Category Archives: issues of morality or ethics

Say It Sam

If the name Sam Harris doesn’t ring a bell, it’s because you’re blessedly not into the world of podcasts.

Neither am I, but Mr. Harris, holder of a Ph.D. in cognitive neuroscience and a philosopher, is a popular podcaster. Although he is halachically Jewish, he is an avowed secularist, not someone who might be expected to feel any connection to Judaism or Israel.

Which is why those who consider him a highbrow of the highest caliber have been dismayed by his bucking of the Israel-hatred that has become mandatory among the imperious intelligentsia. They can’t understand how he missed the memo.

Recently, to address his dismayed disciples’ puzzlement, he wrote a 2000 word tour de force, audaciously titled “Why I won’t debate critics of Israel.” It has been widely shared.

Mr. Harris is no knee-jerk defender of any Israeli action or leader, but has no interest in “exploring all the ways that Israel has missed the mark.”

He is interested only in the larger picture, the one that, in a reasonable world, would obscure all else. “The ethical difference between Israel and her enemies,” he states, “remains vast.” And “the global preoccupation with the Jewish state, as though it were the worst villain among nations, is contemptible… the product of perennial lies and delusions.”

Strong words, made all the stronger by his elaboration.

Militant Islamists, he contends, are “essentially, Nazis who are certain of Paradise.”

Were the IDF ever to “morph into a death cult that uses its own civilian population as human shields,” he fantasized, “if ordinary Israelis begin to celebrate martyrdom… producing generations of bright-eyed, suicidal fanatics, if the residents of Tel Aviv [would] condone the taking of Palestinian infants, old women, and other noncombatants as hostages and then gather in crowds of thousands, baying for their blood – if, in other words, the Israelis began to resemble the Palestinians, then I won’t care who wins this war.”

But of course, he continues, “there remains a world of difference between the two sides, and I believe that we should focus on how brutalizing it is for any free society to confront enemies that can sincerely claim to ‘love death’ more than everyone else loves life – for this has been Israel’s predicament for the better part of a century.”

Cutting sharply through all the “pro-Palestinian” obfuscation, he explains that “The problem in the Middle East is not, and has never been, the existence of the state of Israel.” It has been “jihadism… the belligerence and triumphal lunacy of those who take the most pernicious doctrines of Islam too seriously.”

Disentangling every strand of the region’s history is “a fool’s errand,” he further contends, “because Palestinians and Israelis have discrepant accounts of the past, and no amount of study or debate will reconcile them.”

All that matters in the here and now, he declares, is “what the current inhabitants of Israel, the Palestinian territories, and the surrounding Arab states want out of life now…. What are they willing to sacrifice for? What are they willing to die for? And what are they willing to let their children die for?”

And here he cuts to the quick. While “Israel has its religious fanatics,” he writes, they are not “the same sort of fanatics we find in Hamas or Hezbollah, and they’re far less representative of the surrounding culture.”

There is much more in Mr. Harris’ manifesto, but the following paragraph really says it all:

“If the Palestinians laid down their arms, there would be peace. There could be a two-state solution; there could even be a one-state solution…. If the Palestinians simply stopped killing Jews and stopped building a culture that celebrates pointless murder and martyrdom as its highest values, there could be a diverse, tolerant, and prosperous society between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. There could have been one eighty years ago. But if the Israelis laid down their weapons, there would be a genocide. This was obviously true on October 7th, 2023. And for anyone who has been paying attention, it has been true on every other day since the founding of the state of Israel.”

Words worthy of being displayed on every billboard in Europe and posted in every American university classroom.

(c) 2026 Ami Magazine

Humility: The Mark of Leadership

Few contrasts are as striking as the one between Moshe, the “most humble of all men,” who had to be Divinely drafted to lead the Jewish people, and Korach, who was consumed with a desire for a leadership role.

And, like deceitful populists over ensuing millennia, Korach insisted that he was merely standing up for the masses, advocating for their democratic rights. Who needs a mezuzah (i.e. a leader) if the house is filled with holy books (i.e. the magnificent masses)?

Many contemporary leaders, some more shamelessly than others, advanced their aspirations in Korach-fashion, lusting for power while claiming to be championing the people. (A rare exception was Dwight Eisenhower, the only American president who had to be drafted to run for that office.)

In the authentic Jewish religious world, true leaders are always drafted – that is to say, “elected,” not by campaigns and misleading claims but rather by unsought public acclaim. I have been privileged to have spent time in the vicinities of several, and was deeply affected by their selflessness and modesty. My rebbe, Rav Yaakov Weinberg, was one; see https://www.rabbiavishafran.com/mr-to-us/. His yahrtzeit is Shiva Asar B’Tamuz.

And, just like Moshe was accused of sins he didn’t commit, so are Gedolim today sometimes attacked for imagined misdeeds. And not only by people lacking any relationship to Torah, but even some who are meticulously observant. Frumkeit doesn’t necessarily imply ehrlichkeit.

