Rabbinic Perspectives on Gun Control

As many of you may know, we are fortunate to have a brilliant Yeshiva University rabbinical student, Daniel Fridman, who teaches our Sunday morning shiur each week after Shacharis at 8:00am. This week, Daniel gave a fascinating talk about gun control. I will try to recall the main point of his presentation, and will also include his source sheet (in Hebrew).

For an audio recording of this shiur, please go to http://www.yutorah.org/lectures/lecture.cfm/785985/_Daniel_Fridman/Rabbinic_Perspectives_on_Gun_Control.

Daniel opened by discussing Asara be-Teves and the different calamities that befell the Jewish people on this day. Then he explained a thematic connection between the Torah portion and the topic of gun control. He noted that in Parashas Vayigash, Jacob could not believe that Joseph was alive until he saw the wagons that were sent to retrieve him and his family. How did this convince Jacob that Joseph was still alive? The midrash teaches that Jacob and Joseph were studying the laws of the eglah  arufah (a calf whose neck has been broken) when Joseph disappeared. The eglah arufah is a ritual performed where a body is found outside of a town and the elders of the town perform a sacrifice in which they avow that they were not responsible for the death of the deceased and that they ask God to absolve them of their guilt. This ritual was done over a wadi (stream) and the wadi and the area around could never be used - it had to be a memorial to the dead person who was found. The term eglah (a calf) is similar to the term agalah (a wagon). Hence Jacob saw the wagons as a message from Joseph.

Daniel said that practice of the eglah arufah teaches to take life seriously, and homicide seriously. He said that while the 2nd amendment has different interpretations, for us as religious Jews, we want to know what the rabbinic tradition has to say. For Daniel, this means the sanctity of human life - the fact that man is created in the image of God, that man is a tzelem Elokim - is paramount. He said the the situation with guns now in the country is unacceptable, and he pointed out that in other industrialized countries that do have gun control, the mortality rate from guns is a fraction of what it is here. Finally, as citizens in a democracy, but based on Jewish sources (Talmud Bavli, Shabbat 54b), we have the obligation to speak out and advocate for what is right.

Daniel went on to say that Judaism recognizes the right to self defense, but that this is not an unlimited right.

Daniel brought up the verses in Genesis about Lamech, who was criticized by his wives for teaching his son, Tuval Kayin, how to make copper and iron implements. According to Nachmanides, these are implements of war, and Lamech's response was that while these weapons cause more damage, it is people who kill people, but not the weapons themselves. Of course, according to Jewish tradition, Lamech himself was an inadvertent murderer. He accidentally killed his ancestor, Kayin, and also his son, Tuval Kayin. Since he did not intend to commit murder, he asked that his punishment be delayed for seventy-seven generations.

Daniel then raised the case of the maakeh, the railing that a property owner is obliged to construct on the roof of his building to prevent people from falling off. Based on this idea, as well as the mitzvah of lo ta'amod al dam re'ekha (lit. "Do not stand idly by the blood of your fellow"), Maimonides explains that we are forbidden from creating dangerous situations in which someone become injured or die. Although Daniel  did not have a chance to review the Sefer Ha-Chinuch, Mitzvah 546 in the shiur  (but on the source sheet), in it the author of the Sefer Ha-Chinuch notes that the Torah commands us to keeps our dwellings and places safe so that no no one will die because of our sins and we will not endangers ourselves and say that we are "relying on a miracle."

Daniel continued to say that the tradition criticizes those who think that weapons are somehow ornaments. Judaism, Daniel observed, is not a pacifist religion, and it understands that war is sometimes justified, but it is far from the ideal. King David, whose war were largely righteous wars, was prohibited from building the Temple because he had blood on his hands. The sages look forward to a messianic time when swords will be beaten  into plowshares and spears into pruning hooks (Isaiah 2:4), but one who wears weapons now as an ornament is disgracing himself.

To sum up, we as Jews should promote a society where holiness of human life is championed. Those things which specifically endanger human life need to be removed or fixed so that they are no longer a danger. If we allow a dangerous situation to exist, we transgress the mitzvah of  lo ta'amod al dam re'ekha - not standing idly by our neighbor's blood.


If I may add my own two cents, I found Daniel's presentation persuasive. The stand that Daniel proposes should be seriously considered by religious Jews and for that matter by religious Christians as well.

Here are Daniel's sources....

Daniel Fridman's Shiurim are Now Online!

We are pleased to announce that the first installment of Daniel Fridman's shiurim (classes) are now available on this blog on the Shiurim page. Daniel's presentations cover a wide variety of 
topics and are always richly informed by textual sources. You are invited to join us every Sunday morning following 8:00am davening for breakfast and learning, or if you prefer, feel free to listen to the shiurim here. Of course, they are better in person!

