[Avodah] torture in halacha???

[Zev Sero]

On 14/05/2012 10:03 PM, Micha Berger wrote:
> Hitting someone in order to get a quarter back is itself a minimal
> case or torture.

Not as the term is usually used.


> We're miscommunicating because you are saying that there is no separate
> issur of torture beyond hitting, something to which I agree. I don't think
> hitting in order to get something from someone and torture are different
> things.

I'm not sure there isn't a separate issur.  I just can't think of one.
Maybe it does exist, and someone can find a source for it.  But the
original question assumed that there was such an issur and asked whether
it could ever be overcome, and RLL's answer was that first one must
establish that the issur exists, and then we can talk about its limits.

  
> However, I am saying that the question of issur veheter and what
> constitutes sufficient justification for torture does exist -- because
> the question exists for hitting.

Oh, OK.

-- 
Zev Sero        "Natural resources are not finite in any meaningful
zev at sero.name    economic sense, mind-boggling though this assertion
                  may be. The stocks of them are not fixed but rather
		 are expanding through human ingenuity."
		                            - Julian Simon