Ohn ben Peles, the Midrash recounts, a confederate of Korach’s, was saved from the latter’s fate by Mrs. Ohn. After plying her husband with enough wine to put him to sleep, she sat outside their tent and uncovered her hair. So when Korach’s supporters came to fetch her husband and saw the immodest woman, meticulously religious folks that they were, they turned on their righteous heels and left. 

The upshot: Even religious people can fall for would-be-dictators’ lies. 

© 2026 Rabbi Avi Shafran

Naso – An Opportunity, Not an Ordeal

I cringe when I read portrayals of the law of Sotah ritual as some sort of “trial by ordeal.”

That phrase conjures images like the 17th century Salem witch trials, when Puritans invoked “tests” to determine whether someone was a witch. Or earlier times in Europe, when the accused was subjected to an often life-threatening experience. Only if he or she perished as a result would the accused be declared innocent (and, oftentimes, dead). And if the suspect survived being, for instance, bound and thrown into deep water, the unfortunate would be found guilty and subsequently executed.


By contrast, the Sotah law kicks in – or kicked in, until the Churban Bayis Rishon (and, according to one opinion in the Talmud it was never used) – when a man suspects his wife of being unfaithful, warns her to not seclude herself with a specific other man, and she ignores the warning.

The ritual has her drinking a concoction consisting of water, a bit of dirt from under the Temple’s marble floor, a bitter herb and the rubbed-off dried ink of the text of the Torah’s description of the Sotah ritual, including Hashem’s name.
 
If the woman is guilty of betraying her marriage, the Torah explains, she and the man with whom she sinned will, upon her drinking the concoction, suffer a terrible death.  If she’s innocent, she will suffer no ill effects and, on the contrary, will be blessed with healthy children.

The Sotah-drink ingredients are, if unappetizing, innocuous.  And so, it would take a divine intervention to bring about the punishment.

Interestingly, though, and tellingly, if the wife chooses to simply dissolve her marriage and forfeit the financial support promised her at her wedding, we compel the husband to grant her a divorce, and she suffers no other penalty. She is not forced to imbibe the Sotah drink.
 
So there is no “trial by ordeal” here. What there is, rather, is a way to establish an accused woman’s innocence of adultery, a means of returning love and trust to her marriage.
 
The entire point of the Sotah ritual, in other words, is to convince a jealous husband that his wife has remained faithful to him. Which explains why, unlike in every other case of a suspected crime or sin, we involve a Divine intercession – Hashem’s own assurance that the woman is innocent. 

The ritual is not intended as a way to convict, but to restore marital peace, in which Hashem Himself, as the “third partner” in a successful marriage (Kiddushin, 30b), has a stake.

Which explains Rabi Yishmael’s comment (Shabbos, 116a) about the ritual: “In order to make peace between a husband and his wife, [Hashem in] the Torah says: My name that was written in sanctity shall be erased in the water.”

© 2026 Rabbi Avi Shafran

Behar — Don’t Serve Servants

“They are My servants, whom I freed from the land of Egypt” (Vayikra 25:55).

Although the Talmud’s comment on the phrase “They are My servants” – “but not the servants of servants” (Bava Kamma 116b) – has a technical, halachic meaning, it also hints at a broader one.

In other words, not only does it say that a Jew cannot own another Jew, it also signals that Jews are not to indenture themselves to causes other than the Jewish mandate. Not to a political party, social cause or personality. A Jew’s exclusive ultimate role is to be a servant of Hashem.

Because the freedom we were divinely granted from Egyptian bondage was not what many consider “freedom” – libertinism, the loss of all fetters. It was a passage from being “servants to servants” – to Egyptians and Egyptian mores – to becoming servants of Hashem. As Moshe, in Hashem’s name, ordered Pharaoh: “Let my people go so that they may serve Me” (Shemos 9:1).  

The Hebrew word for freedom, cherus, the Mishna (Avos, 6:2) notes, can be vowelled to render charus, “etched,” as the Aseres Hadibros were on the luchos.  “The only free person,” the Mishna concludes, “is the one immersed in Torah.”

True freedom doesn’t mean being retired and moneyed, lying on a beach with sunshine on one’s face and a cold beer within reach, without a care or beckoning task. 

In the words of Iyov, “Man is born to toil” (5:7).  True freedom, counterintuitively, comes from hard work.  Applying ourselves to a higher purpose liberates us from the limitations of our inner Egypts, and is what can bring true meaning to our lives.

Indian poet and Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore wrote:

“I have on my table a violin string. It is free to move in any direction I like. If I twist one end, it responds; it is free.

“But it is not free to sing. So I take it and fix it into my violin. I bind it, and when it is bound, it is free for the first time to sing.”

A timely metaphor, as we progress from Pesach, the holiday of our release from bondage, to Shavuos, the day we entered servitude to the Divine. And when, like on Pesach, we will sing the words of Hallel.

Tazria – Pity the Habitual Accuser

It’s bad enough that the person whose divisive sins caused him to contract tzora’as (a physical condition conferring tum’ah, or ritual defilement, and sometimes mistakenly identified with leprosy) has to sit apart from society, but he is also enjoined to call out to passers-by: “vi’tamei tamei yikra” –  “Contaminated! Contaminated!” (Vayikra 13:45).

