(ה) כיצד מאימין (את העדים) על עדי נפשות. היו מכניסין אותן ומאימין עליהן. שמא תאמרו מאמד, ומשמועה, עד מפי עד, ומפי אדם נאמן שמענו, או שמא אי אתם יודעין שסופנו לבדוק אתכם בדרישה ובחקירה. הוו יודעין שלא כדיני ממונות דיני נפשות. דיני ממונות, אדם נותן ממון ומתכפר לו. דיני נפשות, דמו ודם זרעיותיו תלוין בו עד סוף העולם, שכן מצינו בקין שהרג את אחיו, שנאמר (בראשית ד, י) דמי אחיך צעקים, אינו אומר דם אחיך אלא דמי אחיך, דמו ודם זרעיותיו. דבר אחר, דמי אחיך, שהיה דמו משלך על העצים ועל האבנים. לפיכך נברא אדם יחידי, ללמדך, שכל המאבד נפש אחת מישראל, מעלה עליו הכתוב כאלו אבד עולם מלא. וכל המקים נפש אחת מישראל, מעלה עליו הכתוב כאלו קים עולם מלא. ומפני שלום הבריות, שלא יאמר אדם לחברו, אבא גדול מאביך. ושלא יהו מינין אומרים, הרבה רשויות בשמים. ולהגיד גדלתו שלהקדוש ברוך הוא, שאדם טובע כמה מטבעות בחותם אחד וכלן דומין זה לזה, ומלך מלכי המלכים הקדוש ברוך הוא טבע כל אדם בחותמו שלאדם הראשון, ואין אחד מהן דומה לחברו. לפיכך כל אחד ואחד חיב לומר, בשבילי נברא העולם. ושמא תאמרו מה לנו ולצרה הזאת, והלא כבר נאמר (ויקרא ה, א) והוא עד או ראה או ידע אם לוא יגיד וגומר. ושמא תאמרו מה לנו לחוב בדמו שלזה, והלא כבר נאמר (משלי יא, י) ובאבד רשעים רנה.
(5) How do we press the witnesses in a capital case? We bring them in [to the court's chambers] and press them: "Perhaps what you say [isn't eyewitness testimony] is but your own assessment, or from rumors, or your witnessing an actual witness testify, or your reporting what a trustworthy said. Or perhaps you were unaware that by the end we'd interrogate you, with examination and inquiry. Know that capital cases are not like monetary ones. In monetary cases, [a false witness] can return the money and achieve atonement. But in capital cases, the blood of [the victim [and all his future offspring hang upon you until the end of time. For thus we find in regard to Cain, who killed his brother, "The bloods of your brother scream out!" (Genesis 4:10) - the verse does not say blood of your brother, but bloods of your brother, because it was his blood and also the blood of his future offspring [screaming out]! [Another explanation of the verse: for his blood was splattered over the trees and rocks [there was more than one pool of blood]. [The judges' speech continues] "It was for this reason that man was first created as one person [Adam], to teach you that anyone who destroys a life is considered by Scripture to have destroyed an entire world; and anyone who saves a life is as if he saved an entire world." And also, to promote peace among the creations, that no man would say to his friend, "My ancestors are greater than yours." And also, so that heretics will not say, "there are many rulers up in Heaven." And also, to express the grandeur of The Holy One [blessed be He]: For a man strikes many coins from the same die, and all the coins are alike. But the King, the King of Kings, The Holy One [blessed be He] strikes every man from the die of the First