העורך Editor

ראה כאן מאתר “אגודה אחת“.

We just read this in the Parsha (Numbers 35:31 – 35):

כל מכה נפש לפי עדים ירצח את הרצח ועד אחד לא יענה בנפש למות:

ולא תקחו כפר לנפש רצח אשר הוא רשע למות כי מות יומת:

ולא תקחו כפר לנוס אל עיר מקלטו לשוב לשבת בארץ עד מות הכהן:

ולא תחניפו את הארץ אשר אתם בה כי הדם הוא יחניף את הארץ ולארץ לא יכפר לדם אשר שפך בה כי אם בדם שפכו:

ולא תטמא את הארץ אשר אתם ישבים בה אשר אני שכן בתוכה כי אני ידוד שכן בתוך בני ישראל:

This is what NOT to do (from present-day Syria):

The calm is astounding given the fact that it is simple for people to arm themselves. It is easier than ever to kill someone should one so desire, and it has become virtually impossible to hold criminals accountable without risking a blood feud. There are no police, and even if there were, it is no longer possible to call them. Not that a trustworthy judicial system existed under Assad, but there was a state. Today, there is merely a fragile balance that can be disturbed at any time. Everything must be negotiated. The authorities have been replaced by personal relationships and village solidarity.

When a young man was found beaten to death near Korin in May 2014, the 10-person village council — elected out of a pool made up of a representative from each family — began investigating to the extent that it could. Who was the last person to see the victim and had somebody been with him? One witness had seen him in an argument with two distant cousins. The two confessed, but that was only the beginning of the problems. How could a blood feud be avoided?

“We referred the case to the Sharia court in the city of Binnish,” Ajini explains. “It has a good reputation in the entire province” because it is home to one of the region’s ablest judges. Ajini says the court is not a practitioner of the strict Islamic jurisprudence often associated with Sharia, but the label, he adds, increases people’s acceptance of its verdicts.

The murder case was a difficult one. A prison sentence was not possible because are are no prisons and the death penalty could have torn the village apart. So the court negotiated a compromise in the form of 7 million Syrian pounds of blood money, equivalent at the time to roughly €32,000. It was a fortune, and the family of the perpetrator had to sell gold and land to be able to pay it. Furthermore, the two murderers were forbidden from entering the village for a year.

Uh Uh!

Many people are under the impression democracy is the closest form of government to true freedom for all, while monarchy is just dictatorship. So how do we explain the Torah’s insistence on the Davidic monarchy (if anything)? Who knows? Maybe freedom is overrated?

The truth is, monarchy is closer to freedom than is democracy. To learn more, check out this book from Hans Hoppe. And here’s a summary.

Rabbi Brand answers here.

Divrei Chaim asks this question:

… The gemara (Meg 14b) asks how Chuldah could prophesize while Yirmiyahu, who was a greater navi, was around. (I’m not 100% sure I understand the gemara’s question – if G-d starts speaking to you, how can you not prophesize, regardless of how much greater others may be? I assume what the gemara means is that receiving nevuah requires some kind of prior preparation. If there is someone greater already acting as a navi, that bars others from making those necessary preparations to receive nevuah themselves.) The gemara answers that since she was a relative of Yirmiyahu’s, he was mochel. It sounds like there is a din similar to that of moreh halacha b’makom rabo with respect to nevuah. Maybe this is what was bothering Yirmiyahu – as a talmid, or apprentice navi, he was in a similar position as Chulda and al pi din had to defer to the greater navi.

Answer: I think it’s not about getting the prophecy but about giving it over to others, just as I may “prepare” to decide Halacha, but not actually do so in my Rabbi’s presence without permission.