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gavra – Jaywalking laws would be as much dina dmalchua as driving through a red light. Safety laws are covered as part of dina d’m.
Syag – the data I happened to quote from NPR isn’t from them, they among others just covered the story and that fact. Nor is the data under dispute. 99% of Americans who owe use tax don’t pay it. Nothing particularly controversial about pointing out that undisputed figure. It’s even higher than the number of Americans who disregard the jaywalking laws. 🙂
gavra – 99% of Americans who owe it do not pay the use tax (including not using the table) and none of the 45 states that have it on the books enforce it or try to collect it. Jaywalking is also against the law. Do frum people who live in middle of a long avenue walk to the corner to cross to the neighbor directly across the street? If not, are they violating Dina D’Malchusa despite it being Shabbos in a frum neighborhood with not a car for miles in sight?
To a room full of frum people. And you are kidding yourself if you think that even 10% of your frum family members who file a state tax return in one of the 45 states with a use tax (and made out-of-state/internet purchases that didn’t have sales tax charged) kept track and declared their purchases for the past year on the state return and paid the use tax.
Unless they’re all part of the national 1.6%.
“why would you assume people don’t?”
NPR has an article that will answer your question. It is entitled “Most People Are Supposed To Pay This Tax. Almost Nobody Actually Pays It.”
It says “It’s called a use tax. As far as I can tell, accountants and tax lawyers are some of the only people who pay it. Forty-five states have a use tax. About 1.6 percent of the taxpayers in those 45 states actually pay the use tax.”
So 98.4% of Americans who owe the tax do not pay it. (Does the 0.016 who pay cover all of unzere?)
“Like most states, Connecticut rarely goes after anyone for use tax violation… But states seem to be abandoning the idea that people will pay the use tax.”
Syag Lchochma – Can you give an example of knowing first hand information demonstrating guilt? That would seem to be pretty rare unless you witnessed the crime yourself.
Also, even if you saw it yourself, is there no concern of loshon hora? After all, loshon hora is about wrongdoing that is true.
nisht is correct that if you make online purchases from merchants (Amazon, Newegg, etc.) and they don’t bill sales tax in your State, then every year when you file your State taxes you need to pay the sales tax (also called use tax) that you didn’t pay for all the purchases the previous year from merchants that didn’t bill your State’s sales tax.
Does everyone here who is judging others declare all their out-of-state online purchases on their state tax return that they didn’t pay sales tax at the time of the sale? Otherwise you’re a tax cheat.
Syag Lchochma – I’m not following the seeming dissonance between your position on not judging Rubashkin (which I agree with) even though he’s been convicted by a non-Jewish court and your position on accepting the judgement of other yidden who are convicted by a non-Jewish court.
zahavasdad – A relevance is that if the government acts in a manner halacha deems incorrect, we halachicly cannot assist or even support the government doing that.
Syag Lchochma – That isn’t correct. The person certainly doesn’t lose his halachic status and benefits of being considered a shomer Torah umitzvos based on an accusation. In fact, even if guilty of what he’s accused by the government he still doesn’t lose that halachic status or its halachic benefits insofar how we are required to view and treat him.
nfgo3 – if you think that the secular laws and sentencing system are too lenient on financial crimes then you’re disagreeing with the Torah. Because the Torah’s penal system for financial crimes is way more lenient than the secular system.
gavra – My understanding is that halacha recognizes Bais Din as having jurisdiction even on a dispute between a Jew and a gentile. But like you, I don’t have a source offhand for that point, though such is my strong recollection.
gavra – halacha has provisions specifying what the penalties are for wronging an aino yehudi. As a rule of thumb, the penalties are more severe when the wronged party is a member of klal yisroel.
The Mored B’malchus question is interesting that I don’t know offhand. Rambam probably discusses it. I’m doubtful that if a Jew is Mored B’malchus against a non-Jewish monarch/government if halacha gives the non-Jewish government jurisdiction to punish him according to their own laws, however severe they may be. I suspect that halacha has its own specifications, even in such a case, what the penalty is.
zahavasdad – so that’s the halacha. If after the six years it couldn’t be paid back in full then he’s patur from further repayment.
