חנניה ווייסמאן Chananya Weissman

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How Halacha is Determined

Many people are confused about how halacha (Jewish law) is determined. There are so many rabbis, so many opinions, so much information, so many divergent camps and ways of thinking. What’s a person to do?

To help make sense of it all, here is a concise overview of the main approaches for determining halacha.

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Method #1: Follow the most lenient or personally convenient opinion in all cases.

Best for: Pretending to be religious; being a menuval birshus haTorah (degenerate with the supposed permission of the Torah); bashing Jews with yiras shamayim (fear of heaven); currying favor with the goyim; eroding Orthodoxy; having your cake and eating it, too.

Pro Tip: If you can’t find lenient opinions, create them. Best done by conferring rabbinic ordination on miscreants for this very purpose, citing them as authorities, creating a precedent, then gradually normalizing what was previously unthinkable.

Warning: Your grandchildren will intermarry, become gay, or boomerang to the other extreme and become super religious.

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Method #2: Follow the strictest opinion in all cases.

Best for: Demonstrating how pious you are; making people uncomfortable; turning children off to Judaism.

Pro Tip: Outdo others who follow this method by inventing new stringencies. Rabbis can distinguish themselves by doing the same. There are always new fears and potential dangers, so the possibilities are limitless.

Warning: Every stringency is lenient in some other area (for example, if you are super strict in preventing licentious behavior, you will make it incredibly difficult for singles to date and marry); your children might write a bestselling book for the secular world about how Judaism is a cult.

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Method #3: Do whatever your social group is doing.

Best for: Playing it safe, being popular, not having to think after you learn the ropes.

Pro Tip: You only have to keep up appearances in public or when certain people are watching. The rest of the time you can chill and do what you want.

Warning: You can only function within the protective confines of your social group; your children will be defenseless against peer pressure; you live in quiet terror of your social group turning against you; you probably took a bunch of poison shots.

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Method #4: Do whatever a certain rabbi says, all the time, no questions asked.

Best for: Never having to think again; never having to take responsibility; winning arguments; feeling smart without having to learn.

Pro Tip: Get a feel for which questions to ask and how to ask them, so you get the answers you want and then piously just follow what the rebbe said.

Warning: Ignorance may be bliss, but being an ignoramus has downsides; when they interrogate you in the next world, “I was just following orders” might not be an acceptable response; it doesn’t always fly in this world either; if you picked the wrong rabbi to make all the decisions for you, you took a bunch of poison shots.

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Method #5: Combine your own learning and understanding with direction from rabbis you know and trust to make informed decisions.

Best for: Taking responsibility for your own soul; navigating new and uncomfortable situations without getting misled by fads, peer pressure, propaganda, and Erev Rav; developing a deep sense of self, while remaining true to Torah and tradition; developing a genuine connection with Hashem; avoiding death shots.

Pro Tip: Don’t lose sight of how little you know, but take a moment once in a while to appreciate how far you’ve come.

Warning: Absent a convenient way to make decisions, you will have to muddle through much of the time; you will have little to no social support; you might never fit in anywhere; you might be ostracized and even persecuted.

Bonus Pro Tip: Keep the big picture in mind. It will all be worth it.

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The Torah on Unborn Children – Part 2

Tehillim 19:10 reads as follows: “ יראת ה‘ טהורה עומדת לעד משפטי ה‘ אמת צדקו יחדו”.

Fear of Hashem is pure. It stands forever. The laws of Hashem are true, righteous together.

The Malbim contrasts Hashem’s laws with those of Man, the majority of whom are spiritually impure, and make laws on that basis. Whereas Hashem’s laws stand forever, Man’s laws are short-lived and constantly changing, for they tend to be based on nonsense. Furthermore, Man’s laws are irrational and unjust, even incompatible with one another. The punishments for lawbreakers are so poorly weighed and measured to fit the crime as to be essentially arbitrary.

Wherever you are reading this, you live under a jungle of laws and regulations that make no sense, that ordinary citizens cannot possibly keep track of, that do not fit together with any harmony or consistency, and the definitions of which change to suit those in power. The government can make a criminal out of anyone at any time and throw the book at him – and they do just that when it suits them. Every man is equal under the law, except for everyman.