Man, and yet no man is quite like his friend. Therefore, every person must say, “For my sake the world was created.” [The judges' speech continues:] "Maybe you [the witnesses] will now say, 'What do we need this, and all this anxiety for [let's not come forward even with true testimony]!' But Scripture has already spoken: "If he be a witness - having seen or known - if he does not express it, he shall bear his sin." (Lev. 5:1) Maybe you will now say, 'What do we need this, to be responsible for another man's death?' But Scripture has already spoken: "When the wicked are destroyed there is rejoicing." (Prov. 11:10)"
(א) מִצְוָה לְהַצִּיל הַנִּרְדָּף בְּנַפְשׁוֹ שֶׁל רוֹדֵף – שֶׁנִּצְטַוִּינוּ לְהַצִּיל הַנִּרְדָּף מִיָּד מִי שֶׁיִּרְדְּפֵהוּ לְהָרְגוֹ, וַאֲפִלּוּ בְּנֶפֶשׁ הָרוֹדֵף כְּלוֹמַר שֶׁאָנוּ מְצֻוִּין לַהֲרֹג הָרוֹדֵף אִם לֹא נוּכַל לְהַצִּיל הַנִּרְדָּף אֶלָּא אִם כֵּן נַהֲרֹג הָרוֹדֵף,
(ז) וְנוֹהֶגֶת בְּכָל מָקוֹם וּבְכָל זְמַן, בִּזְכָרִים וּנְקֵבוֹת. וְהָעוֹבֵר עַל זֶה וְיָכוֹל לְהַצִּיל הַנִּרְדָּף וְלֹא הִצִּילוֹ בְּאֶחָד מֵאֵיבָרָיו שֶׁל רוֹדֵף אוֹ אֲפִלּוּ בְּנַפְשׁוֹ בִּטֵּל עֲשֵׂה זֶה, מִלְּבַד שֶׁעָבַר עַל שְׁנֵי לָאוִין, שֶׁהֵן לֹא תָּחוֹס עֵינֶךָ, וְלֹא תַעֲמֹד עַל דַּם רֵעֶךָ (ויקרא יט טז), כְּמוֹ שֶׁנִּכְתֹּב בַּלָּאוִין (מצוה תרא), וְעָנְשׁוֹ גָּדוֹל מְאֹד כְּאִלּוּ הוּא מְאַבֵּד נֶפֶשׁ מִיִּשְׂרָאֵל.
(1) The commandment to save the pursued with the life of the pursuer: That we were commanded to save the pursued from one who is pursuing him to kill him, and even [at the expense of] the life of the pursuer — meaning to say, that we are commanded to kill the pursuer if we are not able to save the pursued unless we kill the pursuer.
(7) And [it] is practiced in every place and at all times by males and females. And one who transgresses it and is able to save the pursued and does not save him with one of the limbs of the pursuer — or even with his life — has violated this positive commandment, besides having violated two negative commandments, which are “show no pity” (Deuteronomy 25:12) and “do not stand over the blood of your neighbor” (Leviticus 19:16); as was written in the negative commandments (Sefer HaChinukh 601). And his punishment is very great — as if he destroyed a life from Israel.
תוספתא מסכת סנהדרין (צוקרמאנדל) פרק ט הלכה ז
היה ר' מאיר אומ' מה תלמ' לומר כי קללת אלהים תלוי לשני אחים תאומים דומין זה לזה אחד מלך על כל העולם כולו ואחד יצא לליסטייא לאחר זמן נתפס זה שיצא לליסטיא והיו צולבין אותו על הצלוב והיה כל עובר ושב או' דומה שהמלך צלוב לכך נאמר כי קללת אלהים תלוי.
Tosefta Sanhedrin 9:7
Rabbi Meir said: What does it mean that “an
impaled body is an affront to God”?
It is like two brothers who were twins and
looked alike, one was the king of the whole
world and one became a thief. After some time, the thief was caught, and they were about to crucify him. Every passerby said: It seems that the king is being crucified!
