Re: s&amora
Micha Berger <micha <at> aishdas.org>
2012-02-02 20:52:18 GMT
On Wed, Feb 01, 2012 at 05:05:45PM -0600, Lisa Liel wrote:
: In Pirkei Avot, it talks about 4 types of people:
: * One who says, "What is mine is yours and what is yours is yours"
: is a /hassid/.
: * One who says, "What is mine is mine and what is yours is yours" is
: a regular person. Others say that this is the behavior of Sodom.
: * One who says, "What is mine is mine and what is yours is mine" is
: an evil person.
: * One who says, "What is mine is yours and what is yours is mine" is
: a fool.
: And that's the answer to your question. How can there be such a disparity
: between the two views of the second type of person? I can't see how, if
: they're talking about the same thing. But there are two ways of reading
: "what's mine is mine and what's yours is yours." One is that we are
: allowed to do what we want with our own property/money, and the other is
: that we aren't. That what's yours *must* remain yours. And what's mine
: *must* remain mine. And that neither of us has a choice in the matter.
In Choshein Mishpat, "kofin al midas Sodom", one can force a party to
drop his claim if that claim is rooted in midas Sodom. This gives us
another place to look for finding Sodom's sin.
In a situation of "zeh neheneh vezeh lo chaseir", the owner can't simply
charge for use of his property (BQ 20a-b and brought halakhah lemaaseh
by the Rama CM 363:6,10). Tosafos (BB 12b) says that this doesn't mean he
is obgliated to give permission to use it. And if there was any damage,
he could insist on damages as well as the value of the hana'ah (since
it's no longer "vezeh lo chaseir").
So, it would seem that midas Sodom is about caring about the other not
getting even when it's not a competition for resources, when there is
no hana'ah -- other than that of the power trip itself.
: The Midrash says that they used to mark the coins in Sdom so that if you
: gave tzedaka, you could be found out and punished. What the people of
: Sdom did was the flip side of what the Dor ha-Palga did. They simply
: abolished personal ownership entirely. Everything belonged to the king,
: or society, or what have you. In both cases, the very essence of being a
: human being, with personal autonomy and the corresponding responsibility,
: was eliminated. And without that, physical destruction is pretty much
: just an afterthought.
While RSRH also reads the Dor haPelaga as being totalitarian, he says it
was Fascist rather than Communist. (See 19 Leters, 6th Letter.) Thus the
loss of a brick was more mourned than the loss of a person. Everything
became about the state's goals. People were reduced to cogs in a machine
to accomplish the Fatherland's mission.
Tir'u baTov!
-Micha
--
--
Micha Berger It's nice to be smart,
micha <at> aishdas.org but it's smarter to be nice.
http://www.aishdas.org - R' Lazer Brody
Fax: (270) 514-1507
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