[Avodah] Revenge and Punishment

[Micha Berger]

On Thu, Feb 18, 2010 at 12:40:16PM -0500, Zev Sero wrote:
: Micha Berger wrote:
: >You are confusing the need for justice with revenge.

: Revenge *is* justice.

This is very wrong. Retributive Justice is only one theory of justice.
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/legal-punishment/#LegPunJus has a
better discussion than I could bother producing.

...
: >We say Hashem yiqom
: >damo and thereby take revenge out of the hands of people who can feel
: >vengeful and elevate it to HQBH's hanhagah of the universe.

: Where do you get that?  We say HYD because we're not able to.

Where do you get that?

: >"Keil qanah"
: >no more refers to revenge than Av haRachamim refers to actually feelings
: >of mercy.

: But when we ask Him for mercy we mean it literally.  And when we ask Him
: for vengeance we mean it just as literally.

No we don't. We do not ask for G-d to have a middah He doesn't have. We
ask for him to act in a way that a human being would act when feeling
merciful.

But more than that, the word "neqamah" isn't limited to revenge.
See Sanhedrin 92a, where we see that Hashem's neqamah is only great
because of its positive effects, not because revenge is a good thing.
(See also the Maharsha ad loc, who writes that Divine Nekamah involved a
unification of Chesed and Din.

: >This is why writing VelaMeshumadim, the berakhah that evolved into
: >VelaMalshinim required Rabban Gamliel to find the one person capable of
: >writing it.

: They were still Yehudim.

Oyvei amekha too?

: >All this ties back to your denial (2-1/2 years ago) of the position of a
: >dozen or so baalei mesorah about Chatzi Hallel on the 7th day of Pesach
: >and "maasei Yadai tov'im bayam, ve'atem omerim shirah?"

: I reject it because the gemara in Megillah *explicitly* rejects it, and
: attributes this shita to Haman Harasha, in opposition to Mordechai's
: shita.  

Yes, you know better than Maran Beis Yoseif et al. You're being either
Adar-esque or off the derekh if you think you know the masqanah of the
gemarah better than everyone I named. It would seem the gemara says that
reason alone is insufficient, not that it's untrue. I'm not even asking
you to except their sevara. Rather, only that if the BY considers the
assumption that we feel bad for the need for Mitzriyim to die to be
an acceptable part of his sevara, you should acknowledge that assumption
as being part of Yahadus.

But you won't, we were through this before. And if a dozen mar'eh
meqomos don't prove the point, nothing else will.


Back on topic -- that error feeds this one, as well as your limited
sense of what justice can be based upon. 

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             One doesn't learn mussar to be a tzaddik,
micha at aishdas.org        but to become a tzaddik.
http://www.aishdas.org                         - Rav Yisrael Salanter
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