(ז) ויאמר קין אל הבל אחיו ויהי בהיותם וגו'. על מה היו מדיינים? אמרו: בואו ונחלוק את העולם, אחד נטל הקרקעות ואחד נטל את המטלטלין. דין אמר ארעא, דאת קאים עליה דידי! ודין אמר מה דאת לביש, דידי! דין אמר: חלוץ! ודין אמר: פרח! מתוך כך ויקם קין אל הבל אחיו ויהרגהו. רבי יהושע דסכנין בשם רבי לוי אמר: שניהם נטלו את הקרקעות, ושניהן נטלו את המטלטלין. ועל מה היו מדיינין? אלא, זה אומר: בתחומי בהמ"ק נבנה. וזה אומר: בתחומי בהמ"ק נבנה, שנא' ויהי בהיותם בשדה, ואין שדה אלא בהמ"ק. היך מה דאת אמר (מיכה ג): ציון שדה תחרש. ומתוך כך (בראשית ד): ויקם קין אל הבל אחיו וגו'. יהודה בר אמי אמר: על חוה הראשונה היו מדיינין. אמר רבי איבו: חוה הראשונה חזרה לעפרה. ועל מה היו מדיינין? אמר רבי הונא: תאומה יתירה נולדה עם הבל. זה אומר: אני נוטלה, שאני בכור. וזה אומר: אני נוטלה, שנולדה עמי.
(7) ..."And Cain spoke to Abel his brother. And it came to pass when they were in the field... " (Gen 4:8) What were they fighting about? They said, "Let's divide up the world." One took the earth and one took the moveable objects. One said "That land that you are standing on is mine!" and the other said "What you are wearing is mine!" One said "Take it off!" and the other said "Fly!" Because of this, "Cain rose up against Abel his brother and slew him. Rabbi Joshua of Sikhnin in the name of Rabbi Levi said: they each took earth and each took moveable objects. And what were they fighting about? One said, "The Temple will be built in my territory!" and the other said "The Temple will be built in my territory!" as it is written "when they were in the field"-- and "field" can refer only to the Temple, hence what is written: "Zion shall be threshed as a field" (Micah 3). And because of this, "Cain rose up against Abel his brother." Judah bar Ami said: they were fighting about Primordial Eve. Rabbi Eivo said: Primordial Eve had already died. And what were they fighting about? Rabbi Huna said: A twin girl was born along with Abel. One said, "I will take her, because I am the firstborn." And the other said, "I will take her because she was born with me."
תלמוד ירושלמי נדרים פרק ט: הל' ד
/ה"ד/
ואהבת לרעך כמוך ר' עקיבה או' זהו כלל גדול בתורה בן עזאי אומ' זה ספר תולדות אדם זה כלל גדול מזה .
Jerusalem Talmud Nedarim 9:4
Rabbi Akiva taught: “Love your neighbor as
yourself” (Leviticus 19). This is the major principle of the Torah. Ben Azzai says “This is the book of the generations of Adam. In the day that God created man, in the likeness of God made He him” (Genesis 5:1). This is an even greater principle.
תורה תמימה
זה ספר וגו'. תניא, רבי עקיבא אומר, ואהבת לרעך כמוך (פ' קדושים) כלל גדול בתורה, בן עזאי אומר, זה ספר תולדות אדם – כלל גדול מזה *ר"ע רומז למ"ש באגדה דשבת ל"א א' בההוא עובד אלילים שבא לפני הלל שילמדנו כל התורה כשהוא עומד על רגל אחת, אמר לו, מה דעלך סני לחברך לא תעביד, זו היא כל התורה ואידך פירושא היא וכו', והכונה דכמו שעליך שנוא זה שיעבור על דבריך כך לא תעבור אתה על מצות יקוק שבאת ללמוד תורתו, וזה הוא יסוד התורה, ואידך פירושא דמילתא לדעת איזה דבר שנוא לפני הקב"ה זיל גמור, וזו היא כונת ר"ע כאן ע"ד הדרש וצחות הלשון. ומה שנראה לו להסמיך זה הדרש על זה הלשון הוא משום דבפשיטות קשה הענין לצוות על אדם שיאהב את חבירו כמו שאוהב את עצמו, מפני שזה דבר הנמנע מצד הטבע, וגם ר"ע בעצמו ס"ל (ב"מ ס"ב א ) חייך קודמין לחיי חברך, ולכן דריש שאהבה זו פירושה העדר השנאה והיינו שלא יעשה כנגד רצונו, ואם לאדם כן, מכש"כ להקב"ה.
