultra-Orthodox (Israeli political) parties - Shas, United Torah Judaism, Habayit Hayehudi and National Union, none of which have any women in the Knesset - are not disqualified, their nakedness will continue to sing out and the nakedness of the land will be revealed. (End quote from Yossi Sarid). 
______________ 

Learn more about the Kitzur Shulchan Aruch and Orthodox Judaism's subjugation of women: read Judaism's Strange Gods
______________ 


Michael's Hoffman's Truth Mission is solely supported by the sale of his books, newsletters, CDs and DVDs,  and your financial support. 
______________

Independent History and Research, P.O. Box 849, Coeur d'Alene, Idaho 83816 USA 
______________

Saturday, April 09, 2011

New Jersey Rabbi used religious charity to launder nearly $1 million

“...an underground money transfer network that stretched from Brooklyn all the way to Israel.”

"Also arrested was a man charged with brokering the sale of a human kidney.”

Rabbi Fish “...would not use the word cash, but instead referred to laundered money as ‘gemoras,' a reference to part of the Talmud...”

Orthodox rabbi pleads guilty to using religious charities to hide $1M for Solomon Dwek

By Ted Sherman | The Star-Ledger (New Jersey) | April 9, 2011 

Rabbi Mordchai Fish, left, admitted Friday that he let FBI informant Solomon Dwek, right, use his charities to channel $900,000 in illegal funds.

Of all those targeted in what became the biggest FBI sting operation in New Jersey history, Mordchai Fish was among the most secretive.

He changed cell phones constantly. He spoke in code, using Talmudic references to set up meetings to exchange cash. He constantly worried aloud about electronic bugs and had cash couriers all over Borough Park.

On Friday, the tearful, 58-year-old Orthodox rabbi from Brooklyn pleaded guilty in federal court to a money laundering scheme that used religious charities to hide nearly $1 million in funds he thought had come out of a massive bank fraud and a counterfeit designer handbag operation.

Fish was one of 44 people initially charged in the widespread sting, which came to light in July 2009 with the arrests of three mayors, two legislators, five rabbis and dozens of public officials and candidates for office. Also arrested was a man charged with brokering the sale of a human kidney.

At the center of it all was failed Monmouth County developer Solomon Dwek, an informer who entered into a cooperation deal with federal prosecutors after he was arrested for trying to pass $50 million in bad checks at a bank drive-through window.

With the politicians, Dwek posed as a corrupt developer by the name of David Esenbach, who gave out FedEx envelopes stuffed with cash to anyone who would help expedite a series of phony real estate deals concocted by the FBI. More than a dozen have already pleaded guilty to corruption charges.

Separately, using his own identity, Dwek arranged to launder millions of dollars in a series of tax scams using religious charities — a scheme in which money was given to charitable funds and religious schools, and then kicked back in cash, minus a 10 percent cut.

Dwek, in setting up Fish and others, repeatedly told them that he was looking to pull cash out of his bankrupt real estate empire and from a "schnookie" bank deal gone bad. Later, he claimed he had profits he was trying to hide coming out of a counterfeit, high-end designer handbag business.

Last week, another rabbi caught in the same sting, Saul Kassin, the 89-year-old spiritual leader of the nation’s largest Syrian Sephardic Jewish congregation, pleaded guilty to one count of operating an unlicensed money-transmitting business.

In court Friday (April 8) before U.S. District Judge Joel A. Pisano in Trenton, Fish, who broke down repeatedly, pleaded guilty to an information charging him with money laundering conspiracy.

Fish admitted that he began meeting with Dwek in early 2008, and agreed to a series of transactions that were funneled through several community charities known as "gmachs," which Fish controlled.

Prosecutors said the checks were deposited into bank accounts held in the names of the charities, and Fish would subsequently arrange to make cash available through an underground money transfer network that stretched from Brooklyn all the way to Israel.

According to criminal complaints filed in the case, Fish was among the most furtive of those caught on surveillance video. He would constantly change cell phones and speak in an amalgam of English, Yiddish and Hebrew, to set up meetings.

