Development Site - Changes here will not affect the live (production) site.

Allowing Others to Take Advantage of You Is No Mitzvah

Sept. 8 2016

Analyzing a contemporary halakhic ruling by Rabbi Asher Weiss, Gil Student argues that, while the Torah demands scrupulous honesty—especially in business dealings—it does not demand making oneself a victim of exploitation. His conclusion, based primarily on medieval rabbinic works, is perhaps best illustrated by a midrashic tale about the biblical Jacob:

[The Talmud] asks why Jacob, on meeting Rachel, said that he was her father Laban’s brother (Genesis 29:12). Jacob was [in fact] Rachel’s cousin, not her uncle. The [Talmud then] explains that the following conversation ensued between the two. Jacob asked Rachel to marry him. She replied that he cannot marry her because her father is a master of trickery. Jacob replied that he was Laban’s brother, i.e. peer, in trickery.

Is it proper for Jacob to try to trick someone who is going to trick him? The Talmud defends the practice with a passage that appears twice in the Bible: “With the merciful You show Yourself to be merciful; with the upright You show Yourself to be upright; with the pure You show Yourself to be pure and with the crooked You show Yourself to be shrewd” (2 Samuel 22:26-27; Psalms 18:27-28). . . .

[Ancient and modern rabbis are not] permitting dishonesty. They are permitting leveling the playing field: realistic behavior that does not automatically disadvantage those who are honest. The Torah does not require you to be a sucker.

Read more at Torah Musings

More about: Halakhah, Jacob, Jewish ethics, Religion & Holidays, Talmud

The Summary: 10/7/20

Two extraordinary events demonstrate something important about Israel’s most fervent adversaries. One was a speech given at something called The People’s Forum (funded generously by Goldman Sachs), which stated, “When the state of Israel is finally destroyed and erased from history, that will be the single most important blow we can give to destroying capitalism and imperialism.”

The suggestion that this tiny state is the linchpin of a global, centuries-old phenomenon like capitalism goes well beyond anything resembling rational criticism. Even if Israel were guilty of genocide, apartheid, and oppression—which of course it is not—it would not follow that its destruction would help end capitalism or imperialism.

The other was an anti-Israel protest that took place in front of New York City’s Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, deemed “complicit” in Israel’s evils. At organizers’ urging, participants shouted their slogans at kids in the cancer ward, who were watching from the windows. Given Hamas’s indifference toward the lives of Gazan children, such callousness toward non-Palestinian children from Hamas’s Western allies shouldn’t be surprising. The protest—like the abovementioned speech—deliberately conveyed the message that Israel is the ultimate evil and its destruction the ultimate good, cancer patients be damned.

The fact that Israel’s adversaries are almost comically perverse does not mean that they can be dismissed. If its allies fail to understand the obsessive and irrational hatred that it faces, they cannot effectively help it defend itself.

Read more at Mosaic