In 1964 Kitty Genovese was stabbed to death late one night in Queens, New York by Winton Mosely who said that he simply wanted to kill a woman. He was sentenced to life, and a few weeks ago he died in prison. The case generated immense publicity because it seemed that a lot of people heard her scream and no…
General Topics
Love Your Neighbor
Once again we return, in our cycle of reading the Torah each week, to the iconic, indeed universal, “VeAhavta LeReyacha Kamocha” (Leviticus 19:18), which is usually translated in English as, “And you shall love your neighbor as yourself.” For most people this is understood to mean that we should love our neighbors as much as we love ourselves. Which seems…
Censorship
I have always hated the idea of censorship. It never really works. As Proverbs says, “Food eaten in secret always tastes better.” Nothing encourages evil more than publicity, and nothing gets a film or a book more attention than being banned. If that was true a thousand years ago, it is exponentially more so now in our era of social…
What is Good?
The core question of any discussion about ethics is: What is “good”? If we humans think we ought to have some standards of behavior and this behavior is “good” (whereas going against it is “bad”), how do we decide what is good and what is bad? Is it “good” if I kill grandma to eat her brains, because my cannibal…
Passover Madness
Pesach, indeed of all religion, defies logic. That does not make it any less significant, valid, or effective. The whole of mysticism, you might say all of our emotions, are the quite non-rational phenomena. Yet clearly Pesach works! But I want to say something about Pesach, so here goes. Here is a religion that requires us not to eat leavened,…
Self-Defense
The case of an Israeli soldier shooting an injured, disarmed, terrorist has divided Israel along the usual and predictable lines. Those who are sensitive to ethical considerations regret and deplore the act. They are impressed that the armed forces as well as the civil have reacted swiftly to condemn it and they have charged him. If the enquiries reveal that…