GEN785 Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch makes the following perceptive comment: “In the teachings of the Mishlei [Proverbs], there is great emphasis on opposing the vice of sloth and idleness, and on rousing us to energetic and industrious activity. They never cease to portray to the lazy person the ridiculous and absurd as well as the unfortunate consequences of his behavior.  Particularly interesting is the term רמיה repeatedly used in Mishlei to signify the opposite of industry.  This expression, which is usually found in an ethical connotation – meaning deceit --is here used in an economic context as the opposite of industry, thus meaning sloth, idleness, negligence, et. And in truth, the person who does not spend his life and the spiritual and physical powers which were bestowed upon him for their manifest purpose, does commit deceit. He betrays the sacred charge and opportunity entrusted to him; he betrays his maker, who grants him strength, by failing in the duty which is expected from him in return; and he betrays the world which his actions should benefit. Consequently, the vary air that a lazy person breathes can be considered theft.” From the Wisdom of Mishlei (Jerusalem: Feldheim, 1966, pp. 164 f.] Thus, the man of Torah is, indeed, productive, industrious, energetic, innovative, ambitious; he is very much an alive, vibrant member of the community. He has desires and aspirations. But these desires are not for materialistic acquisitions for their own sake, nor are they centered around the attainment of this–worldly pleasures. He yearns for spiritual fulfillment; he seeks to attain Torah knowledge and wisdom, both for himself and for others. And those materialistic benefits with which he is endowed by the Almighty – large of small –he regards as a blessing, which will aid him in the attainment of his spiritual goals, or which will make it possible for him to help others attain a richer appreciation of Torah values, and an enduring commitment to the pursuit of a Torah way of life. This approach is reminiscent of Avraham Avinu, who used all of his extensive resources to fulfill himself as a man of God. Also, wherever he went, he called out in the name of God. [this verse], thereby bringing others to a recognition of the God idea, and to an acceptance of His dominion over all creation.  [See Genesis 12:5, and Targum Onkelos, and see Torah Faith: The Thirteen Principles, pp 268 f. See also Sforno, on Genesis 12:4.] FENDEL 210-1.

SHOW FULL EXCERPT

GEN786 A husband should take care of his wife’s needs before his own.  The word oholo (his tent) is written with the feminine suffix, the letter hai.  The Midrash [Genesis Rabbah 39:15] comments that this teaches us that Abraham first pitched the tent of his wife, and then his own (Rashi).  From here we see that when a husband needs to do something for himself and his wife, he should take care of his wife’s needs first.  PLYN 46

SHOW FULL EXCERPT

GEN788 According to Ramban [Nachmanidies – AJL], Abraham should have stayed in Canaan; he should have had faith in God that He would sustain him despite the famine. Abraham’s decision to leave was not his only error; it also put Sarah in a position of moral hazard because, as a result of going to Egypt, she was forced to tell a lie. In saying that she was Abraham’s sister and not his wife, she was taken into Pharaoh’s herem where she might have been forced to commit an act of adultery. This is a very harsh judgment, made more so by Ramban’s further assertion that it was because of this lack of faith that Abraham’s children were sentenced to exile in Egypt centuries later.  SACKS 16

SHOW FULL EXCERPT

GEN787 With ten trials was Abraham our Father proved. Pirkei Avot V:4.  “From the day that heaven and earth were created, no famine had ever come, until the days of Abraham – and then not in all countries, but only in Canaan – in order to test him, and to bring him down to Egypt; for it is stated: there was a famine in the land; so Abram when t down to Egypt.” [this verse. The verses which follow are ibid. 12:1-3, 7.]  Why was this a test? Consider: Before it tells of the famine, Scripture records what the Almighty told Abraham: “Go you out of your land … kindred … father’s house, to the land I will show you.  And I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great; and you shall be a blessing … and in you shall all the families of the earth be blessed.”  Soon afterward the Patriarch heard the Almighty’s words again: “To your progeny will I give this land.” So we find Abraham solemnly promised that he would give rise to a great nation, be blessed, etc. and the land of Canaan would belong to his descendants.  Yet soon after he arrives in the promised land, famine strikes it, and he must go to Egypt to live! What sort of fulfillment of the promise was this? How would we have reacted?  Scripture records not a word of protest or complaint by Abraham.  His faith unshaken, he continued trusting the Almighty, that every promise would yet be fulfilled, no matter what he faced now. To the Jewish people, such a test is familiar.  The promises and assurances of the Torah have not come true automatically.  Blessings and riches, wealth and fortune, have not always followed observance as readily as the Torah might have led us to hope.  But as Abraham withstood the trial, so must we.  The way of the Jew is never to lose hope or relinquish trust.  If we cannot have what we like, we must learn to like what we have.  But patiently, serenely, we are ever to accept, with the faith of our Patriarch, that every promise by God must come true in its own time.  SINAI3 31

SHOW FULL EXCERPT

GEN789 See [[GEN396]] Genesis 3:13 duped FREUND 95-6

SHOW FULL EXCERPT

GEN794 Since we know that Sarah was Abraham’s niece Genesis 11:29 and Rashi and nieces were also known at that time as “sisters,” Sarah did not really lie when she said that she was Abraham’s sister. It was not the entire truth (since she was also his wife), but even when she clearly could have legally made up any story [since in a case of life and death such as this, anything and everything is permitted to be said], she told a lie that had some truth in it.  AMEMEI 295

