Can the severity of a sin be learned from the severity of the punishment?

An excellent rayah that we DON’T look at the onesh to gauge the severity.

Loshon harah does not have misah nor a korvon nor malkod you might think it’s not so bad.
So sichos mussar points out no it’s terrible.

Similarly hamlbin pnei chaveiro. There’s no onesh misah. No big deal, right? Wrong! It’s terrible keilu horgo!

Ai why don’t we gauge based on the onesh? Because while a good gauge and good rule of thumb. It isn’t absolute

BTW
In our original discussion on this topic I said “As to why the Torah didnt mandate misah, maybe being meanes is so bad that he doesnt even deserve the kaparah of misas beis din? Or “I happen not to understand it. But I think that that is my short coming””

You didnt like that explanation (“I can’t figure out that logic.”)
I found the mekor

It is a Maharsha Sanhedrin 64: Inn chidishei halachos

גמרא ומזרעך ולא כל זרעך כתב הסמ”ג לאווין מ’ ויש בזה טעם לתשובת המינים מפני שבמיתת ב”ד מתכפרין המומתין וזה עשה כ”כ עבירה גדולה שאין הקדוש ברוך הוא רוצה שיהא לו כפרה ומזה הטעם אני אומר כו’ עכ”ל ע”ש ומזה נראה לתת טעם הא דאמרינן בכל דוכתא דאין עונשין מן הדין אף על גב דק”ו מדה היא בתורה מכ”מ אין לדון כן לענין עונש דאימא זה שעשה עבירה החמורה מזו אינו מתכפר בעונש המפורש בקלה ממנה וק”ל:

original thread :https://www.theyeshivaworld.com/coffeeroom/topic/a-study-in-trolls-updated/page/2

Also note

“Can the severity of a sin be learned from the severity of the punishment?”

To be clear, I’m obviously not saying it can NEVER be learnt from the onesh. Just that it can’t always be learnt from the onesh

KY

I too enjoy our discussion.
And youve gotten me to reevaluate and prove my position which is great.

furthermore you got me to rethin another position, that is tangentially related to this, namely does every halachic position need “proof” or are some obvious.

My inital inclination was that some things are obvious, but I’m less sure now.

Incidentally do you know of any discussions regarding which is worse intermarriage or marrying someone who won’t keep taharas hamishpacha.

Using your framework I take it you’d say the latter is worse. To me, it is obvious that the former is worse, though I concede that I cant prove it (I have some weak rayahs up my sleeve but nothing worth sharing at the moment)

DO you (or anyone reading this ) know of any treatments on this topic?

Looking forward to Thursday

“Incidentally do you know of any discussions regarding which is worse intermarriage or marrying someone who won’t keep taharas hamishpacha.”

By intermarriage a kanoi can kill them; by nidda they are chyaiv misa bdei shamayim.

just me

“But it doesn’t seem to be treated as if taharas is worst. ”

thats my point. Strictly speaking based on punishment Nidah is worse. Yet “obviously” we dont treat it as such, otherwise there should be a movement promoting intermarriage amount the non-frum.

I don’t have a solid mekor for this though, and maybe yes we should promote intermarriage (or at the least not discourage it) to prevent the worse punishment/aveira

There is mashal on this, where a king tells his servants to grow a garden of flowers. They get paid on the work they do. Some are more worthy than others, so they get paid more for it; The king does not tell them the pay for each because he wants a nice mix and not one or two types, but if they would know the pay for each, they would only plant the higher paid ones. Similarly. when it comes to mitzvos. Hashem, wants us to perform a mix because we don’t understand the effect it creates above.

If someone has bulmus, hunger pang, we feed him the lighter sin. For shabbos its a sakonoh, so we slaughter for him rather give him naveloh. There is an argument between the RMA and Mechaber if shabbos is hutra or hudcha. If there is sakonoh on shabbos, if there is a goy around according the RMA use him, but according to the Mechaber you don’t need to. It is a actually a mitzva to use a talmid chacham, so that people should not learn from it. SA O’CH (328,12)

When we must tear toilet paper on shabbos, don’t tear on perforations in order not to cut to size.

You missed the point, Which is a worse tearing D’Oraisa toilet paper to clean oneself or a brutal murder and disposing of the body in a horrible way.

Most people would certainly say murder is worse, but the punishment is worse for tearing the toilet paper

Shabbos is the foundation of Judaism. If you destroy the foundation, you destroy the whole building,
therefore the punishment is greater. If someone is mechaleh shabbos after admonishment, we can’t drink from his wine.

It was part of the crime of brutally killing someone, It wasnt just feeding the dog

Basically it was killing someone and showing no respect for the Meis as well. About as depraved as you could possibly get

on second thought my Nidah “rayah” might not be one at all.

Its very possible that although we would rather he be with nidah than goya (an assertian I am being strictly based on sevara I would love any sources on this topic) , He is doing a worse aveira., but we would rather he do worse aveira for a greater good.

