Torah and Jewish Idea > Torah and Jewish Idea
To risk life, limb & shabbos.....for a Haitian Hamitic ingrate?!
Masha:
--- Quote from: Spectator on January 17, 2010, 02:54:03 AM ---Zaka is a Jerusalem-based emergency response team run by righteous Orthodox Jews. What they are doing is a true virtue and they surely know Jewish law (Halacha) better than this lowlife scum wonga66. wonga's comments are full of venom and incitement, just ignore them.
--- End quote ---
Well, Spectator, perhaps you should go and listen to Chaim's commentary on Haiti earthquake and the stupid Jewish organizations who rushed to help there before you insult wonga66.
Spectator:
--- Quote from: Masha on January 19, 2010, 04:27:33 AM ---
--- Quote from: Spectator on January 17, 2010, 02:54:03 AM ---Zaka is a Jerusalem-based emergency response team run by righteous Orthodox Jews. What they are doing is a true virtue and they surely know Jewish law (Halacha) better than this lowlife scum wonga66. wonga's comments are full of venom and incitement, just ignore them.
--- End quote ---
Well, Spectator, perhaps you should go and listen to Chaim's commentary on Haiti earthquake and the stupid Jewish organizations who rushed to help there before you insult wonga66.
--- End quote ---
If you are talking about overall Jewish/Israeli help to Haiti, I agree with you. Moreover, as an Israeli I question disproportionately great help of Israel to the Haiti residents and, even more, the exaggerated importance Israeli leftist media give to this earthquake and our participation in the issue. I guess it is nothing more than self-hating desire to find favor with the gentiles.
However, this thread is not about the mainstream but the specific rescue team, Zaka. We must take into account two facts:
1) These guys are often the first ones who arrive to the place of catastrophe (mainly terrorist acts in Israel). Some of them are paramedics who save lives, some collect corpses (or body parts), take proper care of them, and prepare to bury them according to Halacha. This alone gives Zaka much respect.
2) They are Orthodox Jews who perfectly know what must and must not be done in such extreme conditions according to Halacha. They are consulted by important rabbis.
8 Israelis were missing after the earthquake. Also, there were reports about missing diaspora Jews. So Zaka operatives went there to search and help them. Now if they were only helping Jews and ignoring Gentiles, this would certainly arouse hatred and animosity towards Jews. And even the Halachic opinion you mentioned in your recent post that states we are not obliged to save gentile's life, agrees that we must do it if there is a suspicion of animosity in case of refusal. Let alone the fact that there is another Sage who says that we only must not save life of a true idolator (Haiti-style stupid superstitions are not true idolatry), and in case of a regular gentile - we are obliged to save his life. All this gives Zaka more than enough reasons to work in Haiti. I also guess they have other reasons I am not aware of.
-----------------------------------------
Now about wonga. My problem with him is not because I disagree with what he says. The real problem is the fact that he constantly presents his own claims as Halacha (religious law) and Hashkafa (religious worldview). And he does that either
- to encourage antisemitic stereotypes by claiming or implying that Judaism views gentiles as worthless filth whose lives aren't worth a penny (which is simply not true - there is big difference between G-d's commandment to live separately and care for fellow Jews first and foremost and what wonga says).
- to defame certain rabbi (for example rabbi Melamed) or an organization (for example Zaka), or a community (for example Haredim), in short - create division and tension among the Orthodox Jews, to sharpen and exaggerate differences between them.
Both these things harm Jewish people immensely.
I hope this clarifies.
Kahane-Was-Right BT:
As long as there is even one single Jew not accounted for, they are obligated to save every possible person from within the rubble and even break Shabbat to do so. Once missing Jews are all accounted for, then that becomes a different issue. My gemara rabbi sides with Rav Moshe Feinstein and other acharonim who rules that we do break Shabbat to save the non-Jew nowadays. There is room to disagree since that is a modern innovative psak, and Rav Bar Hayim disagrees with that psak. He holds that if there are only gentiles then it is good to go and help them but we cannot break Shabbat to do so. So on Shabbat they would have to help in ways that do not involve desecrating the Shabbat or otherwise sit out for a while.
Spectator:
--- Quote from: Kahane-Was-Right BT on January 19, 2010, 04:35:57 PM ---As long as there is even one single Jew not accounted for, they are obligated to save every possible person from within the rubble and even break Shabbat to do so. Once missing Jews are all accounted for, then that becomes a different issue. My gemara rabbi sides with Rav Moshe Feinstein and other acharonim who rules that we do break Shabbat to save the non-Jew nowadays. There is room to disagree since that is a modern innovative psak, and Rav Bar Hayim disagrees with that psak. He holds that if there are only gentiles then it is good to go and help them but we cannot break Shabbat to do so. So on Shabbat they would have to help in ways that do not involve desecrating the Shabbat or otherwise sit out for a while.
--- End quote ---
Thank you for summing this up.
Ari Ben-Canaan:
How could we ever be sure a victim was not a member of the "Lost Ten Tribes"! :)
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