Avram in MD

Joseph,

Ok, I can accept that. For what purpose did you make the extension in your original post at all, however?

Joseph,

I just asked that question without taking a position since I wasn’t sure which is the proper path.

A disingenuous response. You didn’t ask a question, you made a statement:

The same question can more or less be asked about every baal teshuva.

scared driver delight,

But to suggest a safe speed along a street has no point?

I think the yellow signs are primarily intended for short distance situations where the ability to enforce is limited and the speed reduction is temporary. It’s different from a straight thoroughfare.

So, if I understand your argument correctly, a “suggested” speed of 25/35mph is appropriate for Coney Island Ave, but ticketing/fining people is inappropriate unless they are really flying? If you feel that there is a reasonable speed that is in excess of the limit, then why would you consider the limit to be a “great suggestion”?

lesschumras,

First, the caregivers are forbidden to disclose any information ( HIPAA rules ) about their medical care

I don’t think a mamin was intending to poll the caregivers.

and ,second, perhaps Mr Sasoon, the only person legally allowed to disclose any information, would prefer to protect their privacy

This is possible, and if so, nobody would have any information. I don’t think a mamin was intending to invade their privacy in any case.

scared driver delight,

a speed limit of 35 mph on a side street isn’t so unreasonable. Getting a ticket for going above that is unreasonable.

Wait, what?

Are you contending that it is unreasonable to enforce speed limits?

Avrom in MD-you misread the OP. He said you get a ticket for going above, not that that’s what the limit is.

The OP wrote:

equipped with a camera taking pictures of speeding vehicles going over 35 mph and fining them.

For that sentence to make any sense, the speed limit would have to be 35mph. I do not believe I misread anything.

147,

like we Australian Jews

Australian?

http://www.theyeshivaworld.com/coffeeroom/topic/schlissel-challah#post-565374

Depends on the building in question?

Patur Aval Assur,

In your quotation below, the text in bold are my clarifications based on how I understand you.

In short, the criteria are that it has to be something that has a non-benefit related reason to follow it but doesn’t have a benefit related reason to follow it.

So to shorten your question, you are asking us to provide a reason for doing anything that is unrelated to benefit.

The best answer I can come up with is this:

We humans are ephemeral and limited, therefore it is possible for us to receive benefit that makes us longer lasting and stronger. It makes sense, therefore, for human beings to act for their benefit, and we call this sense “reasons” for acting.

Since G-d is eternal and omnipotent, it is nonsensical to state that He can receive benefit. Yet, we know that He does things, so He must have reasons that are unrelated to benefit. We are incapable of knowing these reasons due to our own limitations.

So why would a human being do something if not for benefit? It doesn’t really make sense to us, and your conundrum would stand, except for one thing: human beings were created b’tzelem Elokim. Therefore, there is a spark from Hashem inside each one of us. So even though we cannot articulate it with the earthly definition of “reasons” that you seek, if all “benefit” reasons for an act are stripped away, we are still left with the reason that Hashem does things. What is that reason? Ask Hashem. But it’s within us, whether we can articulate it or not.

Patur Aval Assur,

Not necessarily. I am rejecting the way you are explaining altruism, because according to you, altruism is just the best benefit. Hence altruism is really benefitism.

It seems to me that you are rejecting your own definition of the way I explain things, not mine. I hold that benefit has value even if it is not personal. You reject this.

Not in terms of good and bad.

What are your arbitrary definitions of good and bad for the purposes of this debate? Because it would seem that according to your rules, good and bad shouldn’t exist at all.

You have a closed set of assumptions in this discussion that preclude any explanations for established human behaviors, and by your own admission they do not reflect the reality of the world. So what is the purpose of this debate?

Patur Aval Assur,

(This is assuming it has value to us. If not then there is no reason to do it.)

Nope, I reject this parenthetical, because it contradicts what you were willing to accept above (that you don’t know what the value is).

So you are agreeing that the reason to do something is that it is valuable, as opposed to simply because it is the ???.

What is the ??? if not the ultimate value of an act?

So do you also agree to the point that follows from that, namely that someone who saves someone is no better than someone who kills someone, since they are both simply pursuing value?

No, because one value can be better or worse than another.

Patur Aval Assur,

You are saying either that there is value, or that even though there is no value one should still refrain from killing (I’m not sure which one you are saying).

I’m saying there is value – although there is no guarantee that a human can see or understand that value.

or else carefully delineate what the value is, which I feel you have not done as of yet.

This is an unreasonable constraint, and is why I previously said that your conundrum was artificial.