The transcripts show he would not use the word cash, but instead referred to laundered money as "gemoras," a reference to part of the Talmud — the collection of Jewish law and tradition that explains the Five Books of Moses.

Among the transcripts included a recording of Fish and Dwek together in a car on their way to pick up cash in Brooklyn. As they drove, Dwek would mention the cross streets to which they were headed.
"I’m nervous now," Fish was heard on the surveillance tape. "Don’t even say the street in this car."

Dwek, who was wired for sound and video with a hidden miniature camera, assured Fish there was nothing to worry about. He had the car swept, he said.

"Swept, shmept," replied Fish.

He told the judge Friday he engaged in approximately 15 money laundering transactions with Dwek, helping convert approximately $900,000 in checks into more than $800,000 in cash, after receiving his cut.

Fish’s attorney, Michael Bachner of New York, said it was a difficult day for his client. "After due consideration with his family and loved ones, Rabbi Fish decided that it was proper and right to acknowledge his behavior," said Bachner. "He is looking forward to putting this matter behind him so that he can continue to engage himself in the work he has always dedicated himself to, which is the care of troubled youth in the community.”

Fish is scheduled to be sentenced July 28, when he faces a maximum of 20 years in prison and a $250,000 fine, although under federal sentencing guidelines is likely to be exposed to anywhere between 33 months to as much as five years. In addition, Fish agreed to forfeit approximately $90,000.

***

Monday, August 09, 2010

Hoffman contra Wilders: Sharia Law protested, Talmudic Law not an issue

Michael Hoffman’s dissent immediately follows the article below, which was circulated by Mr. Paul Fromm of the Canadian Association for Free Expression

______________

WARNING ABOUT ISLAM BY GEERT WILDERS

In a generation or two, the US will ask itself: Who lost Europe?

Here is the speech of Geert Wilders, Chairman, Party for Freedom, the Netherlands, at the Four Seasons, New York, introducing an Alliance of Patriots and announcing the Facing Jihad Conference in Jerusalem 
Dear friends,

Thank you very much for inviting me. I come to America with a mission.  All is not well in the old world.  There is a tremendous danger looming, and it is very difficult to be optimistic. We might be in the final stages of the Islamization of Europe.  This not only is a clear and present danger to the future of Europe itself, it is a threat to America and the sheer survival of the West.  The United States as the last bastion of Western civilization, facing an Islamic Europe.

First I will describe the situation on the ground in Europe.  Then, I will say a few things about Islam.  To close I will tell you about a meeting in Jerusalem.

The Europe you know is changing. You have probably seen the landmarks.  But in all of these cities, sometimes a few blocks away from your tourist destination, there is another world.  It is the world of the parallel society created by Muslim mass-migration.

All throughout Europe a new reality is rising: entire Muslim neighborhoods where very few indigenous people reside or are even seen.  And if they are, they might regret it.  This goes for the police as well.  It's the world of head scarves, where women walk around in figureless tents, with baby strollers and a group of children.  Their husbands, or slaveholders if you prefer, walk three steps ahead.  With mosques on many street corners.  The shops have signs you and I cannot read.  You will be hard-pressed to find any economic activity.  These are Muslim ghettos controlled by religious fanatics.  These are Muslim neighborhoods, and they are mushrooming in every city across Europe. These are the building-blocks for territorial control of increasingly larger portions of Europe, street by street, neighborhood by neighborhood, city by city.

There are now thousands of mosques throughout Europe.  With larger congregations than there are in churches.  And in every European city there are plans to build super-mosques that will dwarf every church in the region.  Clearly, the signal is: we rule.

Many European cities are already one-quarter Muslim: just take Amsterdam , Marseille and Malmo in Sweden .  In many cities the majority of the under-18 population is Muslim.  Paris is now surrounded by a ring of Muslim neighborhoods.  Mohammed is the most popular name among boys in many cities.
In some elementary schools in Amsterdam the farm can no longer be mentioned, because that would also mean mentioning the pig, and that would be an insult to Muslims.

