short (and medium) takes
Feb. 20th, 2004 12:04 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cellio
From Slashdot by way of ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif){kind=small}
siderea:
the
"why your anti-spam proposal won't work" form letter.
At last night's board meeting I had a wording quibble (a matter of precision and clarity) over a proposed bylaws change. One of the other board members suggested that I was being overly picky because I'm a technical writer. Hello? This is a matter of law. Law should be precise and clear. I happen to be in a profession that emphasizes that; this is an asset. (We have a couple lawyers on the board; I'm surprised one of them didn't speak up.) Sheesh -- amateurs. :-)
Speaking of law, I'm reading from Mishpatim tomorrow morning -- the "eye for eye, tooth for tooth" section. We are used to thinking of this as being harsh (sharia, anyone? no thanks), which is why the rabbis reinterpreted it to monetary damages. But with that interpretation, I wonder if this is actually lenient. Consider civil damages today in the US, where payments sometimes seem to be way out of proportion to actual damage, and are wildly inconsistent. And we distinguish based on who the victim is; the torah does not.
Twice within the past couple weeks I've been approached by people on the streets selling raffle tickets. Both conversations began with "would you like to buy a raffle ticket?" and "what for?"; then they diverged. One said "for Hillel Academy"; the other said "for a $5000 drawing". (The latter was from a veterans' group.) I knew intellectually that Judaism (and hence, Jewish culture) approaches charity differently from the world at large (or at least its US instantiation), but it's been a while since the difference has been that obvious. In the Jewish world (at least the parts I've seen), the cause is the important thing. In fact, the word usually translated as "charity" -- "tzedakah" -- doesn't really mean that; it's closer to "justice". I actually haven't even looked to see what the prize is for the Hillel raffle ticket I bought. In the broader culture, though, you have to sell the prize; it's assumed, I guess, that people won't just buy a ticket to support a good cause and you have to make it worth their while. Which partially explains the deluge of mailing labels, calendars, stuffed animals, umbrellas, and such that appear in my mailbox (and serve as anti-motivators).
I particularly like this take on the rainbow meme,
shamelessly stolen from xiphias:
| My God says "Justice, justice shall you pursue", wants people to work toward a fair and equitable world, and believes in love, honor, and respect. Sorry about yours. | |||||
(no subject)
Date: 2004-02-20 09:39 am (UTC)Hm, it approaches but doesn't quite include "I cast PKI; your plan founders".
I'm under the impression that that was the idea; the rabbis preferred to give the benefit of the doubt in order to avoid gross miscarriages of justice. (See also how they effectively legislated away almost all of the death penalties specified in Torah by setting the requirements so high that they couldn't be met.)
(Also, I get the impression that harshness was only part of it; several of the Talmudic arguments against its literal interpretation pointed out that e.g. "an eye for an eye" doesn't work literally when the offender is blind.)
For several years now I've strongly preferred giving only in ways that don't involve returns: I don't generally do raffles (if it's a good cause I'll offer a no-strings-attached check instead), I don't take "premiums" when donating to PBS/PRI/NPR stations, etc. They need the money; they have enough overhead as it is; they shouldn't be wasting money on thanking me, they have better uses for it.
Re:
Date: 2004-02-20 09:51 am (UTC)Yes, agreed. What I didn't make clear enough is that even after you get from the original text to monetary damages, it's still more lenient than what we have now in the US. (Also more even-handed.) If you projected the sanhedrin forward to today, I don't think you'd see judgements in the tens of millions of dollars for minor damages. Yeah, that doesn't happen a lot -- we can all cite the McDonalds/coffee thing but can you list ten more? -- but it does happen, and a lot of people (I gather) settle suits for large amounts of money to avoid the risk of getting hit for huge amounts.
I don't take "premiums"
I don't either, but that doesn't stop some organizations from mailing them unsolicited. Even when I write back to them and say "you will get no money from me until you stop wasting money sending this stuff to people who don't ask for it", it keeps coming. And they get no money from me even though I would otherwise support them. That makes me sad, but I will not send the message that wasting money on trinkets is a good tactic.
Re:
Date: 2004-02-20 10:03 am (UTC)But the other thing is that the Talmud has a principle, "You shall not favor the poor over the rich in a court of law." It's one of those things that struck me as really weird and kinda unfair as a kid, but I think I sort of get it now.
Re:
Date: 2004-02-20 10:10 am (UTC)That sounds unbalanced taken in isolation, but doesn't the gemara provide the context that of course we shouldn't favor the rich over the poor, so we only need to talk about this case? In other words, wealth is to have no influence.
Re:
Date: 2004-02-20 10:09 am (UTC)Sure; that's another gross miscarriage of justice. In fact, I'm not sure "lenient" is the appropriate term; the problem here isn't so much lenience as avoidance of attempts to "play" the system for unjust profit as regularly happens (and often succeeds in one way or another) in the U.S. system.
"So being a judge means your choices are restricted...." (Tocohl Susumo, Hellspark) This was well understood by the Sages, who carefully limited both the actions of judges and the scope of judgements, but sometimes seems not so well understood by judges (and not at all by juries) in the U.S. (I don't include lawyers in this; much as we like to malign them, if people didn't insist on gaming the system, lawyers wouldn't be in the business of doing so.)
Re:
Date: 2004-02-22 07:10 pm (UTC)Maybe not entirely gratuitous, as quite a few of the things that happen in the book are probably germane to the discussion at hand.