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Bizarre Talmudic Scenarios

talmudology.com

41–50 of 141 posts

Re: Bizarre Talmudic Scenarios

#41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> (either the owner falsely claims the piano was played or is improperly spying on the piano or tenant) Grabbing the wheel and jerking hard left... If the owner installs camera/microphones to check the piano status, that would be very creepy and leaning into the spying realm. If the owner installed sensors on the keys/hammers/strings/etc to detect movement, then I think I'd be okay with that. Those sensors would not…

Supposing the owner installed really invasive spying tools - the cameras and microphones, and used those to discover the tenant played the piano. Then, I think the owner would be guilty of whatever invasion of privacy law or tort is relevant, but the tenant would still be in breach of the contract. It would be right to punish the owner and tenant for their respective misdeeds, not say that because the owner did bad t…

I think the law says otherwise? Evidence collected illegally is (usually?) not valid.

Regardless, I could imagine it might incentivize spying otherwise.

Re: Bizarre Talmudic Scenarios

#42
Gemara can’t be studied by reading, especially not by literal reading of a translation, especially not by someone without the appropriate background. It can be too easily misunderstood and misquoted. It’s just not written for casual reading and every word is metaphorical. I am with TchoBeer in that it makes one tense up.

Re: Bizarre Talmudic Scenarios

#43

the idea behind that crazy scenario of a man penetrating a woman when falling from the roof: He has to pay for the physical injury but not for the shame of raping her. The entire action was unintentional. But physical injury is still needed to be accounted for even if unintential, we do it even in our modern laws with 'involuntary manslaughter' etc However, the hurt to a person's feelings - it apparently needs intent…

Modern law seem to be rooted in religious laws, there is a lot of similarities either unintentionally/intentionally,

Re: Bizarre Talmudic Scenarios

#44
post #11
post #2

Whenever I see something about the Talmud in gentile-dominated spaces I tense up a bit. I'm not orthodox anymore, but I was orthodox for the first 20-odd years of my life so I'm in the unique position of being around a lot of gentiles but knowing a lot about Judaism and Jewish law. This article is pretty ok, but its format is probably confusing for a gentile audience. For reference: a large number of Jews do "daf yom…

Gentile here, an atheist at that - so is the Talmud like the xkcd's what-if :) (okay, this maybe completely inappropriate but it sounds like).

Yes - that’s actually a good way to think about it. It tries to define the practice of often obscure laws by exploring boundaries and corner cases.

Re: Bizarre Talmudic Scenarios

#45
post #37
post #2

Whenever I see something about the Talmud in gentile-dominated spaces I tense up a bit. I'm not orthodox anymore, but I was orthodox for the first 20-odd years of my life so I'm in the unique position of being around a lot of gentiles but knowing a lot about Judaism and Jewish law. This article is pretty ok, but its format is probably confusing for a gentile audience. For reference: a large number of Jews do "daf yom…

I wonder if I'm the only one reading that finds the term "gentile" as moderately offensive. It seems to map the world into Jewish ontology of "God's chosen people", and other. "Non-Jew" feels less abrasive since it only assumes the (obvious) existence of Judaism. I find Judaism super interesting historically (and have some Jewish ancestory and have spent a couple months in Israel), but still the term "gentile" in a m…

You are not alone, having lived in Brooklyn in Orthodox areas, I have encountered some ridiculous racism from the orthodox community. Frankly even a trip to Costco in Brooklyn will give you a huge amount of perspective on how many view non-orthodox jews as "Others" and "Non-People".

That said, I also worked with the Safardic Jewish community doing tech in the garment industry and as the token gentile I was loved on and respected for my work.

Like every culture there is a broad spectrum, but if the Orthodox jews of NYC are anything to go on, I am seriously questioning why they are choosing to live here.

Re: Bizarre Talmudic Scenarios

#46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Supposing the owner installed really invasive spying tools - the cameras and microphones, and used those to discover the tenant played the piano. Then, I think the owner would be guilty of whatever invasion of privacy law or tort is relevant, but the tenant would still be in breach of the contract. It would be right to punish the owner and tenant for their respective misdeeds, not say that because the owner did bad t…

I think the law says otherwise? Evidence collected illegally is (usually?) not valid. Regardless, I could imagine it might incentivize spying otherwise.

It's not valid for the state to collect evidence illegally. If it was then it would make sense to have any laws constraining how the state could gather evidence.

In this case it's not the state that's spying, it's the landlord, and the landlord is constrained by the punishments for violating the law against spying.

A slightly different spin on it, if the landlord witnessed a murder while illegally spying on his piano should his recording or testimony be admissible in court? I would say yes though again the landlord should face whatever spying penalties apply.

Re: Bizarre Talmudic Scenarios

#47
post #4

Actually, some real cases are as weird as the hypothetical ones. A couple comes to mind: a guy rents a house in the middle of nowhere with the condition that he won't play the grand piano that's in the middle of the living room. And another one, a guy suicides after his doctor diagnoses him with a terminal cancer. In case you didn't guess: the first guy played the piano and the doctor was having an affair with his pa…

For the piano: contracts cannot change the law itself so any tenants rights will also apply.

The doctor should lose their license and possibly be sentenced to murder but you would have to prove what was in his mind. Helps if he had a history of affairs with women whose spouses died under his care. Source: watched enough law and order.

Re: Bizarre Talmudic Scenarios

#50
post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gentile here, but even I tense up when I see discussions about the Talmud show up in "Gentile spaces". Some reasons: 1) Conspiracies. There's a millennia-long history of conspiracy theories involving the Talmud, and talk about the Talmud often see conspiracy theorists surface which sidetracks any rational discussion. 2) Religion. To this day, there is a significant group of religion Jews who take the Talmud extremely…

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> God killing children for calling Elijah bald,

Elisha

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