Indeed, the Talmud uses that added indignity to illustrate a popular (well, at the time) saying: “Poverty follows the poor.” (Bava Kama, 92b).

But the metzora’s prescribed announcement of his condition, says the Talmud, teaches other things too. Like the importance of letting others know of one’s sufferings, so that they might pray for him (Mo’ed Katan 5a). And it hints, too, to the need to mark a grave, so that people won’t inadvertently contract tum’ah by passing over it (ibid).

The Shelah (Rav Yeshayahu HaLevi Horovitz, c.1555-1630), however, sees in the metzora’s announcement a hint to yet something else. Parsing the phrase differently, he reads it as saying “and those ritually contaminated will call out [about others] ‘Contaminated!’ ”

In other words, some people project their own deficits onto others.  As the amora Shmuel said, in the context of genealogical status: “Those who assert a flaw [in others], it is their own flaw that they in fact assert” (Kiddushin 70a).

Indeed, it isn’t uncommon to see people in the public sphere who seem to make a habit of accusing others of a particular proclivity or wrongdoing being exposed as having the same proclivity or having been engaged in the same sin.

So if we ever have the unpleasant experience of being accused of something by someone who is given to lobbing the same accusation at others, we might do well to pause. And, rather than take the allegation personally, realize that the accuser may, in fact, suffer from insecurity, and that he is really accusing himself.  

© 2026 Rabbi Avi Shafran

Vayakhel – Not All Donations Welcome

Sometimes money amassed through questionable means is donated to good causes like charities or educational institutions. Perhaps the donors’ subconscious, or even conscious, intent is to somehow render their ill-gotten gains “kosher” in some way.

The Zohar informs us of the folly of such thinking.

On Moshe’s exhortation near the beginning of parshas Vayakhel that the people donate materials for the construction of the Mishkan – “Take from yourselves a portion for Hashem…” (Shemos 35:5), the mystical text states:

“From yourselves” —  from what is [truly] yours, not from [what you have obtained from] usury and not from [what you have obtained from] theft.  Because if it is [obtained through unethical means, the giver] has no merit, but, on the contrary, woe to him, as he has come to recall his sin.”  

Not only would the Mishkan’s holiness have been compromised if any of the precious metals or fabrics used for its construction were besmirched by its donor’s bad behavior in obtaining it, but also, any donation of wrongly obtained material would be a reminder of the donor’s sin.

The same point is said to have been made, particularly pointedly and wittily, by the Kotzker Rebbe, on Chazal’s statement that, at Sinai, the people saw with their eyes what normally could only be heard with ears.  That way, allegedly said the Kotzker, there would be no way for anyone to hear the lo (“Thou shall not”) in lo signov – “Thou shall not steal” – as being spelled lamed-vav, meaning, “For Him, steal.”

It would seem that the notion of justifying economic crimes with virtuous use of ill-gotten gains is nothing new. It existed in the 19th century — and even in Biblical times.

© 2026 Rabbi Avi Shafran

Terumah – Inside, Outside and In-Between

The aron habris, the holy ark described in the parshah, was essentially a wooden box set into a golden one, with another golden one set inside it (Yoma 72b).

The Gemara (ibid) sees in the aron, which contains the luchos, shivrei luchos and a Torah scroll, a metaphor for the coherence of conscience and behavior that defines a true scholar. “A talmid chacham,” Rava teaches there, “who isn’t tocho kiboro,” – whose inside [essence] isn’t like his outside [the image yielded by his behavior] – “isn’t a talmid chacham.”

My revered rebbe, Rabbi Yaakov Weinberg, zt”l, noted that the Gemara’s wording is pointed. We are not exhorted to bring our “outsides” into line with our “insides” – to first achieve purity of heart and then display its signifiers – but rather the other way around. We do right to first emulate the comportment and behavior of those more spiritually accomplished than we are – to present an image of observance and propriety – even if our souls may not be as pure as our clothing and actions seem to declare. 

That is because, in the Sefer Hachinuch’s words, “A person is affected by his actions” and demeanor. How we dress, speak and act can change who we are.

Achieving coherence of appearance and heart must be the ultimate goal for us all. But we shouldn’t feel hypocritical or despondent if, in the process of reaching that goal, we show the world a better image of ourselves than we deserve. What matters is only that we are working to bring our inner selves into line with our outer ones.

What’s more, according to a Midrash brought by Rashi on the posuk 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, the Gemara  (Shabbos 55b) says was one of the humans who never sinned! 

The inescapable conclusion is that self-interest isn’t sin. The essential sense of self is inherent in being human, and no contradiction to righteousness. 

That, too, is reflected in the aron. It was gold within and without, yes, but there was wood (perhaps hinting to the eitz hadaas) between the golden layers. One’s toch and bar can be pure and consistent, but there is always a self in the middle. And that’s inherent in being human.

© 2026 Rabbi Avi Shafran