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<a style="color:#888;font-size:22px;font-family:Arial,Helvetica,Sans-Serif;font-weight:normal;text-decoration:none;" href="http://www.aishdas.org/asp" title="(http://www.aishdas.org/asp)">Aspaqlaria</a>
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<a href="http://www.aishdas.org/asp/2007/04/the-butlers-dilemma.shtml">The Butler’s Dilemma</a>
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<span>Posted:</span> 12 Apr 2007 11:59 AM CDT</h3>
<div style="margin:0;font-family:Georgia,Helvetica,Arial,Sans-Serif;line-height:140%;font-size:13px;color:#000000;"><p>A moral dilemma taken from the <a target="_blank" href="http://dilbertblog.typepad.com/the_dilbert_blog/">Dilbert Blog</a> by <a target="_blank" href="http://www.dilbert.com">newspaper cartoonist</a>, Scott Adams:</p>
<blockquote><p>Let’s say you’re the butler to a billionaire who lives alone. The billionaire dies in his sleep. You know he owns a large piece of jewelry that no one else has seen, and you have access to it.</p>
<p>If you steal the piece of jewelry, sell it, and give the money to an African charity, you can feed an entire village for a year. The village would otherwise starve. If you don’t steal the jewelry, it will go to his surviving family who has so much money they won’t care about it.</p>
<p>Obviously it is illegal to steal the jewelry and feed the starving village in Africa. But do you have a moral obligation to commit the crime for the greater good?</p>
<p>And if so, do you likewise have a moral obligation to steal anything else you can get your hands, from dead billionaires or living neighbors, if you can use the stolen property for the greater good?</p></blockquote>
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<p>The problem becomes much simpler within a halachic framework. A person who stole to feed his own children is still violating the prohibition against <em>geneivah</em>. It is only when one deals with <em>mitzvos</em> like “<em>ve’asisa hatov vehayashar</em> — and you shall do the good and the just” that one is called upon to make one’s own moral choices. Otherwise, the choice is on a legal level — and charity doesn’t trump theft.
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