[Avodah] right and wrong

[Eli Turkel via Avodah]

Tangential to some of the recent discussions I wish to point out that the
defintion of right and wrong is subjective and indeed changes through
history.
As one example consider the recent post on love from
http://www.talmudology.com/

In the 1440s in England, Elizabeth Paston, the twenty-year old daughter of
minor gentry, was told by her parents that she was to marry a man thirty
years her senior. Oh, and he was disfigured by smallpox.  When she refused, she
was beaten <https://archive.org/stream/pastonsandtheir00benngoog> "once in
the week, or twice and her head broken in two or three places." This
persuasive technique worked, and reflected a theme in Great Britain, where
Lord Chief Baron Matthew Hale  declared
<https://books.google.com/books?id=y39FAAAAcAAJ&lpg=PA491&ots=3KcjInZC5R&dq=by%20the%20law%20of%20God%2C%20of%20nature%20or%20of%20reason%20and%20by%20the%20Common%20Law%2C%20the%20will%20of%20the%20wife%20is%20subject%20to%20the%20will%20of%20the%20husband.&pg=PA491#v=onepage&q=by%20the%20law%20of%20God,%20of%20nature%20or%20of%20reason%20and%20by%20the%20Common%20Law,%20the%20will%20of%20the%20wife%20is%20subject%20to%20the%20will%20of%20the%20husband.&f=true>
in
1662 that "by the law of God, of nature or of reason and by the Common Law,
the will of the wife is subject to the will of the husband." Things weren't
any better in the New Colonies, as Ann Little points out (in a gloriously
titled article
<https://books.google.com/books?id=iuAzDHsAHT0C&printsec=frontcover&dq=lethal+imagination&hl=en&sa=X&ei=XcNMVfu_E8qhNr37gagJ&ved=0CB4Q6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=ye%20rule&f=false>
 "*Shee would Bump his Mouldy Britch; Authority, Masculinity and the
Harried Husbands of New Haven Colony 1638-1670.*) The governor of the New
Haven Colony was  found guilty of "not pressing ye rule upon his wife."

What was obvious in one generation is no longer regarded as true today.
Similar arguments apply to slavery


-- 
Eli Turkel
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