[Avodah] dina demalchuta

[Lisa Liel]

On 7/20/2011 10:11 AM, Micha Berger wrote:
> Here we have the concept of the validity of civil contracts. We only have
> two buckets: asei vs lav. I would think this is a din in "lo signov",
> for most contracts, and thus Shemu'el's DDD here is "it is a lav to
> violate a civil contract". But I'm not married to that assumption.

See, you say that we only have two buckets.  But that's exactly what you 
haven't established.

(As a caveat, I'm not arguing the point that DDD is what the rabbis have 
established (as noted by Chana), rather than a reconstructed 
interpretation of the original source material.  But you're pursuing a 
different line of argument, and I don't think you've succeeded.  Simply 
stating a thing doesn't make it true.  Not for Zev and not for you.)

Zev is saying that it's not in a bucket.  It's simply a recognition that 
their dinim *are* dinim.  Not that we're necessarily bound by them.

Here's a nafka mina.  If I break US law while not otherwise violating 
halakha, by Zev's reasoning, the halakha has no problem with what I did. 
  But if the US government puts me in jail for it, it's legitimate on 
their part.  The halakha recognizes the legitimacy of their actions.

I was once a camp counselor, and I had some issues with some of the 
inane rules that had been dictated between the time I was a camper and 
the time I returned as a counselor.  I told my campers that I had no 
problem with them violating those particular rules, but that if they got 
caught, they were on their own.  This seems to me a parallel situation. 
  I had rules the campers had to follow.  The camp administration had 
rules as well.  Some of them matched; some of them didn't.  I had rules 
that the camp didn't have, and the camp had rules that I didn't have.  I 
recognized the camp rules, but that didn't mean I considered my campers 
to be bound by them.

Do you see the difference?

Lisa