[Avodah] Hypocrisy in halakhah

[kennethgmiller at juno.com]

R' Zev Sero wrote:
> We owe them only the basic duty that every person owes
> every other: not to harm them, not to steal from them,
> not to defraud them.  But we have no positive obligation
> to help them in any way; we do have such a duty to our
> brothers, precisely because they are our brothers.

So, theoretically, if we see someone in a sakanah on Shabbos, doing a melacha to rescue him is *not* among the basic duties which we owe to people in general, but is only something which we'd do for a brother. In practice, of course, we *would* rescue even a non-brother, but only to insure that he'd rescue us if the situation were reversed, *not* because it is a "basic duty". Is that what you're saying? 

If so, I can accept it as a halacha, because we understand how important Shabbos is. But it seems to me that the goal of this "basic duty / brothers" explanation is to explain things in a manner which would sound fair to the non-brother. But it won't. He will not accept it as fair unless his religion is similarly discriminatory against us.

Akiva Miller
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