[Avodah] taker but not giver

[Zev Sero]

On 13/3/23 15:13, Micha Berger via Avodah wrote:
> On Mon, Mar 13, 2023 at 10:02:06AM -0400, Zev Sero via Avodah wrote:
>>> What are the grounds for saying that mishum eivah ever means "because
>>> otherwise they may come to hate us enoug to kill us"? In other contexts
>>> it means "because it fosters hatred, and hatred is bad."

>> Because there is no basis for permitting chilul shabbos simply to avoid
>> "hatred".  The only heter we are given is pikuach nefesh, so we have to be
>> able to relate it to that.

> This is simply presuming your conclusion, isn't it?

No, it's basic halacha, that everyone knows.  Where do you find a heter 
for chilul shabbos, other than pikuach nefesh?  The heter for healing a 
Yisrael is "vachai bahem", or "mutav shetischalel shabbos achas".  Where 
do you find any other heter?


>> And also because any explanation we come up with has to explain why before
>> 1800 it was *completely forbidden* to do this, and all the poskim insisted
>> we should *not* be concerned about eiva...

> This is true either way. Under the Romans, grounds for slaughter were
> pretty arbitrary, and all the more so for subjugated peoples who had a
> long history of rebellion. How could anything be permitted in the 1800s
> that weren't permitted in your perception of Chazal's Israel?

What do you mean, my perception?   Are you seriously asserting that 
breaking shabbos to heal nochrim *was* permitted before 1800?!  Every 
single posek before that date explicitly says it is forbidden!   I can 
explain what changed, but you can't ignore that it *did* change!  You 
can't pretend that this is an old halacha.   And what authority did the 
poskim of the Enlightenment have to permit what Chazal and all the 
Rishonim and Acharonim forbade, if *not* because they determined that it 
was pikuach nefesh, so the long-standing heter for that applied?


-- 
Zev Sero            “Were we directed from Washington when to sow
zev at sero.name       and when to reap, we should soon want bread.”
		    –Thomas Jefferson: Autobiography, 1821.