Hashem’s laws, on the other hand, are divine and objectively just. This is why they stand the test of time like no other.

I heard Rabbi Moshe Tendler, of blessed memory, explain “righteous together” as follows. An individual Torah law by itself might not seem rational or fair. They are righteous when studied and observed together, as a complete package, creating a divine balance for Man in this world.

Consequently, those who pick and choose which parts of the Torah suit them, or who otherwise believe they can improve on the original, are doomed to fail. Not only are they doomed to fail, they are doomed to become that which they hate and fear: hypocritical and unjust.

With this in mind, let us examine the supposed Torah support for enemies of unborn children. Their arguments are based almost invariably on a handful of disparate comments cherry-picked from the vast expanse of the Talmud, with no context provided, in the style of missionaries and snakes.

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Source #1: Until forty days, the fetus is merely water (Yevamos 69B). The baby-killers triumphantly claim that this reflects the actual legal status of unborn children in the early days of gestation. It’s like bathwater. Spill it out.

This is quite easy to refute. First of all, the Torah explicitly states that Hashem killed Ehr and Onan for destroying their seed during marital relations (Bereishis 38). If an actual fetus is nothing but water, then destroying seed is less than even that. Since when is pouring out water punishable by death, even at the hands of heaven?

The Gemara in Nidda 31A makes it abundantly clear that we are talking about far more than mere water. Chazal teach, based on Bilam’s prophecy in Bamidbar 23:10, that Hashem is present when a Jewish husband and wife are together, and He eagerly anticipates the seed from which a righteous child will be born.

So what about the Gemara in Yevamos? Once again, the missionaries conveniently ignore the context. Chazal are discussing the case of the daughter of a Kohen who married an Israelite. Since the wife is assimilated into the tribe of the husband (no apologies to feminists) she is no longer allowed to eat terumah. If she has children with her husband, she remains ineligible to eat terumah even after his death. If she was pregnant at the time of her husband’s death, the child in her womb counts the same as a child that was already born.

If the husband died within forty days of the last time they lived together, she is allowed to eat terumah immediately. If it turns out that she is not pregnant, all well and good. Even if she is pregnant, for the first forty days the fetus is like water – not that one can intentionally eliminate it, but that it doesn’t yet have the technical legal status of a fully formed child, which keeps her a member of her deceased husband’s tribe.

The fetus being like water until forty days is nothing more than a figure of speech, and it was always understood as such until heretics and ignoramuses came along and made a religion out of it.

Their distortion of this Gemara is further vasectomized by the Noda B’Yehuda in responsa 309, cited by the Pischei Teshuva on Even HaEzer 156:4. The Torah states that a woman becomes a yevama if her husband didn’t have a child at the time of his death. What if a woman lived with her husband, he died later that day, and she later gave birth to a living child that was actually conceived after her husband’s death? Would this child release her from being a yevama? Or do we say that at the time of her husband’s death he did not technically have a son?

The Noda B’Yehuda leaves the question unresolved. However, he strongly considers the possibility that a seed inside the mother’s womb that is destined to be born already has the legal status of the father’s child, which has life-altering implications for the widow. This pours water on the claim that the Torah considers a fetus to be mere water. Nonsense.

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Having demonstrated that even a seed in the mother’s womb is extremely important, possibly even having the legal status of a child for certain purposes, it is superfluous to refute claims that a fetus at later dates isn’t a living person with legal status. But for purposes of educating the masses and eviscerating the distorters of our divine Torah, we will examine their other favorite sources.

Source #2: Rashi in his commentary to Sanhedrin 72B states that until a child is born, it is not a nefesh. They interpret this to mean that the child does not yet have a soul, and consequently it does not count. Essentially, it’s just a bunch of cells.

