Critical letter received for this headline of a few days ago:
Indeed, it would be for mankind and for Jewish society if courts enforced Torah law, including the prescribed punishments. However, we must only wish to see it when it is carried out by proper Noahide courts. Somehow I doubt that which is done throughout the Islamic world, especially the part about making the execution a blood-thirsty spectacle for the masses, not exactly what the sages had in mind.
Remarks (going beyond a simple response), מקופיא:
No, I wouldn’t call the Taliban a fully Noahide court, but hey, “beggars can’t be choosers”!
My point is Mohammedans are copying (albeit inaccurately) from the Jewish Torah to our own discomfiture. If the Taliban can muster enough “Consent of the Governed” to restore Sharia law, what is wrong with us?!
Still, we shouldn’t mimic them in return. Some Cursedians believe the bastard Diaper-Deity “fulfilled” the whole Torah for them, so they have no-fault divorces instead of death for adultery, and fake “forgiveness” instead of justice. Let’s not allow them to influence us, either.
What is the common punishment in the “Enlightened” world for, say, intentional murder?
If Chai kills Matan (get it?), Matan’s relatives (among others) are forcibly granted the privilege to slave away via taxation to pay for imprisoning, feeding, educating, and exercising Chai (including arrest, a government lawyer, prosecution, etc., not to mention all the “overhead expenses” the government skims off the top). Unless Chai was killing settlers for the government, and\or belongs to the elite, of course.
Is the Israeli regime policy, then, “what the sages had in mind“?!
Many of those who mock, condemn, and monger fear against the Taliban would do the same to loyal Jews if and when we are ever righteous enough to restore anything similar, even if not as far-reaching!
In short, the Taliban are “running interference” for the Jews…
(The famous Chazon Ish Y. D. 2:17 is referring to “Moridin”. I am aware there is far more nuance to this, but this here is a web log, not parchment.)
And why is “making the execution a blood-thirsty spectacle for the masses” not a hiddur mitzvah of the true Torah’s deterrence strategy: “למען ישמעו ויראו”?! Isn’t it important to preserve some fear: עבוד מיראה ועבוד מאהבה וכולי?!
By the way, although an on-the-books death penalty doesn’t deter murderers, the rate of actual, (preferably public) executions does, in fact, deter murderers (see
Dr. Walter Block’s executive summary of a revolutionary, new study of the numbers).