Many state schools in Belgium and Denmark only serve halal food to all pupils.  In once-tolerant Amsterdam gays are beaten up almost exclusively by Muslims.  Non-Muslim women routinely hear 'whore, whore'.  Satellite dishes are not pointed to local TV stations, but to stations in the country of origin.

In France school teachers are advised to avoid authors deemed offensive to Muslims, including Voltaire and Diderot; the same is increasingly true of Darwin.  The history of the Holocaust can no longer be taught because of Muslim sensitivity.

In England sharia courts are now officially part of the British legal system. Many neighborhoods in France are no-go areas for women without head scarves.  Last week a man almost died after being beaten up by Muslims in Brussels , because he was drinking during the Ramadan.

Jews are fleeing France in record numbers, on the run for the worst wave of anti-Semitism since World War II.  French is now commonly spoken on the streets of Tel Aviv and Netanya, Israel.  I could go on forever with stories like this. Stories about Islamization.

A total of fifty-four million Muslims now live in Europe.  San Diego University recently calculated that a staggering 25 percent of the population in Europe will be Muslim just 12 years from now. Bernard Lewis has predicted a Muslim majority by the end of this century.

Now these are just numbers.  And the numbers would not be threatening if the Muslim-immigrants had a strong desire to assimilate.  But there are few signs of that.  The Pew Research Center reported that half of French Muslims see their loyalty to Islam as greater than their loyalty to France.  One-third of French Muslims do not object to suicide attacks.  The British Centre for Social Cohesion reported that one-third of British Muslim students are in favor of a worldwide caliphate.  Muslims demand what they call 'respect'.  And this is how we give them respect.  We have Muslim official state holidays. The Christian-Democratic attorney general is willing to accept sharia in the Netherlands if there is a Muslim majority.  We have cabinet members with passports from Morocco and Turkey.

Muslim demands are supported by unlawful behavior, ranging from petty crimes and random violence, for example against ambulance workers and bus drivers, to small-scale riots.  Paris has seen its uprising in the low-income suburbs, the banlieus.  I call the perpetrators 'settlers'.  Because that is what they are.  They do not come to integrate into our societies; they come to integrate our society into their Dar-al-Islam.  Therefore, they are settlers. Much of this street violence I mentioned is directed exclusively against non-Muslims, forcing many native people to leave their neighborhoods, their cities, their countries.  Moreover, Muslims are now a swing vote not to be ignored.

The second thing you need to know is the importance of Mohammed the prophet.  His behavior is an example to all Muslims and cannot be criticized.  Now, if Mohammed had been a man of peace, let us say like Ghandi and Mother Theresa wrapped in one, there would be no problem.  But Mohammed was a warlord, a mass murderer, a pedophile, and had several marriages - at the same time.  Islamic tradition tells us how he fought in battles, how he had his enemies murdered and even had prisoners of war executed.  Mohammed himself slaughtered the Jewish tribe of Banu Qurayza.  If it is good for Islam, it is good.  If it is bad for Islam, it is bad.

Let no one fool you about Islam being a religion.  Sure, it has a god, and a here-after, and 72 virgins.  But in its essence Islam is a political ideology.  It is a system that lays down detailed rules for society and the life of every person.  Islam wants to dictate every aspect of life.  Islam means 'submission'.  Islam is not compatible with freedom and democracy, because what it strives for is sharia.  If you want to compare Islam to anything, compare it to communism or national-socialism, these are all totalitarian ideologies.

Now you know why Winston Churchill called Islam 'the most retrograde force in the world', and why he compared Mein Kampf to the Quran.  The public has wholeheartedly accepted the Palestinian narrative, and sees Israel as the aggressor.  I have lived in this country and visited it dozens of times.  I support Israel.  First, because it is the Jewish homeland after two thousand years of exile up to and including Auschwitz, second because it is a democracy, and third because Israel is our first line of defense.
This tiny country is situated on the fault line of jihad, frustrating Islam's territorial advance.  Israel is facing the front lines of jihad, like Kashmir, Kosovo, the Philippines, Southern Thailand, Darfur in Sudan, Lebanon, and Aceh in Indonesia.  Israel is simply in the way.  The same way West-Berlin was during the Cold War.