I agree with you that both human beings and animals would only want to do things that are valuable. The difference between them is that animals are capable of seeing an action as valuable only if they understand what the value is for them (your demand). This is why I keep relating your arguments to the animal perspective. Humans, on the other hand, do not have this constraint. Hashem can tell us that an act has value, and we can believe Him and do it, even if we have no understanding of what the value is.

Patur Aval Assur,

I am reframing it because if it is not personal then there is no reason to do it.

Yes indeed, that is the axis of our disagreement.

Any number of reasons. E.g. you like money so you want to steal. Or you are jealous of someone so you want to kill him. Etc. Etc.

I would argue that the vast majority of people who do stuff like that do not A) Discover what their purpose in life is, and B) Consciously reject it.

Note that my point is not so much that there should be nothing stopping you from killing or stealing inasmuch as it is that you shouldn’t think that you’re a good person for giving up the stealing and killing, since you are only giving it up because you are getting something even better.

That’s balderdash (feel free to quote me on your report cards thread – emoticon).

A person who’s anger flares up, but refrains from killing because he thinks it’s wrong through reciprocal “golden rule” reasoning is better than a person who refrains simply because he’s afraid of getting jailed or executed, even though both are refraining in order to “get something better.” Why? Because once the police are removed from the equation, the former person would kill, while the latter would continue to refrain. We could probably derive some circumstance which would remove the inhibition from the latter guy too. The point that our sages are trying to make is that the ideal for us is to elevate our reasoning to the point where nothing can remove the inhibition to sin. With an animal this is impossible, but Judaism posits that this is possible for human beings.

At the end of the day, you are absolutely right in your reasoning … from the point of view of an animal. Animals are motivated purely by their perception of what is beneficial to them. Most humans are too, but we have the potential to elevate ourselves beyond this reasoning, because we were created b’tzelem Elokim, Who created the universe even though there was no “benefit” to Him. But it’s a waste of breath to try and explain this to an animal, because how could you describe colors to someone who was born completely blind? It would make no sense.

Patur Aval Assur,

So then you will have to say that God can command whatever he wants, even if it is against inherent morality. And then DaasYochid might tell you that you just said kefira.

Absolutely G-d can command whatever He wants. The universe and morality are not independent of G-d, however, so to say that G-d goes against inherent morality makes no sense.

Patur Aval Assur,

So you are saying that Avraham did it for a benefit. Which means you are agreeing with me.

Not exactly. Avraham Aveinu saw no benefits to the akeida. He was already promised everything he wanted, and Hashem now was asking him to give up the vehicle of that promise. And this wasn’t something like sacrificing Yitzchak to save someone else, or stop an asteroid from hitting the Earth, or even to make a public kiddush Hashem (they were alone on the mountain) or anything else where a benefit could be derived, either for himself or anyone else. All Avraham knew was that Hashem had asked him to do this. Avraham trusted in Hashem – that he wasn’t capricious.

How is that the same as doing something for a benefit?

That even within your system where the ultimate benefit is the good feeling of fulfilling your purpose, a good person is no better off than a terrorist.

I think you do not understand my “system”.

Hashem created a dynamic universe that is affected by action. He created two categories to describe the effects of any action: good and bad. He created human beings who have the power to consciously choose what actions to take. He also created for humans a two-category system that parallels his good and bad categories: truth and falsehood. He created within human beings an innate sense of responsibility to seek the truth and reject falsehood – that is why Adam and Chava were accountable for their choice in the garden. Adam and Chava ate from the tree of knowledge of good and bad, and therefore ingested their own system of good and bad that is fundamentally independent from the system of truth and falsehood and Hashem’s good and bad. This muddied our ability to discern truth and falsehood, because we can confuse it with our own sense of good and bad. So our good feelings have nothing to do with whether an act is beneficial (true) or not. Whether we align our feelings with truth and falsehood is up to us, but it doesn’t change our responsibility.

So why would/should we do what Hashem wants simply because it is the truth? Because that is how we were created. It shouldn’t even be a question, and only is because of the disalignment between our human sense of good and bad and Hashem’s.

Health,

That’s why I said it needs to be done on a personal level. I used to teach Fire & Safety including CPR courses.

So you are saying that there are resources out there to help a person develop personalized family action plans?

Btw, what do you do if your smoke detector went off at 3 am???

That’s actually happened to me – very scary to wake up to. The alarm went off in a room that we were not climate controlling at the time. I flew out of bed to the room (probably not the best idea), while my wife went to wake the kids. I felt the door, it was cool to the touch, and I went in. No fire. Whew! I think that high concentrations of water droplets (it was foggy outside) may have disrupted the ionized current enough to trip the alarm.

Patur Aval Assur,

In your first paragraph, what is the benefit if not the pleasure?

A person may not know what the benefit of his action is.

In your second paragraph, you don’t explain what the benefit of following the command was.