ובן עזאי מוסיף, דמדברי ר"ע שמעינן רק מה דעלך סני לחברך לא תעביד, וא"כ משמע דמי שאינו חושש לכבוד עצמו אינו דרוש לחוש גם על כבוד אחרים, על זה אומר, זה ספר תולדות אדם בדמות אלקים עשה אותו, הנה אין ראוי לאדם להקל בכבוד זולתו לא רק משום דעלך סני אלא גם משום שנברא בדמות אלקים ואם מיקל בכבודו הוי כמיקל בדמות היוצר. ובמק"א הארכנו עוד בענין זה.
Torah Temimah on Genesis 3
Rabbi Akiva alludes to what is said in the Aggadah of Shabbat 31a, regarding a case of a certain idolater who came before Hillel and asked him to teach him the entire Torah while standing on one foot. Hillel replied to him, "What is hateful to you, do not do to your fellow; this is the entire Torah, and the rest is commentary—go learn it," etc. The intention is that just as you dislike it when someone goes against your words, so you should not go against the commandments of God that you came to learn. This is the foundation of the Torah. The rest of the explanation of the matter is to understand which actions are hateful to God—learn them and act accordingly. This is the intention of Rabbi Akiva here, regarding the interpretation and the eloquence of the language.
The reason he connects this interpretation to this language is because, in simple terms, it is difficult to command a person to love their fellow as themselves, as this is a thing that is naturally difficult. Rabbi Akiva himself holds (Baba Metzia 62a) that one's own life takes precedence over the life of one's fellow. Therefore, he interprets that this love means the absence of hatred, meaning one should not act contrary to another's will. If this is so for a person, it is certainly true for God.
Ben Azzai adds that from Rabbi Akiva’s words, we only learn that what is hateful to you, do not do to your fellow. This implies that someone who does not care about their own honor is not required to care about the honor of others. To this, he responds: "This is the book of the generations of man; in the image of God, He made him." It is not appropriate for a person to belittle the honor of others not only because of "what is hateful to you, do not do," but also because they were created in the image of God. If one belittles their honor, it is as if they are belittling the image of the Creator. We have elaborated further on this issue elsewhere.
אבות דרבי נתן נוסחא ב פרק ל
וכל מעשיך יהיו לשם שמים כהלל. כשהיה הלל יוצא למקום היו אומרים לו להיכן אתה הולך. לעשות מצוה אני הולך. מה מצוה הלל. לבית הכסא אני הולך. וכי מצוה היא זו. אמר להן הן. בשביל שלא יתקלקל הגוף. איכן אתה הולך הלל. לעשות מצוה אני הולך מה מצוה הלל.
לבית המרחץ אני הולך. וכי מצוה היא זו. אמר להן הן. בשביל לנקות את הגוף. תדע לך שהוא כן מה אם אוקיינות העומדות בפלטיות של מלכים הממונה עליהם
להיות שפן וממרקן המלכות מעלה לו סלירא בכל שנה ושנה ולא עוד אלא שהוא מתגדל עם גדולי המלכות. אנו
שנבראנו בצלם ודמות שנאמר כי בצלם אלהים עשה את האדם (בראשית ט' ו') על אחת כמה וכמה.
Avot D’Rabbi Natan, Version 2, Chapter
30
And all your actions should be for the sake of Heaven, like Hillel. When Hillel left for a place, they would ask him, “where are you going?”
- “I am going to do a mitzvah.”
- “What is the mitzvah?”
- “I am going to the bathroom.”
- “And is this a mitzvah?”
- “Yes, so that the body is not damaged.”
Or:
- “I am going to the bathhouse.”
- “And is this a mitzvah?”
- “Yes, in order to clean the body. Know that if someone is appointed to polish and clean the statues of kings they are paid every year, and also respected among the great kings. So we, who are created in the image of God, how much more so?"