The case in question is a mother who is having a difficult childbirth and her life is directly endangered by the child. The law is that if the child’s head has exited, we are not allowed to harm it to save the mother, for we do not push aside one nefesh to save another. (This has broad implications, and pretty much puts the eugenicists and “ethicists” out of business, please God.) If not, we are allowed to kill the child if necessary to save the mother’s life.

The baby-killers distort this source beyond all recognition. First they surgically extract nine words from Rashi’s commentary – that the unborn child is not a nefesh. They conveniently ignore the fact that this source applies strictly to an extremely rare circumstance, and permits the killing of the child in that case only because the mother is about to die before our eyes. Then they pretend that this is the Torah’s definition of all unborn children, all the time. Since the child is a lifeless, soulless entity, we may eliminate it without the slightest pang of guilt.

Of course, nothing could be further from the truth. No student of Torah will claim that Chazal or Rashi would argue that killing unborn children is some innate right, if not a virtue. The death of an unborn child – especially at the hands of man – is a horrific tragedy that is permitted in the same way that we are permitted to kill a would-be murderer if there is no other way to stop him. That is precisely the comparison the Gemara makes.

But they don’t tell you that.

Furthermore, they misconstrue the word nefesh. When Rashi states that the child is not a nefesh until he is born, he does not mean that the child is just a clump of cells with the mere potential to become something more. Rather, until he is born he does not have the same technical legal status as the mother, to the extent that we intervene if the child is directly endangering the mother’s life. This is clearly illustrated by the Gemara in Sanhedrin 57B, which explicitly refers to a fetus in the mother’s womb as adam, a human being (based on Bereishis 9:6). According to Noahide law, abortion is a capital crime. In reference to this law, the Rambam states as follows (Melachim U’Milchamos 9:4): “A Noahide who kills a nefesh, even a fetus in the mother’s womb, is executed for it.”

The baby-killers and their apologists seem to have missed this Rambam, which explicitly refers to an unborn child as a nefesh. Have we suddenly discovered a previously unknown dispute between Rashi and the Rambam? Of course not. The Torah’s consistent position is that a fetus is alive and precious.

The laws of Hashem are true, righteous together.

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Source #3: “Ubar yerech imo”, a fetus is an appendage of the mother (as opposed to a separate entity). If the fetus is simply a part of the mother’s body, say the missionaries, then the mother should have the right to remove it. Why should hacking a fetus to pieces be any different than getting a manicure or a haircut?

Ah, but we are reasonable people. Eliminating a fetus should at least be considered a form of elective surgery, and elective surgery should only be performed if there is a serious need. What constitutes a serious need? What doesn’t? Hack away.

As usual, the distorters of Torah neglect to provide any context for the three words that suit their agenda. This concept appears in the Talmud in a wide variety of cases, yet, tellingly, eliminating a fetus is not among them. Not even close. What the distorters take as the most natural and obvious application of this concept is not entertained anywhere by Chazal.

They also fail to mention that the very concept of ubar yerech imo is a matter of dispute throughout the Talmud. One opinion is that the fetus is considered part of the mother’s body for certain legalistic purposes, as we will see, while the other side considers the fetus a separate entity because it is destined to separate from the mother. While we ultimately rule according to the former, the fact that this concept is a matter of dispute is very significant. No student of the Torah would argue that Chazal were disputing whether a fetus is just another body part, which can be lopped off if needed.

Here are several examples that illustrate this.

Yevamos 78A: Someone designates a pregnant animal for a sin-offering, and the mother subsequently gives birth. Do we say ubar yerech imo, in which case he can fulfill his vow by sacrificing either the mother or the child, or do we not say ubar yerech imo, in which case the child of a sin-offering cannot be brought?

Chullin 58A: A similar question is raised regarding the child of an animal that is treif (has a grave injury, and is therefore unfit). Is the child unfit as well, or is it treated as a separate entity?

Temura 30B: Someone committed bestiality with a pregnant animal, which disqualifies the animal from being brought as a sacrifice. The mother subsequently gives birth. Do we say ubar yerech imo, in which case the child is also disqualified, or is the fetus treated as a separate entity, and permitted?