That’s right! There was no apparent benefit to him whatsoever. Hashem had already promised everything to Avraham that he could have possibly wanted, specifically through Yitzchak, but then Hashem requested him (??? ???) to bring Yizchak as an offering. Avraham did it simply because Hashem asked him to, because he believed that if Hashem asked it, there was benefit to it.

My point from the terrorist is that as long as you think you are fulfilling your purpose, you have the same “good feeling” regardless of whether you fulfilled your actual purpose. (This is based on your assumption that the terrorist feels good.)

So, what’s the question?

Health,

Are we really helping ourselves? E/O is offering Fire Safety courses. If it’s not done on a personal level, it’s only for show! Why do we – when something like this happens, put on a show? We should make real change, not just superficial change.

I don’t think people are intentionally putting on a show. Aside from tidbits like installing smoke detectors, safe usage practices with electronics, matches, and other flammable household items, and the things you learn in elementary school such as stop/drop/roll, feeling doors for heat before opening them, staying low in smoke and covering your face, etc. I think many (myself included) are at a loss about how to do more.

I want to develop a family fire plan and practice it through routine family fire drills, but in a real fire, conditions and actions needed to escape could vary widely based on where the fire is, what started it, etc. How do I obtain the knowledge necessary to put together the best possible fire plan based on this complexity?

Patur Aval Assur,

What is the value of aligning motivation with ??? if not the good feeling?

This is the fundamental question of humanity, the one that Chava grappled with right after her encounter with the snake.

Assuming we care about our lives, a basic reason to seek deeper purpose is longer term benefit. We have bigger brains, so we can predict further into the future than animals can. Getting a vaccine hurts, which is not a good short term feeling, and small children have to be held down to get a shot, but we adults understand it may protect us from diseases down the road, and most of us would willingly go to the doctor for the shot. For Chava, her conundrum was that eating from the tree would sure taste good and give her a lot of knowledge, but then she’d die (or maybe not, said her rationalizations).

As human beings, while we find avoiding death to be more desirable than ephemeral pleasure, I don’t think we’d be satisfied with just that. We’re not here to just eat and avoid getting eaten for as long as we can. So we seek greater purpose. I am Jewish so I believe that we have a Creator Who has an intended purpose for us and directs us to it via the Torah. What we learn about our purpose, however, may conflict with our existing notions of what makes us feel good, and we then arrive at that same primeval question Chava faced once again.

So it seems that the good feeling is based on the person’s own understanding of his purpose. The terrorist thinks his purpose is to kill people and he feels good; the good samaritan thinks his purpose is to help people and he feels good. At the end of the day what is the difference between them?

Now we’re hitting a fundamental question of humanity post tree. Once upon a time we could clearly see our purpose. Now our desire to feel good beats so loudly within us that we can follow it instead of our true purpose, making up false purposes along the way and convincing ourselves that they’re right in order to shush our existential discontent. Instead of the driver leading the horse, the horse goes where it wants and the driver convinces himself that that is where he’s supposed to be.

So I guess Patur Aval Assur’s question could be asked about my example of children sharing in this manner:

If both lead to sharing at the end, why is the wise child who does it because it is his purpose any better than the child who does it because his mommy will praise him?

I can think of two possible answers:

1. Reaching the point where we are doing things because it’s our purpose is itself part of our purpose. So even if we’re doing things that we are purposed to do but we have different reasons for doing so, we’re not 100% fulfilling our purpose.

2. Chazal were concerned that fulfilling our purpose for any other reason presented a risk of being led astray. It allows for our yetzer haras to begin rationalizing away at our reasons. Therefore, the reason for ???? ???? ???? ???? ??? is one of safety.

A toddler sees no benefit in sharing a toy whatsoever, because he wants to have the toy and by sharing, he doesn’t have the toy.

An older child begins to see that sharing is valued by his parent. He’ll share his toy because he’ll get praised or rewarded by his parent. This is doing something for the sake of a reward. Some people’s religiosity is in this mode.

The older child may also begin to see the benefit in sharing because it opens the possibilities of trade: if I share my toy that he wants, he’ll share his toy that I want. This is also doing something for the sake of reward, and is the underpinnings of secular “morality”.

An even older child begins to develop empathy: I will share my toy because it will make him feel good (bein adam l’chaveiro), or it will bring closeness with my parent who values sharing (bein adam l’Makom), and that makes me feel good too. I think this begins to transcend doing something for the sake of reward, but I can understand your argument that it does not. Fine.

A wise child realizes that he wasn’t put on Earth to have toys. He was put on Earth to fulfill a purpose. He learns about his purpose, and sees that sharing is part of this purpose. He shares to fulfill his purpose. I think this is a pure form of not doing for the sake of a reward at all, because even if the child ultimately feels good because of acting in this way, it is only because he aligned his feelings with his purpose.

