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Please share some examples of the most egregious answers “The Ethicist” has published in The New York Times.
That weekly column is a disgrace to good ethics.
I stopped reading the NY Times years ago and so, have no answer for you. Most of what is written in that left wing rag is, in an ycase, biased!
The New York Times is owned and operated by secular Jews. They are our mortal enemies. Our existence is an affront to them. From their perspective, our disappearance from society would be boon to them. Their ethical rules reflect it. While it might be good to read the newspaper to keep an eye on what our enemies are doing, no frum person will see it as a newsource anymore than (NOT le-havdil) the infamous Der Sturmer (whose editor Julius Streicher was hanged at Nuremberg for excessivly bad journalism).
You still read the NYT?!!! No self respecting Jew should read that paper. It is so biased!
The questions and often the answers are hillarious. To ask if a vote for the writers mother’s political candidate could be considered a birthday gift is an example of the quality of the questions.
I saw one a few weeks ago that really bothered me. A person wrote that she was reading a sports book that she thought her nephew would appreciate so she gave him a copy. She hadn’t finished the book yet, and as she continued reading she came to a story of an athlete who was in a same gender relationship. Knowing that her nephew comes from a religious family and that his parents would not approve, she felt guilty that she gave him the book. She asked if she should tell his parents about the book.
The response was that censorship is usually unacceptable. She should not feel guilty and she should not tell the parents because the child should be free to explore new ideas without interference from his parents. In fact, the ethicist writes, it’s probably a good idea to lechatchilah expose him to areas that his parents would otherwise censor and again, there is no reason to feel guilty that she accidentally exposed him to new ideas.
I’ve never read the column regularly, but I heard about a case in which a female real estate agent wrote him to ask if it would be ethical for her to stop doing business with an Orthodox Jew, because he wouldn’t shake her hand (which to her uneducated mind showed that he thought women were inferior or polluted or something). Mr. Ethics said yes, certainly! I understand that even after many Orthodox rabbis contacted him to explain the real reasons, he never retracted his answer.
I think there was an article on Torah Musings in the last few months about one of the Ethicist columns.
akuperma:
Arthur Ochs Sulzberger Jr. who is the owner/publisher of the NYT is of paternally Jewish origin but his mother who raised him (Barbara Winslow Grant) was a farhitzte Episcopalian. He is no more Jewish than Whoopie Goldberg.
I am often not in agreement with the ethicist but Randy Cohen did in fact retract his answer on the orthodox man who refused to shake in a later column, explaining that he was unaware of the religious restrictions.
Do you have any evidence Cohen retracted? I don’t believe he ever has.
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