Putting him in prison for six years doesn’t get the money repaid either. In fact, putting him in prison will get less repaid then forcing him to work it off for six years.
According to the piskei halacha, the butei dinim retain jurisdiction over klal yisroel even if chutz l’aaretz, in non-Jewish lands. Before the enlightenment this was recognized by most European governments which authorized the kehila to enforce crime and punishment in the Jewish community. This halacha didn’t change with the enlightenment and thus we aren’t permitted to turn our own over to the secular government.
Rav Moshe in Orach Chaim 5-9,11 and Choshen Mishpat 1-8 says you can’t support or have a Jew punished by the secular authorities because they administer a punishment in excess of halacha. So to answer your question, if a Jew steals his punishment should be as specified in halacha.
The sheva mitzvos mandating the goyim establish a court system applies to them to establish it to administer justice among themselves. They do not, in the eyes of halacha, obtain jurisdiction of the Jews in their lands.
(Any response to this comment should include addressing the psak halacha from Rav Moshe.)
gavra – start the thread with the points you want to discuss separately and frame the issues on those various points so we can discuss them.
Halacha punishes theft with a financial penalty. Rav Moshe in Orach Chaim 5-9,11 and Choshen Mishpat 1-8 says you can’t support or have a Jew punished by the secular authorities because they administer a punishment in excess of halacha.
I made five distinct (and numbered) points. So far I see only the first point having been addressed by anyone. (And that response was a fair one.)
We have a far more and greater responsibility for observant Jews than we do for anyone else. They’re included in acheinu bnei yisroel. How you’d treat your flesh and blood brother and son in similar circumstances is how you should any observant Jew.
edited for inappropriate/unsubstantiated information. Please reread your own points 1 through 3
Anyone interested in addressing to my points two through five?
1. I’m deeply disturbed that anyone here is accepting reports or saying that *any* wrongdoing took place in this case. This is *only* an investigation and the officers yesterday were only serving search warrants and taking documents to use in their investigation.
No one was arrested. No one.
2. Even if in the future (or any other cases) anyone is arrested, even the non-Jewish system recognizes everyone is innocent until and unless convicted and upheld on appeal. Furthermore, we are obligated to be dan l’kaf zechus and presume innocence.
3. Even if the non-Jewish system convicts anyone, we still are not permitted to accept or believe said conviction. The non-Jewish system accepts circumstantial and other types of evidence that is unacceptable in the Jewish system since the Torah considers such evidence weak and easily manipulable by those seeking a conviction for unjust reasons.
Additionally, the non-Jewish system convicts with much weaker proofs than the Torah permits a conviction based on.
4. Also, the punishments metered out by the non-Jewish system is excessive by Torah standards. Economic crimes in the Jewish system are punished with economic penalties, not jailings that are literally pikuach nefesh.
There is absolutely no justification that any Jew can support the jailing of their fellow Jew for something halacha doesn’t demand such an excessive punishment. You can look in the teshuvos seforim throughout the ages, including in Rav Moshe in the Igros Moshe in our own times, where they strongly rule it is forbidden to use the secular authorities criminal justice system since they convict based on proofs that are halachicly unacceptable as well as because they hand out punishments more severe than halacha permits even if guilty.
5. If your own flesh and blood brother or son committed a crime would you go around saying if he did the crime he must do the time? Would you be advocating your brother or son’s imprisonment? Of course not. You must treat and advocate for your fellow observant Jew no less than you would for your son or brother.
I’m davening that any frum yid should not suffer any incarceration from the government.
Rashi teitches a baal nefesh as “a kosher person” in Chullin 6a. Rabbeinu Chananel over there teitches it as “a person who distances himself from aveiras and is careful with himself.”
Sam2: Do you have any written sources you can cite to support your definition of a baal nefesh?