SHOW FULL EXCERPT

GEN792 One of the highest values in Judaism, if not the highest value, is preservation of human life.  Therefore, if a Jew has to violate 610 of the 613 Mitzvot-commandments [N.B. -- Excepting only murder, adultery, idolatry - AJL], in order to save a life even in remote danger, he or she should do so.  Laws of the Foundation of Torah 5:1-2.  Among these 610 is the commandment to tell the truth.  Therefore, if a Jew must lie to save his or her life, one not only has permission to do so, but must lie in such a situation.  This Jewish law, of course, runs counter to the “categorical imperative” of Emanuel Kant, and shows that there are other values higher than telling the truth in Judaism.  AMJV 224

SHOW FULL EXCERPT

GEN791 One may violate most religious injunctions in order to save his life. Even an infant who is one day old, legally not considered viable, is entitled to the same consideration Shabbat 151b. There are three cardinal prohibitions which may not be violated even at the cost of one’s life: idolatry, adultery, and murder Sanhedrin 74a. Any commission of suicide for the sake of avoiding a transgression of other religious injunctions is a serious offense. Maimonides Yesodei haTorah 5:4.  The moral question whether religious laws may be transgressed in order to preserve a life was in issue for a long time. Some sectarian groups, such as the Qumran sect, apparently believed that the primacy of the law should never be via compromised (See Bloch, The Biblical and Historical Background of Jewish Customs and Ceremonies, p 117). On the other hand, a Hasmonean court (2nd cent. B.C.E.) ruled that one may desecrate the Sabbath to defend his life I Macc. 2:41. It seems that no such dispensation was ever granted prior to the Hasmonean era. The Talmud accepted the principle of the primacy of life. Rabbi Ishmael (3nd cent.) voiced a minority opinion that even the law forbidding idolatry may be transgressed (not in public) when one ordered to do so at the risk of his life. He based his view on the verse in Leviticus 18:5 “You shall therefore keep my statutes and my judgments, which if a man do he shall live in them.” Rabbi Ishmael commented on the last phrase of the verse: “’he shall live in them’ but not die by them” Sanhedrin 74a  The primacy of life was apparently paramount in the moral code of the Semitic patriarchs. Abraham requested Sarah to tell Pharoah that she was his sister, not his wife, so that the king would have no need of killing him [This verse]. This request can only be rationalized by the prevailing ethical principle that all virtues, including marital fidelity, maybe waived in the interest of saving a life. The rabbinic majority opinion was crystallized after a long debate in the upper chamber of the House of Nitzah in Lydda (ca. 135). It was during the Hadrianic persecution, when the practice of Judaism was forbidden, that the issue is finally resolved. “In every law of the Torah, if a man is commanded: ‘Transgress and suffer not death,” he may transgress and not suffer death, excepting idolatry, adultery, and murder” Sanhedrin 74a BLOCH 243-4

SHOW FULL EXCERPT

GEN790 Rabbi Hanina ben Dosa said: Any person in whom the fear of sin comes before wisdom, his wisdom shall endure; but anyone in whom wisdom comes before fear of sin, his wisdom shall not endure.  Pirkei Avot III:11.  Here we have a clear, superb statement of one of Judaism’s basic insights:  Wisdom, thought is subservient to the will, which is so inextricably bound up with the motions; therefore, unless a person be first imbed with “fear of sin,” a strong moral sense, his wisdom cannot itself be influential in any fundamental way, no matter how marvelously developed it may be.  For sooner or later the mind and its wisdom become a rationalizing handmaiden, subservient to the wishes and demands of the self that wills.  When Abraham journeyed to the Land of the Philistines, as a measure of self-defense he concealed the fact that beautiful Sarah was his wife, and announced instead that she was his sister. [this verse]. Later Abimelech king of the Philistines felt hurt that Abraham should have suspected his people of being wife-snatchers, wince taking another man’s wife was forbidden, under one of the Seven Noachian Laws, as a crime punishable by death. Abraham replied, however, that “I though: there is no fear of God at all in this place, and they will kill me on account of my wife.” Genesis 20:11 By this he meant: Of course you have a law that no one may take another man’s wife. But where there is no “fear of God,” no wisdom, no abstract knowledge of the law is enough to overcome the evil inclination. You would probably find some way of disposing of me, and then there is no law to prevent you from marrying Abraham’s attractive widow!  Where “fear of sin” does not come before wisdom, to form a basis and background for it wisdom cannot endure. Consider the man who swears that he will never touch a single dollar that belongs to the next fellow. Under his breath he may well add, “Try to convince me that this dollar really belongs to the next fellow.”  SINAI1 273-4

SHOW FULL EXCERPT

GEN793 Sarah does not dispute Abraham’s fears.  She proceeds to tell the lie Abraham asked her to related, and even stands by it when the king takes her into his home.  Only when God sends a plague on Pharaoh’s house does the Egyptian monarch learn that Sarah is a married woman, and he immediately releases her.  Abraham lies about this matter once again Genesis, chapter 20) and his son Isaac acts in the same way Genesis 26:6-11. On none of these occasions does God express displeasure with what Abraham or Isaac has done (since God communicates with the Patriarchs on other occasions, He could have easily expressed disapproval of their actions).  TELVOL 1:427

SHOW FULL EXCERPT