Although we don’t say חטא כדי שיזכה חברך, ( shabbos 4a) in the tzad that we did say that. Do we say the person doing the aveira still has an aveira, he is worse off for having done it , he will get an onesh/need kaparah. But do the aveira ie get the onesh, ie do the worse act, to benefit your friend.
Or no, in that tzad, it wouldnt be the worse act, NOT doing the aveira would be worse maybe he’d even get get punished for not doing the aveira . There has to be some discussion on this, I will go hunting over shabbos bl”n. Though I’m not certain it relates to our topic

Yom Tov malochos with admonishment is malkus, Yom Kippur is kares and shabbos is skilah.
Similarly, the number called up for laining indicates this severity. Chal Hamoed 4,Yom Tov 5, Yom Kippur 6 and shabbos 7. A rabibinic prohibition is chayev misah. Explains R’ Yanoson Aibshutz ztz’l, the chazal are protectors of the palace of the King who have the right to shoot intruders on the spot.

The person who ripped the toilet paper because they soiled themself is not the same person who Drove to the Mall on Shabbos

Joseph
“As no one addressed my above point regarding intermarriage versus nidda, it is fair to say that everyone agrees with it.”

Lol you didnt make a point (you rarely do)
And using your “logic” since you didn’t address ANY of my points, you agree with them. Interesting, I wouldnt have thought

KY
regarding intermarriage vs Nidah,. I hear your point but you are dodging mine. Granted I said “marry” but my point holds for any union. In my experience we are more opposed to a Jew living with a goy than with a non-frum Jewess. Do you perceive it differently?
I don’t think it is merely the “technicality” that by a Goy the very union is wrong, while non-frum it is other aspects. But again, I do hear your distinction and perhaps this “rayah” that was already weak to begin with since I dont really have a mekor for it, is even weaker.

KY

“I assume the punishment is a barometer of severity unless told otherwise,
You assume, what? That it’s random? Just a Hodge podge of punishments randomly assigned to sins? Help me out here.

furthermore you got me to rethin another position, that is tangentially related to this, namely does every halachic position need “proof” or are some obvious.

Many are obvious, and don’t really NEED proof.
But they must all be provable”

YES!

now this is the crux of our disagreement, and what I meant by lack of critical thinking.

when faced by a question “what is worse stealing or rape? ” there are 2 approaches:

1) Obviously rape is worse! what kind of question is that, aye why isnt there a worse onesh? good question, I’m not sure. Maybe it is yet another exception, to the general rule. but as they say fin a kasha shtarbt men nisht, perhaps the question is better than the tereitz . But that doesn’t change the reality.

or

2) well stealing gets a worse onesh so its worse. Aye Im pretty sure anybody would rather the former? I’ not even sure what the response is? Theyre wrong they should prefer the latter . This approach leads to really absurd conclusions that are logically untenable.

I mean should a penuyah submit to prevent her attacker from taking her money? could a thinking person even have such a hava amina?
again, I dont have PROOF that she shouldn’t.
do I need to provide proof?
Are you unsure?

” You assume, what? That it’s random? Just a Hodge podge of punishments randomly assigned to sins? Help me out here.”

i’m not sure how to answer that. I dont understand what exactly it is about cursing a parent that warrants speciifly stoning vs hitting that warrants chenek. . that doesnt mean I think it is random.

“”I assume the punishment is a barometer of severity unless told otherwise,”

yes generally true. but what if it just cant be otherwise?
Unless you are saying that yes it is possible that stealing is worse than rape.
Is that a position you can accept?

Or put another way. Both of us are stumped.
either
Of course rape is worse. I have no idea why it doesn’t get a worse punishment

Or
Of course stealing is worse, it has a worse punishment! I have no idea why rape seems so bad?

What is pushing you to prefer the 2nd approach, especially when you concede that there are exceptions to the general rule ?

Much the same crowd once again trying to minimize the seriousness of Judaism
I will try to answer some for the moment

Now there’s much to be learned from these serious statements made in our texts regarding slander or haughtiness they’re not meant to be taken literal

remarkable or not the same non-literalist on other issues are so literal all of a sudden over here for these

Baseline for Judaism is the pyramidal structure of punishment .however there’s other factors that must be taken into that edifice

eg, Shabbos even though it is more severe than murder which by the way is decapitation. is not one of the three Cardinal precepts For which for which an individual must forfeit their life for
Second one must factor in unintentional act as well for to kill unintentional they have to flee in Exile which is not the case for Shabbos
a kohan who kills unintentionally is not permitted ever more to go up and Duchan

“Incidentally do you know of any discussions regarding which is worse intermarriage or marrying someone who won’t keep taharas hamishpacha.
Actually remarkably was discussed it was actually rather topical in the later 70s
and it was addressed in an article published in the Jewish Observer 1977 from none other than Rabbi Yaakov Kamenetsky