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Welcome to the Nishma Commentary Discussion Forum blog.
Commentary with Rabbi Benjamin Hecht is a regular column on the Nishma website in which Nishma's Founding Director analyzes contemporary issues, in the general as well as the Jewish world, from a Torah perspective.
If you have a comment on an article within this column, we invite you to place your comments here; then we invite everyone to join the discussion.
Cartoons, Amalek and Values
What is the true measure of commitment to Torah? Is it the placement of one value above all others, or is it the pursuit of wisdom in the struggle of how to make Torah decisions, putting relevant values in their proper places, circumstance by circumstance? Makkot 7a offers us a discussion of what constitutes an abusive court, in terms of the frequency with which the death penalty is applied. We see in this discussion, directly and indirectly, a weighing of issues including pikuach nefesh, power of the state, checks on that power, responsibilities of the state, protections of the individual, and so on. No single value reigns supreme, though some are prominent such as pikuach nefesh. What we're seeing in the Torah world today is a drifting-away from the Pharisaic approach to Torah. There's more to Pharisaism than the particular laws, it's also about a distinct approach to understanding those laws. This aspect of the Mesorah is being lost because it isn't being taught explicitly. Put simply, much of Orthodoxy is transforming into Sadduceeism in its methodology, while retaining Pharisaic laws. This is not Pharisaism, it is not the Mesorah, and so, in the end, it is not Torah. So, I ask again: what is the true measure of commitment to Torah?
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