The war against Israel is not a war against Israel.  It is a war against the West.  It is jihad.  Israel is simply receiving the blows that are meant for all of us.  If there would have been no Israel , Islamic imperialism would have found other venues to release its energy and its desire for conquest.  Thanks to Israeli parents who send their children to the army and lay awake at night, parents in Europe and America can sleep well and dream, unaware of the dangers looming.

Many in Europe argue in favor of abandoning Israel in order to address the grievances of our Muslim minorities.  But if Israel were, God forbid, to go down, it would not bring any solace to the West.  It would not mean our Muslim minorities would all of a sudden change their behavior, and accept our values.

On the contrary, the end of Israel would give enormous encouragement to the forces of Islam.  They would, and rightly so, see the demise of Israel as proof that the West is weak, and doomed.  The end of Israel would not mean the end of our problems with Islam, but only the beginning.  It would mean the start of the final battle for world domination.  If they can get Israel, they can get everything.

So-called journalists volunteer to label any and all critics of Islamization as a 'right-wing extremists' or 'racists'.  In my country, the Netherlands, 60 percent of the population now sees the mass immigration of Muslims as the number one policy mistake since World War II.  And another 60 percent sees Islam as the biggest threat.  Yet there is a greater danger than terrorist attacks, the scenario of America as the last man standing.  The lights may go out in Europe faster than you can imagine.  An Islamic Europe means a Europe without freedom and democracy, an economic wasteland, an intellectual nightmare, and a loss of military might for America -- as its allies will turn into enemies, enemies with atomic bombs. With an Islamic Europe, it would be up to America alone to preserve the heritage of Rome, Athens and Jerusalem.

Dear friends, liberty is the most precious of gifts.  My generation never had to fight for this freedom, it was offered to us on a silver platter, by people who fought for it with their lives.  All throughout Europe, American cemeteries remind us of the young boys who never made it home, and whose memory we cherish.  My generation does not own this freedom; we are merely its custodians.  We can only hand over this hard won liberty to Europe 's children in the same state in which it was offered to us.  We cannot strike a deal with mullahs and imams.  Future generations would never forgive us. We cannot squander our liberties.  We simply do not have the right to do so. We have to take the necessary action now to stop this Islamic stupidity from destroying the free world that we know.


Michael Hoffman contra Geert Wilders: 
Sharia Law protested, Talmudic Law not an issue

I will address the two main fallacies which Mr. Wilders advances: 1. Alliance with Judaism and Zionism 2. Obsession with the symptoms rather than the root of the European demographic crisis.

1. Alliance with Judaism and Zionism

Wilders claims the Israelis are part of the West. What nonsense. Talmudism was allied with Islam for centuries. Jonathan Pollard's spying benefited Pakistan through Mossad. Today Egypt is an Israeli satrapy.

Who backed Islamic immigration into Europe in the first place? Major Zionist organizations, that's who. Do some research on Marek Halter; also the Conseil Representif des Institutions Juives de France (CRIF).

Talmudists work for the destruction of the West, as annually commemorated in their Ninth of Av  — Tish b’Av rites (see Judaism Discovered). Triumphs of western civilization are regarded by the religion of Orthodox Judaism as disasters and ritually lamented on Tish b’Av.

Mr. Wilders is worried about life under Sharia law, but Europe has been under Halachic (Talmudic) law for decades, without much of a murmur of protest. Does Wilders know the status of a stranger (ger) under the Halacha of the rabbis? He protests rule by Islamic supremacists but works with Zionist supremacists with the supposed joint intention of the restoration of European civilization — a civilization which Orthodox Judaism execrates!