Tisha ba-Av at Old Broadway

This past Monday night, July 20, 2010, Tisha ba-Av evening, our teacher, Daniel Fridman, opened his remarks with a surprising statement. He said that he probably should be forbidden from attending Tisha ba-Av services at the Old Broadway Synagogue. The reason is that he gets so much joy at seeing the shul open or Tisha ba-Av. Indeed, this is only the fourth year that Old Broadway is open for Tisha ba-Av in particular and or the summer in general. For many years, the shul used to be open year round, during the summer and also for daily minyan. The daily minyan was discontinued in the 1970s, and I suspect that so was meeting in July and August. It made sense, since the shul was not air conditioned and Rabbi Kret and Mrs. Kret and the other survivors made their way to the Catskills to escape the heat of the city. Now most of us do not go to the Catskills and, thanks to the generosity of the Plaks family (in honor of the Eric and Gloria's wedding), the shul has had air conditioning since 2006. Summer 2007 was the first summer we decided to stay open. I made a list of all the Shabbosim and made sure that we would have enough people for at Shacharis each Shabbos. Thank God, we were successful, but I was nervous that we would not pull it off. When it became clear that Old Broadway was also viable during the summer, it felt that we brought a dead person back to life. Not that the shul was ever dead, but the more active we can make it, the better. In this way, it can serve us in the present and enable to deepen our Jewish commitments. God willing, having a vibrant shul will also be a valuable gift for the future members of our congregation. Finally, dedication today demonstrates that the hard work of the previous generations has not been in vain, and their hopes and desires continue to live on.

The Mysteries of Riverside Cemetery

Cemeteries are by their nature mysterious places. They are where the living come to commune with the dead, and where, to some degree, the dead commune with each other. Cemeteries are also museums of the past, containing the earthly remains of people and sometimes, even institutions. The Riverside Cemetery is excellent of this sort of open air museum. Set among rolling hills and tree lined lanes in Saddle Brook, New Jersey, traveling through the grounds, one sees the gates of many New York and New Jersey synagogues and organizations that are no longer. Particularly poignant are the many Harlem congregations and organizations that are now defunct: Beth Israel of Harlem, Beth Hamedrosh Hagodol of Harlem, Harlem Benevolent Association, True Fellowship Society Harlem, Harlem Progressive, Young Men's Aid Society of Harlem, Harlem Kurlander, Harlem Israel Society, and others. There are some congregations that were in Harlem, but have moved out and still exist, such as the First Hungarian Congregation Ohab Zedek, and Temple Ansche Chesed. Of all of them, only our small synagogue, the Chevra Talmud Torah Ansche Marovi, still exists in Harlem.

The Chevra Talmud Torah Ansche Marovi purchased our section of the Riverside Cemetery around the time that it was constructing the synagogue on Old Broadway. The first burial there was of Dora Rubin, who died on October 22, 1922. Since then, our section of the cemetery has become the final resting place of a number of people who were important to the shul, such as past presidents Davis Brown, Isidor Thornschein and William Joachim; Sam and Ida Ratner, who donated the materials and labor for our sukkah, Ferdinand and Klara Mezei, the in-laws of Rabbi and Mrs. Kret, as well as many people who are not so well known.

Moshe Zvi Hirsch ben Reb Aryeh Leyb and Chana Sarah bas Reb Shraga Feyvush are among these. Their names are inscribed on an old marble bench which is in the middle of cemetery section. We have not been able to determine these people were and why there is a modest memorial to their memory. This is our first mystery.

The second mystery and the one that has truly captured my imagination is the one that surrounds that lonely tombstone of Leo Hand. All that we know about poor Leo we know from his stone. He died on August 3, 1926 at age 10. The death of a child is always a tragedy, which one can still feel eighty-four years later. This sadness is compounded by the physical remoteness of Leo's grave. His matzevah stands alone on the eastern side of our section of the cemetery the next nearest tombstone (in our section) is not less than fifteen feet away. It is all so strange and distant, and yet the grave remains, year after year, each time we visit.

But is Leo  really so alone? If one walks thirty feet or so due west, clear into the neighboring section, "Family Section Number 6," one comes across the graves of Isidor and Fannie Hand (Yitzchak and Feigie) who died in 1967 and 1973 respectively. They seem to have been the right age to have been Leo's parents. Indeed, the man's name in Hebrew was Yitzchak, which is listed as the name of Leo's father on Leo's tombstone. Moreover, how common could the name "Hand" be? Could it be a coincidence that they are so close to Leo's grave if they are not related? Finally, if they are Leo's parents, why weren't they buried next to Leo in the Old Broadway section? Was it possible that they wished to be buried in the Old Broadway Synagogue section but were no longer members and therefore not entitled to burial plots? I hope to contact the staff at the Riverside Cemetery to see if they know the answers to any of these questions.

The saddest part of visiting the Riverside Cemetery, at least for me, is neither the Old Broadway Synagogue section, nor the Phoeniz Association section, where my great-grandparents are buried, but the Ansche Chesed section. There, my friend Isaac Meyers lays at rest, after died as a result of a tragic traffic accident three years ago. We visited his grave today, placed some rocks on the tombstone, and recited the 23rd Psalm. We also tried to tell a few jokes, because, he would want it that way. They were not very good. We will have to do better next time.


Our annual visit has been sponsored and organized by Dale Brown, the grand-daughter of Davis Brown and the head of our Cemetery Committee. Dale has generous sponsored our congregational outings to the cemetery for the last decade or so and had been tending to the Old Broadway section of the Riverside Cemetery by herself for many years before that. Each year, Dale provides a sumptuous breakfast for all who come and for the last two years, Daniel Fridman, our talented teacher, has conducted his weekly shiur at the breakfast at the cemetery. I am grateful to Dale for giving us this great opportunity to perform a chesed shel emes, a true kindness, by tending to the graves of our deceased congregants. I also believe, or at least like to think, that those members of our shul who are buried at the Riverside Cemetery see that we remember them, and perhaps also intercede for us with Hashem if need be. Finally, I like to believe that in the merit of our caring for those who are no longer with us, that when our time comes, and we will be buried in the ground, that the next generation will visit our graves, pull some weeds, and remember for a moment who we once were.

Photos from this year's visit to the Riverside Cemetery