Political Theory,” by Joshua Berman
In ways that were astonishingly new and counter-intuitive, in ways that served the purposes of no known interest group, the political philosophy of the Torah may be seen to rise like a phoenix out of the intellectual landscape of the ancient Near East. Throughout the ancient world the truth was self-evident: all men were not created equal. It is in the five books of the Torah that we find the birthplace of egalitarian thought. When seen against the backdrop of ancient norms, the social blueprint found in the Torah represents a series of quantum leaps in a sophisticated and interconnected matrix of theology, politics and economics…The theological breakthrough of the Hebrew Torah is the transformation of the status and standing of the masses, of the common person, to a new height, and the elimination of nobles, royalty, and the like.
In the Torah, the common man received an upgrade from king’s servant to servant king.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.
What is the relationship between Judaism and modern discourse on human rights? The short answer to this question is that the humanistic and liberal values that underlie modern human rights discourse are not foreign to Judaism. Quite the contrary: they exist within it and emanate from it, in the Bible, halakhic literature, and modern religious philosophy.
The book of Genesis, especially the story of the Creation, is the wellspring of fundamental human principles. The creation of human beings in the image of God serves as the starting point from which primary values are derived. These include human life, human dignity, property, equality and freedom, and the family. Many precepts originate from these fundamental values. The value of life, first mentioned in the Bible in the verse “Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed” (Gen. 9:6), leads to injunctions such as “You shall not murder” (Exod. 20:13) and “Do not stand idly by when your neighbor’s life is threatened” (Lev. 19:16).
The values of equality and freedom stem not only from the fact that all human beings were created in the divine image but also from the fact that they are all descendants of Adam and Eve; the corollaries of these values include the laws of labor relations, which mandated fair and equal treatment of workers by employers even in societies that practiced slavery, and are all the more applicable in our own day and age.
The universal dimension of the Torah is found in the book of Genesis, which contains ethics that were given to all human beings descended from Adam and Noah. This constitutes the ground floor, the basic values of the Torah and Judaism, parallel to the modern system of human rights and hardly different from it in any essential way. The next level, designated “a kingdom of priests and a holy nation” (Ex. 19:6), represents the dimension of the selection of Israel to bear a special divine mission.
Before the Israelites received the Torah at Sinai, we learn that the purpose of this gift was to make them into “a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.”
The concept of a “kingdom of priests and a holy nation” obligates the Jewish people to observe an additional and much broader set of precepts than the basic and universal code constituted by the “Seven Noahide Commandments”; even though this code actually encompasses much more than seven precepts, the Torah imposes on the Jewish people an extremely comprehensive canon of statutes that are not incumbent on other nations.
The two tracks are presented not as merging but as colliding—the track of the “image of God,” which is the basis of human rights, and the track of “a kingdom of priests and holy nation,” which constrains and limits universal human values.
How do the Torah and Halakhah deal with the tension between these two tracks or two opposing systems for living? The fundamental axiom is that we are not dealing with tension and contradiction between the Torah and some external and alien culture, but with an internal tension that stems from the existence of two principles that coexist within the Torah itself. Dealing with and resolving these two opposing poles is the very soul of talmudic thought. It is based on the notion that “both these and those are the words of the living God” (BT Eruvin 13b): both of these contradictory positions are valid and true, and no final and absolute decision can be rendered in favor of one or the other.
Liberalism, like the notion of sovereignty at its heart, rests on a view of human personhood—sovereign, inviolable, sacred—whose historical origins are rooted in theology. Maybe that theology is just a myth, but it’s a myth we seem to need, and indeed can’t live without. Whether liberalism can endure without those theological understandings and their normative claims is an open question. Walzer credits religion, at times reluctantly, at others appreciatively, with tenacity in the face of secular liberal ideas. Perhaps, however, it is a form of that tenacity that allows secular liberal ideas to exist in the first place.