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GENESIS — 38:24 burned

GEN1488 The Jewish view for those who do not retain the dignity of another person is extremely severe.   When the 24,000 students of Rabbi Akiva (all great Torah scholars in their own right, as students of Rabbi Akiva) did not respect one another properly, they all died in a plague because of this sin. Yevamot 62b.  The Talmud Berachot 43b proves from the story of Tamar that it is better to die in a furnace than to embarrass someone.   Tamar was willing to die rather than reveal publicly that her father-in-law, Judah, had sexual relations with her.   (Of course, at the end, Tamar was able to convey to Judah who she was through a code, and he was thus not embarrassed.)   This concept was further demonstrated in a Talmudic story Ketubot 67b in which Mar Ukvah used to secretly supply food for a poor man.   One day, when the poor man sought to find out who was doing this great deed, rather than be “caught,” Mar Ukvah jumped into a furnace and burned his feet.  He later stated that it is preferable to be burned in a furnace than to embarrass anyone publicly.  AMEMEI 115

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GENESIS — 38:24 burned

GEN1485 Sefer HaChinuch (Mitzvah 240) calls the pain that comes from embarrassment the greatest pain of all.  Even when punishing a sinner in a Jewish court, Judaism is sensitive to the embarrassment of the sinner.  Therefore, the person who is designated to administer the lashes to the sinner must have a demeanor that is weak and not strong, in order not to embarrass the sinner.   And if the course of the lashes, the sinner begins to urinate or defecate, the punishment must cease immediately in order not to embarrass this sinner and cause him undue psychological pain.   Laws of Sanhedrin 16:9, 17:5.   Therefore, it is clear that embarrassment is a form of pain that should be avoided whenever possible.   AMJV 247

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GENESIS — 38:24 burned

GEN1486 A person should rather give up his life than publicly shame someone.   … The sages Baba Metzia 59a said that a person who shames another in public loses his share in the world to come. They did not say this concerning someone who committed murder, because a murderer might repent and retain his share in the next world. When a person shames another, however, he is unaware of the enormity of his transgression, and it will not occur to him to repent.  Shaarey Tshuvah 3:139, 141.  Because of the gravity of embarrassing someone in public, the Chofetz Chayim warns us not to join the company of people who are likely to shame others.   If you join such a group, you too are apt to make some comment that will embarrass another person.   If for some reason you are unable to leave such a group, be on your guard: Even if you happen to think of something funny about someone, do not say it Chovas Hashirmah.   PLYN 111-2

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GENESIS — 38:26 more

GEN1493 This moment is a turning point in history. Judah is the first person in the Torah to explicitly admit he was wrong. We do not realize it yet, but this seems to be the moment at which he acquired the depth of character necessary for him to become the first real baal teshuva.  We see this years later, when he--the man who proposed selling Joseph as a slave--becomes the man who is willing to spend the rest of his life in slavery so that his brother Benjamin can go free Genesis 44:33. I have argued elsewhere that it is from here that we learn the principle that a penitent stands higher than even a perfectly righteous individual. Berakhot 34b. Jonathan Sacks, Covenant & Conversation: Genesis-The Book of Beginnings (Jerusalem: Maggid, 2009) 303 – 314.  Judah the penitent becomes the ancestor of Israel’s kings, while Joseph, the righteous, is only a viceroy, mishneh lemelekh, second to the king. Thus far Judah. But the real hero of the story was Tamar. She had taken an immense risk by becoming pregnant. Indeed she was almost killed for it. She had done so for a noble reason: to ensure that the name of her late husband was perpetuated. But she took no less care to avoid Judah being put to shame. Only he and she knew what had happened. Judah could acknowledge his error without loss of face. It was from this episode that the sages derived the rule …: it is better to risk being thrown into a fiery furnace than shame someone else in public.   It is thus no coincidence that Tamar, a heroic non-Jewish woman, became the ancestor of David, Israel’s greatest king. There are striking similarities between Tamar and the other heroic woman in David’s ancestry, the Moabite woman we know as Ruth. The ancient Jewish custom on Shabbat and festivals to cover the challot (or matza) while holding the glass of wine over which Kiddush is being made is performed so as not to put the challah to shame while it is being as it were, passed over in favor of the wine. There are religious Jews who will go to great lengths to avoid shaming an inanimate loaf of bread but have no compunction about putting their fellow Jews to shame if they regard them as less religious than they are. That is what happens when we remember the halakha but forget the underlying moral principle behind it. Never put anyone to shame. SACKS 57-8

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