Patur Aval Assur,

I’ll try to take another stab at this discussion without tying myself up in rhetorical knots like last time.

Would you do something if you received no benefit whatsoever?

I don’t think this is possible. The definition of an action (doing) is something that causes a change – and any change is either beneficial, harmful, or both.

Benefit includes physical reward, getting a good feeling, earning schar, etc.

I think there is an error in this premise that is at fault for creating what may be an artificial conundrum. You seem to assume that ??? encompasses all benefit, and that actions for the sake of ??? are separate from actions for benefit. I do not think Chazal intended those definitions.

I think ??? is a benefit that is not ???. Why is ??? a benefit? Because it reveals our purpose. Why does our purpose have value? Because we are hardwired to desire our purpose.

DaasYochid,

Thank you for your kind words.

So all we’re left with is discussion and debate, and that can lead to misunderstanding and hard feelings.

I think this is a great point. The opportunity to discuss and debate issues I care about is a big part of what motivates me to read and post here, but there is a big downside to be aware of.

ubiquitin,

Sort of, though this case (as I understood it) was about a guy who wears a srugi not being allowed to daven for the amud period. Even with a hat or at by day with a Talis. Perhaps I misunderstood

That’s the thing, nobody truly knows what the shul (or perhaps just the gabbai’s) policy was. We’ve had four speculations on this thread by my count: no srugis because they’re not good enough (DaMoshe), no srugis because it’s assumed they won’t have a hat/jacket (me), no srugis because of perceived hashkafic differences (DaasYochid), no srugis because they pronounce Hebrew differently (HaKatan). There’s been some interesting discussion about whether these such policies are reasonable or not, but in reality with regard to the actual event, we don’t know the policy or its rationale.

Syag Lchochma,

“before declaring an entire shul or community to be lacking in ahavas Yisroel based on hearsay.”

another example.

I agree with you that what I wrote was not a direct quotation of DaMoshe per se, but I did feel that it was an accurate summation of the body of his posts in this thread. DaMoshe didn’t refute or object to the take either. Upon rereading his posts carefully, it is possible that he was intending to limit his polemic to the gabbaim themselves and not include the larger shul or Lakewood community. It wasn’t clear, however, particularly after he prefaced a response to Joseph with “If you’re going to tell me that in Lakewood, they think that…”. There could be other interpretations of that response too. I think other posts such as Sam2’s bringing wife beating as an example to support his point further charged the debate.

My question is just about a tendency to make a posters comments more extreme, and then respond to him based on the “updated version”

I thought a lot about this, and I think there are several different things that go on, with different elements at play depending on the thread.

1. Sometimes when a poster identifying with one “group” makes a statement about others in a different “group” (e.g., DaMoshe’s story in this thread, or if a Yeshivish person opened a thread to discuss some problem or other he witnessed with individuals in a MO setting – certainly has happened in the CR before!), other posters may interpret this as a blanket statement about that other group. Sometimes this arises from unclear wording by the OP, sometimes it arises from posters taking personal offense. I think DaasYochid alluded to this issue earlier in this thread; such posts usually do not engender positive responses.

2. In most threads as posts get added, the debate evolves into two camps, even though individual posters have a wide range of views. In this thread, for example, several posters have put me, DaasYochid, and Joseph into one “camp” and responded to us as one, even though our statements and positions have differences. Similarly, it’s possible that interpretations of DaMoshe’s posts by those arguing with him have been influenced by Sam2’s and ubiquitin’s posts, for example. I think once this two-sided evolution happens, people start responding to the “camp” rather than the poster, and it’s much easier to misinterpret individual posters based on perceptions of what the greater “camp” holds. I agree with you that posters should be very careful to remember that we are responding to unique individuals, not a camp.

Syag Lchochma,

Interestingly, you wrote this come see Teaneck as an example of a lack of ahavas Yisroel! as your parallel to DaMoshe’s statement. Do you believe that that is what he wrote?

I appreciate your feedback on my posts, especially since you consistently work to see the various perspectives in a thread. I am concerned that I remain as respectful and honest as possible in a debate, without misrepresenting anyone’s position. I don’t always succeed with this, and sometimes I’m not as aware of how my words are read by others as I should be.

When I wrote the sentence you quoted above, I was intending to parallel DaMoshe’s representation: …the fact that there isn’t enough achdus and ahavas Yisrael with Lakewood as an example. I did spin off of the thread title a bit to make it a bit more cheeky. I wasn’t intending to embellish or magnify his position at all, so if that’s how my post came across (maybe it was the exclamation point?), it’s good for me to clarify myself.