Category Archives: issues of morality or ethics

Ki Seitzei -Where We Are

Chazal describe the judgment meted out to a ben sorer u’moreh, the boy who, at the tender age of 13, demonstrates indulgences and worse, as being merited because he is judged al sheim sofo, based on what his “end” will likely be: a murderous mugger (Devarim 21:18).

Several years ago, I noted how an incongruity seems to lie in the case of Yishmael. Although his descendants, as Rashi notes, will prove to be cruel tormenters of his half-brother Yitzchak’s descendants, he is judged “ba’asher hu shom”: where he is at the current moment (Beraishis 21:17).

The Mizrachi and Rav Shlomo Yosef Zevin address the problem by noting that the ben sorer u’moreh has already himself acted in an ugly manner, whereas Yishmael’s cruel descendants lay generations in the future. (I suggested, based on a question, another approach, that internalizing materialism and luxuries, like the ben sorer has done, is a particularly weighty indicator of hopelessness.)

Rav Zevin, based on his approach, also reveals a different dimension of the law of ben sorer u’moreh, which is virtually impossible to happen, given Chazal’s requirements for prosecution (see Sanhedrin 71a), and, according to Rabi Yehudah, indeed never did, and exists only to edify us.

He explains that just as the boy’s harsh judgment is based (as above) on his having demonstrated the seeds of criminality already, so are all of us responsible for whatever bad we’ve done, and for its implications for our futures.

But, he continues, when Rosh Hashanah arrives, we are able to engage in doing teshuvah, which removes our past sins from the divine calculus. And, thus, even though we may indeed – like Yishmael’s descendents, lihavdil, did in their horrible way – lapse in our own ways in the coming year, at the moment of judgment, we are judged “ba’asher hu shom.” Where we stand at the moment of din.

Which, Rav Zevin, suggests, is why the parsha about Yishmael’s life being saved by Hashem is read on Rosh Hashanah.

© 2025 Rabbi Avi Shafran

Shoftim — It’s Too Easy Being Green

It is explicit in the text of the Torah that those who went to war in the conquest of Cna’an knew that their lives could be lost in battle: “lest he die and another….” (Devarim 20:5) And that anyone “who is fearful or fainthearted…” (20:8) would be exempt from it.

Even among the brave, though, one imagines that the possibility of dying, even if fully recognized and accepted, would cause anguish. And yet, what are described as being sources of anguish to a fighter, even one ready to give up his life, are the thoughts that someone else might assume his place in occupying his new home, in harvesting his new vineyard, in a new marriage.

That points to a fundamental, if illogical, part of human nature. Losing out on something feels bad, but losing out to someone else is worse. In fact, a low salary has been shown to be less stressful on its own than the knowledge that someone else with the same skills and job is making more money. And when the anguish of “losing out” to someone else is compounded with the idea that the other’s “win” happens even before one has had a chance to experience the fruits of his labor, as in the exempted soldiers’ cases, it is all the more intense.

The inclination to envy, born of the sense of self, comes easily to us. In fact, it is inherent to being human.

That a sense of self isn’t a sin is evident in a a Midrash brought by Rashi on the pasuk “uvicheit yechemasni imi” (Tehillim 51:7); Dovid Hamelech lamented the fact that when his parents conceived him, their intent was basically selfish (a thought reflected as well in his words ki avi vi’imi azovuni, Tehillim 27:10). And yet, Dovid’s father was Yishai, who we are told (Shabbos 55b) died sinless.

We are, of course, admonished to not feed feelings of jealousy (Devarim 5:18), to not allow them to bring us to covet what another person has. But the initial feeling of resentment is part and parcel of being a human being. It’s the dwelling on it, intensifying it, that is wrong.

Its appearance, however, should not make us feel despair, only human, and challenged to resist it.

© 2025 Rabbi Avi Shafran

Photo Fiasco Update

Some interesting information about how the New York Times’ Gaza sausage is made was presented recently by Semafor, a news website founded in 2022 by Ben Smith, a former media columnist at the Times, and Justin B. Smith, the former CEO of Bloomberg Media Group.

A piece on the site written by its media editor Max Tani disclosed that the Times had originally wanted to run images of Youssef Matar, a young child in Gaza with cerebral palsy, alongside its July 24 story that cited doctors in Gaza finding that “an increasing number of their patients are suffering and dying – from starvation.” While the child may, sadly, have been malnourished (ultimately, Hamas’ fault – and its intention, since Gazans’ suffering does wonders for its p.r.), his shocking physical state was mainly due to the ravages of his disease.