Rambam Hilchos Shechita 12:10, based on Chullin 75B: If one slaughters a pregnant animal and the child comes out alive, does the child need to be slaughtered as well, or was it already made “kosher” by the slaughtering of the mother?

These are just several examples of ubar yerech imo being debated and applied in Jewish law. The questions revolve around changes in legal status to the mother, and whether this change in status is transferred to the child inside her. It has nothing to do with the fetus being considered just another clump of the mother’s cells that has no independent meaning or rights.

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Source #4: If two men are fighting, and one of them accidentally strikes a pregnant woman, causing her to miscarry, he is responsible only to pay monetary damages (Shemos 21:22). The child-killers claim based on this that it is not a child they are killing, otherwise the Torah would treat the perpetrator as a murderer.

Of course, they ignore the fact that the very verse they are citing refers to the unborn children as children. Not a limb, not a piece of property, but children. It is true that the penalty for killing this child is less severe than the penalty for killing a child that has already been born, but it is a child nonetheless. Furthermore, nowhere does the Torah indicate that one may willfully perform this horrific act.

The one time the Torah mentions a miscarriage being induced, it is a crime. There are technical legal reasons why the criminal is not treated like a murderer, but one cannot argue that abortion is no worse than stepping on someone’s flowers.

According to the Torah, unborn children are precious human beings, albeit with a legal status that varies from case to case. In the case of a mother’s life being endangered by the pregnancy, the child’s life may tragically be cut short. This is the exception that proves the rule, and should not be used to push the envelope.

Contrary to what the screaming people want you to believe, this case is also extremely rare. The Magen Avraham on Orach Chaim 330 wrote that not even one out of a thousand women die during childbirth. He lived in the 1600s.

But it is clear that the minority of abnormal cases is not the issue under discussion. The Amalekites and Erev Rav are like mosquitoes, probing for any opening from which they can draw blood. They are not interested in protecting mothers, or children, or society, or the human race. They are certainly not interested in following the Torah and serving God. They are evil. They seek to erode people’s sensitivities, corrupt their minds, and destroy their souls.

Those who distort the Torah to arrive at conclusions that are against the halacha lose their share in the world to come (Avos 3:11). Those who study Torah for the purpose of being contrarian and creating strife are better off not being born (Brachos 17A, Tosafos). The cherry-pickers with an odious agenda are exactly who Chazal were talking about.

There is a war for civilization, within and without Jewish society, and it must be fought. But let one thing be crystal clear: the Torah is squarely on our side. We have allowed the Erev Rav and Amalek to claim otherwise, to our shame and detriment. It is high time we put them in their place.

[Note: For even more on the subject, listen to my recent seminars on The Jewish View on Unborn Children, Iyov on Life Before Birth, and Roe vs. Wade and the Jewish Perspective.]

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Medical Tyranny Versus Authentic Torah – Part 4

Rabbi Yisrael Meir Kagan, the Chafetz Chaim, was one of the greatest and most influential Torah leaders of modern times. His works are staples in every true Jewish home, and his saintliness was legendary. He divinely predicted that European Jewry would be decimated but Hitler’s army would be unable to invade Eretz Yisrael, where a remnant would be spared.

But I wonder if even the Chafetz Chaim knew that two footnotes about him would offer us critical guidance nearly a century after his passing.

The Chafetz Chaim lived at the juncture between the old world and the modern world. The Reform movement had metastasized into a powerful threat to authentic Judaism, just as the scientific establishment – and the tycoons who controlled it – were starting to believe they can and should control everything. The role of a doctor in society was evolving from the traditional one outlined in this series to that of a nanny and ultimately a dictator.

If the Chafetz Chaim lived today, what would he do? How would he guide us? Fortunately, the answer is clear from the example he already set.

The Chafetz Chaim on the Torah is a small collection of his teachings on the weekly Torah portions, plus related stories from his life, which appear in footnotes. Below are English translations of two footnotes from Parshas Va’eschanan.

“Another time he explained this verse [Devarim 4:15, that one should very much guard his life/soul] that it is incumbent upon a person to take care of his body, just as a wagon driver must take care of his horse that it shouldn’t starve, for isn’t it from him that he earns his livelihood? Likewise a person needs to take care of his body that he shouldn’t harm it, for from it comes life, as well as for the soul.