Orthodox Judaism calls western civilization the "kochi ve’otzem yadi of Edom," i.e. the brute strength of their irreconcilable and perpetual racial enemy. Judaism, being more shrewd and duplicitous than Islam, has kept its religious secrets from the prying eyes of outsiders to a far greater extent than Islam.

Even when elite westerners have access to documentation that testifies to the authentic nature of rabbinic Judaism, they refuse to publicize it, in part because they are allied with it through Freemasonry and cognate secret societies which seek the rebuilding of the Third Temple at Jerusalem. Mr. Wilders is oblivious to the religious fanaticism and violence inherent in this rebuilding project, as he is to all the other evil and retrograde aspects of Orthodox Judaism.

As an American and a student of Judaism I am appalled by the extent to which my fellow Americans are serving as puppets of a hidden agenda, when, like Wilders, they shriek and wail about “Sharia law” as if it were in power in state houses across the U.S.

Yet they have zero interest in making the slightest mouse-like peep about the Talmudic law that is increasingly encroaching upon our Constitution and taking over our judiciary and legislature — not a word about Halachic law from the Sharia law protestors. Hence, the latter are very obviously being directed not by American patriots, but by powerful forces who have led them to practice selective indignation concerning the subversive religions (plural) undermining our nation.

 2. Obsession with the symptoms rather than the root of the European demographic crisis

The root of the crisis: selfish, pleasure-addicted European Whites are self-exterminating through contraception and abortion.

Foreign peoples who do not engage in the twin plagues of contraception and abortion will quite naturally replace those indigenous people who do engage in those despicable vices. This is a Law of Nature.

To use Islamic immigrants as an excuse to ally with Zionism and Talmudism is a failure of vision remarkable to behold. By this “logic" European Whites are obliged to support war on Muslim Iran and its “Holocaust” revisionist president. Will we never escape from offering our blood and treasure to the idol of Zionism and Judaism? Will we always be suckered into serving as rabbinic golem in Judaic wars, on the basis of one fantastic alibi or another?

Mr. Wilders and his self-extinguishing European brethren should first look to their own child-hating, death loving and aging societies for the cause of their demise.

Alien ethnics of all nationalities and religions will always rush in to fill a demographic vacuum brought on by the selfishness and degeneracy of baby-despising Europeans. Joining with Israelis in their brutal territorial wars will do absolutely nothing to save Europe from its own debased hedonism.

When European couples are again having five, ten and fifteen children as their great grand-parents did, they will begin their long peregrination on the road to regaining their ancestral lands.

European nations awash in atheism, euthanasia, abortion and birth control will never revive the civilization of their Christian ancestors, no matter how much they lick the Talmudic boots and share in the bloody crimes of rabbis and Zionists.

Hoffman is the editor of the hard-copy Revisionist History newsletter, and the author of Judaism Discovered.

Copyright© 2010 www.RevisionistHistory.org

Sunday, August 23, 2009

Today's Talmud Lesson: Does Zionism violate rabbinic law?

Editor's Note: Here is an interesting short sketch of how the chameleon-like rabbinic law (halacha), which is often situation ethics, except when a core principle is at stake (such as the alleged ethnic and ethical supremacy of "Klal Israel" i.e the "Jewish" nation over the depraved goyim) ---is decided based on the demands of the zeitgeist. For hundreds of years it was a heresy in Judaism to seek to found the Israeli nation-state by armed intervention before the coming of the Moshiach (Messiah). With the success of Zionism however, other halachos were conveniently excavated which justified what had once been forbidden. This is the same spirit that informs the US Supreme Court's situation ethics approach to the US Constitution. This is why Associate Justice Antonin Scalia, the alleged "conservative," is such a keen student of rabbinic halacha.

Glossary note: "Gemara" = Babylonian Talmud


Question: How was it possible to establish the "State of Israel" when the Gemara (Ketubot 111a) says that it is forbidden to rebel against the nations of the world?

Answer: While the Gemara in Ketubot does mention the prohibition of rebelling against the nations of the world, it is not found in the law codes – not in the Rambam (Rabbi Moses Maimonides) or the Shulchan Aruch (of Rabbi Joseph Karo).

