[Avodah] Some thoughts on Shemonah Perakim

[T613K at aol.com]

From: "Michael Makovi" _mikewinddale at gmail.com_ 
(mailto:mikewinddale at gmail.com) 


>>Another comment: we are brought to the vexed question of why  G-d
commanded the rational commands, if they are indeed  rational.<<





>>>>>
The answer to this is closely related to that  famous quote, "If there is no 
G-d, everything is permitted."  Even if  people know that there is a G-d, but 
He has not clearly said what is permitted  and what is forbidden, then 
everything is permitted.
 
Man is a rational animal who can rationalize away every crime.  All  
societies consider murder to be wrong, for example -- that's a very rational  
commandment.  Yet many people feel very comfortable with abortion, even  late term 
abortions and even when done in a very gruesome way (e.g., partial  birth 
abortions.)  Many people feel comfortable with performing "abortions"  even a few 
days or weeks /after/ the baby is born, if it turns out to be  defective or if i
t's an unwanted girl in ancient Greece or modern China.   There is a famous 
Harvard professor of ethics (!), Peter Singer, who openly  advocates infanticide. 
  Many Arabs feel very comfortable with honor  killings and have no qualms 
about killing a sister who has been raped, to save  the family honor.  Lots of 
people favor euthanasia to get rid of old  people, sick people, "useless" 
people, comatose people.  In the famous  Terri Schiavo case, where a woman was 
/not/ on life support but did need a  feeding tube, a Florida judge ruled that her 
life was not worth living and  ordered the removal of the feeding tube, and 
her slow death by starvation.   It took her days to die even without food and 
water, but the judge was  humane -- he ordered sedation for pain relief, on the 
off chance that a  brain-damaged person could feel pain.  In this, he was 
more humane  than the people who carve up babies in their mothers' wombs without  
anesthesia.
 
To take another category of sin as an example, most societies throughout  
history have considered laws against sodomy to be "rational."  Only in  our 
generation did something that was always considered a mishpat turn into a  chok.  
Why can't a man marry a man?  In the past, such a question  would have elicited 
laughter.  Today people look at it and say, "Very  strange, the Torah is 
incomprehensible, but we just have to accept what we can't  understand because 
Hashem said so, hard as it is."



--Toby  Katz
=============


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