“And one time he rebuked one of the famous Roshei Yeshiva in Europe for holding himself back from eating a piece of meat every day, and saved it all for the sake of his students, that nothing should be taken from their daily food.

“And he said as follows in his sweet style, ‘Among the numerous matters that are incumbent upon the Rosh Yeshiva in his role as a Rabbi to his students, there is one urgent matter that is worthy of particular attention: that he should make sure his students have a healthy Rosh Yeshiva.’

“He also said that the mitzva to guard one’s health is extremely great. More than once he would order the lamps in the yeshiva to be extinguished at a late hour in the night, in order that the students should go to sleep. He had a pearl in his mouth [was fond of saying] that this too was the advice of the yetzer hara [evil inclination], in order that the students should become weak, thanks to their excessive diligence, and they would later completely stop learning Torah. And so he would say, ‘Even if the yetzer hara advises you to learn [at such hours], don’t desire it and don’t listen to him, for his intentions are not pleasing.’

“And in his final years, when due to weakness it was hard for him to walk, he would push himself in spite of this to walk four cubits after eating, to fulfill the words of our sages in Shabbos 41A...” (Footnote 3)

The Chafetz Chaim was extremely stringent about protecting one’s health, and considered martyring one’s health to learn extra Torah as sinfully self-destructive. Furthermore, unlike many modern Jews who pompously dismiss the health teachings of Chazal as outdated, the Chafetz Chaim treated their wisdom in these areas with reverence as well.

Surely, then, the Chafetz Chaim would place the recommendations of health experts on a pedestal…right?

Here for your consideration is footnote 7 from the same Torah portion:

“…When it became known to the Chafetz Chaim that a conference of doctors was going to take place in Vilna, and they were planning to offer various suggestions “for the sake of the health” of the yeshiva students, such as to limit their hours of learning, and to designate an hour or two every day for exercise, and other improvements and “repairs” of this type, such as to reduce the number of students in each group, the Chafetz Chaim, of blessed memory, first sent a letter of blessing to the chairman of the conference, the well-known doctor [Zemach] Shabad, and these were his words:

“’As I have heard that there will soon be a conference of doctors, and his honor will be the chairman, I send my blessings to him, that the Healer of all flesh should send you His assistance and blessing from above. Being that I heard that the situation in the yeshivos is of great interest at your conference, I thought to inform you that, thank God, the yeshivos are standing on a firm and stable foundation. The students receive all their needs, and they are served three meals a day. Approximately two hours a day they rejuvenate themselves with walks, and, thank God, they are healthy and whole. Surely this will be of great joy to you.‘

“And after signing he added the following two lines: ‘I wanted to remind his honor that it is written in the Torah ‘Whoever touches the mountain [Mount Sinai when the Jews were given the Torah] will surely die.‘ If touching the mountain is deserving of death, one who touches the Torah itself [interferes with Torah study] how much more so.‘”

It is fair to assume that Doctor Shabad and his colleagues did not have sinister motives in establishing health regulations for yeshivos. Again, this was when science and technology were starting to take great leaps forward. Most likely these doctors saw themselves as enlightened health experts, privy to revolutionary new discoveries, whose duty it was to impose their wisdom on primitive Torah scholars for their own good.

The position of doctors was evolving to that of a vaunted authority who makes rules for society. Modern science was evolving into a new form of idolatry. The Chafetz Chaim witnessed these changes, and had the foresight to recognize the existential threat of letting “health experts” overstep their bounds. Doctors were likely to exaggerate potential dangers, overestimate their abilities, and intervene in people’s lives far more than appropriate. Even if their motives were entirely benign, expanding the role of doctors beyond the one outlined in the Torah would cause more harm than good.

Furthermore, if this expansion were permitted for the presumed sake of saving lives, it was inevitable that power-hungry profiteers and governments would use “public health” as a pretext to impose tyranny on the public.