Responsibly, though, the report notes, the Times’ topmost editors wanted to err on the side of caution. According to communications viewed by Semafor, they worried that running the photos might call into question the paper’s reporting (smart guys!). Especially since the article claimed that many of the children suffering from hunger had been healthy kids, without preexisting diseases.

According to internal messages obtained by Semafor, the paper’s managing editor Marc Lacey expressed his concern. “Do we want to use a photo,” he asked “that will be the subject of debate when there is presumably no shortage of images of children who were not malnourished before the war and currently are?”

Sagely, executive editor Joe Kahn agreed, writing that “The story isn’t framed around people with special needs and the lead art[icle] really should not do that, either.”

And so they wisely opted not to publish Youssef’s photos. Instead, they ran, as noted last week in this space, those of Mohammed Zakaria al-Mutawaq, an 18-month-old child in Gaza, whose tiny, emaciated body was the perfect accompaniment to the news story. At least, that’s what the editors thought.

Problem was, of course, that Mohammed was also suffering from serious diseases, cerebral palsy and a suspected genetic disorder, a fact that, when publicized and called to the Times’s attention, was shared in an “Editor’s Note” (posted to the original story, not on the paper’s main social media account) four days after the article appeared and the photo of the “born healthy” child had been widely and irresponsibly republished by other media.

So, let’s recap, just to be clear: The head honchos at the “paper of record” recognized how journalistically irresponsible it would have been to accompany an article saying that healthy Gazan children were being reduced to skeletal shadows of their former selves with a photo of a child with a serious medical condition, the main cause of his sad state. And then went ahead and did precisely that, choosing a different child with a serious medical condition.

As the saying goes, you can’t make this stuff up.

If Mr. Lacey, as quoted above, is correct in his contention that “there is presumably no shortage of images of children who were not malnourished before the war and currently are,” it’s odd that no other clearly malnourished, wasting away young people have had their photographs plastered on his paper’s front page. Could it be that there may indeed be such a shortage?

I don’t know. There is certainly great need in Gaza, and Israel and the U.S. are taking serious steps to ensure that aid to residents isn’t intercepted by Hamas and criminal gangs.

What I do know is that there was a strong desire on 8th Avenue to publish some photo of an ostensibly starving child. So strong that the Old Gray Lady tripped on her skirt and fell face-first into an omelet.

As Semafor reported further, “One thing that pro-Israel critics of the Times and some staff at the paper agree on is that there is a large contingent of staff at the paper who are opposed to the war in Gaza, and blame Israel for the crisis.”

It would seem that, at least on the West Side of Manhattan, objectivity, like irony, is dead.

© 2025 Ami Magazine

Vo’eschanan – Requited Love

The obvious problem posed by the commandment to love Hashem (Devarim 6:5) is that love is an emotion. How can one possibly be told to love?

One understanding of that commandment is provided by Abaye in the Talmud (Yoma 86a): “That [one should cause] the name of Heaven to be beloved [by others] through you.”

He explains that if one conducts himself properly, studying Torah, serving scholars and conducting business with honesty, people will say “Fortunate is his father who taught him Torah, fortunate is his teacher who taught him Torah” – thereby engendering observers’ love for Hashem.

The Rambam (Yesodei HaTorah 5:11) echoes that statement, adding the importance of taking care to not “separate [oneself] too far [from normal life]”.

Causing others to love Hashem is arguably easier today than ever. Since society is so often crass and rude, even conducting oneself in a normal, reasonable way does not go unnoticed. A “please” or “thank you” or “good morning,” not to mention a smile, stands out. And if offered by an identifiable Jew, can create love for Hashem.

Another approach to the mitzvah of loving Hashem is recorded in the name of Rav Akiva Eger, based on the fact that emotions can be cultivated and harnessed.

A key to observing the “love Hashem” commandment, he suggests, is provided each day just before we recite the Shma, which introduces it. The final brachah before krias Shma in the morning ends with “Who chooses His nation Yisrael with love”; and the one before the evening recitation, with “the One who loves His nation Yisrael.”

In other words, recognizing Hashem’s love for us yields reciprocal love for Him.