There are two possibilities why this is so:

1. It is a dispute and we did not hold this way (Our Rabbi, Ha-Rav Tzvi Yehudah, Le-Netivot Yisrael, vol. 2, p. 217).

2. This is not a legal (halachic) issue but a homilectic (aggadic issue) (see Shut Avnei Nezer, Yoreh Deah #454 and Ha-Rav Menachem Kasher's "Ha-Tekufah Ha-Gedolah," p. 187).

There is a commentary to the Rambam's Sefer Ha-Mitzvot called "Megillat Ester" by Ha-Rav Yitzchak Leon and he did in fact write that it is forbidden to conquer Eretz Yisrael since it is it is forbidden to rebel against the nations of the world.

He (Ha-Rav Yitzchak Leon ) argued with the Ramban who said that it is a mitzvah to conquer the Land of Israel throughout all generations (Additions to the Sefer Ha-Mitzvot, positive mitzvah #4).

It is thus a dispute between the Ramban and the author of "Megillat Ester." According to the general rules of deciding Halacha, we must follow one of them. The Ramban is well-known to all and there are many of his rulings (included) in the Shulchan Aruch, while there is not even one law from the "Megillat Esther."

Furthermore, the Rambam did not cite the Gemara that it is forbidden to rebel against the nations of the world.

***

Monday, June 22, 2009

Talmud permits judicial deviation from the Constitution

Attention conservatives, strict constructionists and all those opposed to judicial "activism" and who want to see the Constitution restored as the law of the land: the Talmudic Tradition embodies a wide range of principles that permit judicial deviation from Constitutional law

"Judicial Discretion in Talmudic Times and the Modern Era"
by A. David Pardo (Law offices of Foley Hoag LLP)


In this Article, I explore judicial discretion under Halakhic law, Anglo-American law, and Israeli law. In Part I, I compare the differences in treatment of judicial discretion between the Palestinian Talmud and the
Babylonian (Bavli) Talmud. In Part II, I explore judicial discretion in the modern era. In Part III, I argue that the Babylonian Talmudic conception of judicial discretion is forthright about the existence and need for discretion, thus avoiding the doctrinal problems that inhere in the Palestinian Talmud. Moreover, I argue that the Bavli should serve as a model approach for coming to terms with the discretion that inheres in our Anglo-American judicial system, which is indispensable for the administration of justice.

The notion of discretion in the exercise of governmental powers is one that vexes scholars and the public alike. Is the mere existence of discretion the first stop on the road to judicial tyranny? Or is it an indispensable element in the pursuit of justice?


Some consider discretion to be “the law of tyrants: It is always unknown: It is different in different men: It is casual, and depends upon constitution, temper, passion. In the best it is oftentimes caprice: In the worst it is every vice, folly, and passion, to which human nature is liable.” This view is codified in an oft-cited provision of the Massachusetts Constitution.

It is also reflected in an engraving on the side of the United States Department of Justice building, in Washington, D.C., summarized by five words: “Where law ends tyranny begins.” Yet, in our system of government, where law ends tyranny need not begin. Where law ends, discretion begins, and the exercise of discretion may mean either beneficence or tyranny, either justice or injustice, either reasonableness or arbitrariness . . . . No government has ever been a government of all laws and not of men . . . . Every government has always been a government of law and of men.

The study of discretion in the judicial process has generated countless treatises and jurisprudential theories. These studies, naturally, analyze this concept from a contemporary perspective that is rooted in modern Anglo-American law.
Judicial discretion, however, is not a new concept or one that is unique to democratic societies. Indeed, it is an issue that has divided post-biblical societies in Ancient Israel. Furthermore, the methods developed by rabbis in the Talmudic era are as relevant now as they were then, in understanding and accepting judicial discretion in our democratic society.

(Emphasis supplied)

Hoffman's note: if anyone has a complete copy of Mr. Pardo's article I would like to have it.

For further reading



***