[Avodah] dina demalchuta

[Zev Sero]

On 19/07/2011 10:37 PM, Micha Berger wrote:
> On Tue, Jul 19, 2011 at 10:27:52PM -0400, Zev Sero wrote:
>>> DDD is not an obligation? You want to say it's an issur against violating
>>> their dinim?
>>
>> No, it's neither one.  Not unless you show me a source that derives
>> such an obligation or prohibition from it...
>
> Then what are you saying DDD is, if Shemu'el was neither telling us
> what to do, nor what not to do?

Shmuel's statement is exactly what it looks like: a statement.  The
kingdom's dinim are valid.  When Reuven sues Shimon in Beis Din over
possession of a house, and Shimon shows his title deed from the land
registry, the BD must accept that as valid proof.  If Reuven says,
"ah, but when I sold it to you you didn't make a halachically valid
kinyan", the BD says that doesn't matter, the kingdom's laws, which
are valid, say that it belongs to Shimon even without a kinyan, or
with a kinyan that is not mentioned in halacha.  If the kingdom's laws
are that whoever pays the property tax is recognised as the valid owner,
and Shimon comes in with his tax receipts, that's valid too.  But if
Shimon comes in with a good-old-fashioned shtar kinyan in Aramaic,
signed by two kosher witnesses, who saw all three kinds of kinyan, but
there's no tax stamp on the contract, and the kingdom's law is that no
contract is valid without a tax stamp, then Reuven gets his house back.
That's what Shmuel says, and that's what he means.


>>>>> or as Rashi puts it
>>>>> explaining R' Tarfon, our obligation of uvi'arta hara'ah miqirbekha.

>>>> Rashi does *not* put it that way; you are simply making that up out of
>>>> thin air.

>>> I am not making anything up -- in fact, I gave you a URL and page number
>>> within the article for you to see where RHS says it.

>> You claimed that *Rashi* put it that way.  He didn't...

> I repeated other's claims -- R' Broyde and RHS, because they happened
> to convince me.

They convinced you to put words in Rashi's mouth that *he did not use*?!!
No, you did that on your own.  Nothing in RHS or RMBroyde's articles
justifies claiming that "Rashi puts it" in a way that he doesn't even
hint at.   Nor does anything in RHS's article justify your claim about
an obligation to turn anyone in; *you* came up with that one.



> The only question I'm interested in is how you read the Rashi so as
> to reach a different conclusion than the one I gave.

The Rashi is only a few words, and I read them exactly as written.
There's no mention of the government, no mention of DDD, and no mention
of "uviarta".  All Rashi says is that "if you did kill then it would
be forbidden to save you".  That's it.  Anything else is someone else's
explanation, and can't be attributed to Rashi.

Oh, and I looked up the Maharshal RHS quotes, and the explanation he
reads into it is very strained.  The Maharshal makes no mention of
secular courts or DDD or anything like that.  His only point is that
just because we can't apply dinei nefashos, doesn't mean we shouldn't
let a rasha come to a just end.  Essentially, lo maalin velo moridin.


-- 
Zev Sero        If they use these guns against us once, at that moment
zev at sero.name   the Oslo Accord will be annulled and the IDF will
                 return to all the places that have been given to them.
		                            - Yitzchak Rabin