As Shlomo Hamelech teaches in Mishlei (27: 19), Kamayim hapanim lapanim… – “As water reflects a face back to a face, so is one’s heart reflected back to him by another.”

What is true in human relationships is equally true in our relationship with our Creator.

© 2025 Rabbi Avi Shafran

Letter Published by The New York Times

To the Editor:

In his lengthy lamentation about Israel’s ostensible descent into genocide, Omer Bartov somehow overlooks a most germane distinction between Israel’s war to vanquish an enemy bent on its destruction and murderous campaigns like those that took place in Bosnia, Darfur, Armenia, Rwanda and Cambodia — and certainly the one carried out by Nazi Germany.

How Israel is waging its war against an enemy that has loudly declared its genocidal intentions is rightly open to criticism, and subject, too, to a reasoned defense. But it is a strange sort of “genocide” that can end immediately with the rulers of the attacked region simply laying down their arms, releasing those they kidnapped who are still alive and leaving the scene.

(Rabbi) Avi Shafran

Staten Island

Balak – Judge, Jury and Executioner

Moshe Rabbeinu couldn’t recall the halacha about the proper course of action when encountering a Jewish man engaging intimately with a non-Jewish woman (Sanhedrin 82a).  Pinchas had to remind him that Moshe himself had taught him that kana’im pog’im bo, “zealots have permission to attack the violator.”

Even then, though, after being reminded of the halacha, Moshe demurs, telling Pinchas that “the reader of the letter should be its contents’ executor.”

It is an interesting aphorism, but was there any compelling reason why Moshe didn’t rise to the task of dispatching Zimri and Kozbi himself? It is hard to imagine the ultimate defender of Torah and Klal Yisrael not wishing to himself undertake what needed to be done to defend the Torah and protect his people. After all, the immediately preceding psukim have him punishing those who engaged in worship of Baal Pe’or.

Rav Shlomo Ganzfried, the author of the Kitzur Shulchan Aruch, in his sefer Aperion, suggests a reason, beyond the upshot of the aphorism, for Moshe’s hesitancy.

He points out that Zimri had challenged Moshe, asking if Cozbi was forbidden to him. “And if you say that she is forbidden, what about the daughter of Yitro to whom you are married? Who permitted her to you?” (ibid).

Moshe feared, Rav Ganzfried suggests, that if he were the one to dispatch the sinners, it might be seen as the settling of a personal score, not the heeding of a Torah law. It might be perceived not as an act of kana’us but rather of negi’us.

It occurs to me that Moshe may not so much have been concerned with what others might think but rather demurred and invoked the aphorism of the letter-reader because of the singular nature of kana’im pog’im bo.

Normally, a violator of the law must appear in court and his case properly adjudicated. Kana’im pog’im bo is an exception to that. Thus, the executor of the punishment is acting in a way like a judge. Halacha disallows a judge from adjudicating a case if he has any relationship of pre-existing bias for or against a litigant. So Moshe may have felt he could not halachically assume the role of a kana’i here. As to who could, well, he said to Pinchas, “You read the letter.”

© 2025 Rabbi Avi Shafran

Beha’aloscha – Class-ic Complaint

Rashi, quoting the Gemara, understands the nation’s “weeping about its family” (Bamidbar 11:10) as referring to ‘matters of family’ – to the fact that relatives who were once permitted to be joined  in marriage were now, post-Sinai, forbidden to marry.

Rav Yonason Eybeschutz has an alternate, and very pith, take on the phrase. 

He asserts that wealthy people don’t wear expensive clothes and eat expensive meals primarily because of the enjoyment they may provide but, rather, because of the status they convey. (Think of Lamborghinis that need repairs more often than Hondas, or Rolexes that keep time no better than drugstore watches.) Put most bluntly, members of the upper class want to show that they are different (implying, presumably, better) than the hoi polloi. “That,” writes Rav Eybeschutz, in his sefer Ahavas Yonasan, “is the nature of man.”

The mon, though, served as a great equalizer, allowing the poorest person to taste whatever delicacy he imagined as he consumed it. 

Taking the word for “the nation” as referring to the upper class of the midbar-society; and “family” to mean social stratum, he sees the complaint of the wealthy as being about the erasure of the possibility to adopt status symbols. The removal of that option deeply pains those accustomed to believe their worth can be telegraphed by what they wear or eat (or drive).

© 2025 Rabbi Avi Shafran