The Chafetz Chaim politely reminded the doctors that their concern was appreciated, but their intention to intervene in yeshivos was unnecessary and out of bounds. He further warned them that crashing the boundaries and interfering with the Torah would be most dangerous for health – their own.

Unfortunately, the scientific establishment has not heeded the Chafetz Chaim’s words, and he is no longer here to lead us in the face of the tyranny that has emerged. However, the appropriate response in the face of these challenges is clear from the example he set. We are not to allow “health experts” to encroach on Torah study or Jewish life at large, no matter what fears they express or promises they make.

The commandment to guard one’s health is most serious, but doctors do not have the right to impose their will on individuals or the public, even if they think they know best.

Those who were responsible for closing the shuls and yeshivos did not only touch the mountain, they committed grave sins. Those who issued fraudulent “rulings” that we must do whatever doctors decide for us corrupted the Torah, the penalty for which is losing one’s share in the world to come (Avos 3:11). It is unlikely that they can escape punishment after all the harm they caused, but if they repent they can salvage their souls.

The rest of us need to take the Chafetz Chaim’s words to heart and recalibrate our approach to “health experts”. Doctors work for us, as individuals, if we choose to employ their services. They do not control our lives, and no government has the right to ride on the backs of doctors to control our lives.

If they seek to encroach on the Torah and Jewish life – even with the best of intentions – we must inform them that this interference is unnecessary and unwelcome. If they insist on interfering, we must resist. If their intentions are malicious, we must recognize them as mortal enemies who come dressed as saviors.

Whoever touches the mountain will surely die, and those who touch the Torah, how much more so. May it be soon.

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Torture Has No Place in a Jewish State

If ever I write something that should be considered uncontroversial, this should be it. If you disagree with me on everything else, you should agree with me here.

Torture has no place in a Jewish state.

I don’t care if it is an Arab or a Jew.

I don’t care if it is a known terrorist, a suspected terrorist, or a ticking time bomb.

I don’t care if it is a minor or an adult.

I don’t care how many lives the security agencies think they will save.

I don’t care how badly they or their political bosses need to extract a confession to show they solved a crime.

And I don’t care what you call it. Governments around the world have invented a slew of euphemisms to make the horrific sound acceptable. It isn’t. It’s horrific.

A Jewish state should not have dungeons where people are brought and tortured to extract information, coerce confessions, or simply intimidate them into submission.

A Jewish state should not have state-sanctioned, court-approved sadists who are paid to mentally and physically break people.

A Jewish state should not allow people to be arrested and incarcerated indefinitely in barbaric conditions without being charged with a crime, shown the evidence against them, or given any reasonable recourse.

A Jewish state should not allow people to be dehumanized and their entire families put through hell, because someone in authority signed an order.

We did not survive two thousand years of exile for this. We did not endure legalized brutality in every corner of the earth to learn how it’s done and bring it back with us.

I am not a bleeding heart or a pacifist. I have no pity on Israel’s enemies, and wouldn’t trade one drop of Jewish blood for political favors or world approval. I believe we should ruthlessly defeat our enemies and show them what a holy war really is. Let them hate us if they wish, but let them respect us, and let them fear us. Let them crawl to us begging for peace, and if not, we’ll hit them even harder.

We kill when we must in times of war, but we do not torture people. We respect the basic humanity even of those we must fight. We do not defile their bodies and behave like monsters, cold to their suffering or even enjoying it. That is what they do. That is not what Jews do.

When Jews behave like they are supposed to, God will help them win without need for sadism. That is a historical fact and remains true today.

The people of Israel love to disagree with one another. This is one issue on which there should be complete unity, from every part of the religious, political, and social spectrum. We must demand, together, that the dungeons close and the torture stops.

No more forced or coerced confessions. No more brutal interrogations. No more beatings of prisoners, no more sleepless nights, no more psychological torture, no more sadism.

No more excuses.

If you agree that torture has no place in Israel, please share this and help make it clear to those who have power and those who wish to be entrusted with power that this is now a deal-breaker.

The light unto the nations will no longer torture people in dark places.

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