Sam2/DaMoshe: At least one and possibly multiple of the four student speakers at the YU forum made it open and unregrettably clear he actively practices that lifestyle.
Sam2: Anyone can choose to act as a baal nefesh thus working himself to that without any pretensions from accepting upon himself to be noheig to be machmir to only consume C”Y.
mesorah 123: Translate baal nefesh and you’ll have your answer. Someone who does what’s best for his neshoma. Even if according to the letter of the law you can do less without violating the law.
DaasYochid says he heard confirmation that the maaisa of Rav Moshe vomiting up C”S is true. Others deny it. You claim that Rav Moshe and his sons consumed C”S. Others deny it and Rav Moshe himself writes he is makpid.
Are you going to believe what Rav Moshe himself writes or are you going to believe the stories where everyone claims something else?
Ivdu: Then why did YU roshei yeshivos Rabbi Schachter and Rabbi Twerski condemn it, tell people to stay away from it and said it shouldn’t have been allowed? Because despite the organizers claiming it wasn’t to support toeiva, it in fact was doing exactly that – just by having it, it legitimizes it. Like Rabbi Twerski is quoted in the media as saying, it was no different than having an open forum to discuss how to handle those who covet adultery with their neighbor. Many more people are naturally challenged by that than by the type of toeiva the forum was about.
mesorah 123: So Rav Moshe was being pseudo-frum in advising baalei nefesh to refrain from C”S (and refraining from C”S himself, as he writes)? You get a big zchus for drinking C”S instead of C”Y and no zchus for being a baal nefesh and drinking C”Y instead of C”S, as Rav Moshe advises?
apushatayid: Which category is Rav Moshe instructing a baal nefesh to refrain from consuming? C”A is assur according to all. C”Y (eye-witnessed by a Jew) is permitted according to all. So which category is Rav Moshe instructing a baal nefesh to refrain from consuming?
mesorah 123: Revisionism is inventing that baal nefesh means “an older person with a certain ziknah”. That’s a new one. Rav Moshe didn’t write a zokein. Many young people can be described as being a baal nefesh.
apushatayid: This conversation started with your incorrect comment of “Acording to Rav Moshe Z’l there is no such thing as Chalav Stam. There is Chalav Akum and Chalav Yisroel.” I simply pointed out that Rav Moshe certainly does differentiate between C”S (which he calls CH”C) and real C”Y, i.e. that was witnessed by a real Yisroel. And I pointed out this is obvious since Rav Moshe explicity paskens that a baal nefesh should not consume C”S/CH”C and only consume real C”Y. If there were no difference, as you claimed “Acording to Rav Moshe Z’l there is no such thing as Chalav Stam”, then there would be no way for Rav Moshe to instruct those who are a baal nefesh to refrain from C”S.
apushatayid: Was it an oversight that you didn’t address the point made that Rav Moshe paskens that a baal nefesh should not eat C”S/CH”C and should only eat real C”Y? Rav Moshe clearly differentiates between the two.
As to your point, Rav Moshe issued a heter on how to satisfy Chazal’s requirement. It is not obvious without a heter that when Chazal say a Jew is required onsite that it can rather be satisfied with periodic inspections by a Christian FDA official.
Barry: a) the person being given tzniyus mussar (for violating the very basic standards according to all) might listen, b) the guy being giving mussar against stealing might not listen, so according to your argument why give it? c) the person violating tzniyus is harming bystanders who inadvertently witness the immodesty thus harming others and yiddishkeit d) if someone gambles illegally should he not be given mussar since he’s single and no one else is victimized?
apushatayid, you’re missing Rav Moshe’s middle of the three categories, which he calls Cholov HaCompanies but the oilem generally calls Cholov Stam. You can’t say Rav Moshe doesn’t differentiate between Cholov HaCompanies and real Cholov Yisroel since Rav Moshe says a baal nefesh should stick with real C”Y and not use CH”C (C”S).