Yitro, 5768
Thou Shall Not (be an accessory to) Murder
Shmuel Herzeld
Which of the Ten Commandments do you think you violate the most? Unfortunately, we
all violate many of them far too often.
It is almost impossible to never violate the Shabbat—there are so many laws. But that is
only once a week…. The commandment to honor the parents is also nearly impossible to
get right. The commandment “Do not covet” is another one that is extremely difficult to
observe properly. And how many of us can say that we never ever steal, not even a little
bit?
If there is one commandment where we might assume that we are good about, it is the
sixth commandment. “Lo tirtzach, do not murder.” Most of us feel pretty comfortable in
the fact that we have never murdered anyone.
I am sorry to tell you that we should not feel so comfortable. Here is how the rabbis
interpret the sixth commandment:
The medieval French commentator, Chezkuni, writes: “Hein beyad, hein be-lashon, hein
be-shtikah.” The prohibition of murder can be violated through the hand by physically
killing someone, through words, and through silence.
Hashem holds us accountable for murder if we cause someone’s death through words and
silence. To some extent, this goes beyond American law. Recently there was a case
called the, “MySpace Suicide Hoax.” In the MySpace Suicide a 13 year old girl in
Missouri committed suicide after she was emotionally manipulated by adult neighbors in
her neighborhood. As a “prank” the adults and kids set up a fake boy friend for this girl.
They insulted her with words and manipulated her emotions. Some knew about it and
kept silent; others actively participated in badgering the self-esteem of a young girl.
As Chezkuni argues those who were actively or passively involved in this so-called hoax
are considered to have violated the commandment of “lo tirtzach.” We see from this that
our words can directly lead to murder. The power of words is overwhelming. Even
though this young girl hanged herself, those who insulted her by Jewish law are
morally—if not legally—held responsible for murder.
In this context we should realize that the commandments are literally called in the Torah,
“Aseret Hadevarim”, not the Ten Commandments, but the Ten Utterances. Words have
the power to be the holiest sanctification of God’s name and they have the power to
destroy. Words or the lack of speaking out can literally lead to murder.
Most of us are still feeling pretty good about ourselves. We might think that while we
occasionally gossip or insult someone, most of us have not incited a crowd to violence or
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egged someone on to the point of suicide. But the truth is that the threshold for the
violation of this prohibition is even lower.
There was once a rabbi named Rabbi Yonah of Gerona who discussed a radical
expansion of the prohibition of “lo tirzach.”
Rabbenu Yonah was a great Talmudist and a great moralist. But in order to understand
who he was, we need to understand his background.
In the year 1233, Rabbenu Yonah was one of the leaders of the Maimonidean
Controversy. Rabbenu Yonah and other leading rabbis signed a ban against people
reading Maimonides’ great philosophical work, The Guide of the Perplexed and the first
book of the Mishneh Torah, known as Sefer Ha-Madda. Rabbenu Yonah believed that
the philosophical ideas in these works were too dangerous for public. Indeed, he even
went further. At his urging the Christian authorities publicly burned Maimomides’ works
in Paris in 1233.
But once you give people the idea that it is ok to start burning books it is hard to put out
the flame and so in 1242, twenty-four wagonloads of the Talmud were burned exactly
where Maimonides’ books were burned.
When Rabbeinu Yonah saw this he felt that it was divine retribution for his participation
in the early burning of Maimonides’ writings and he publicly admitted that he was wrong
in front of his entire congregation.
For the rest of his life he tried to repent for his activity. He quoted Maimonides
frequently and he wrote different works on how to repent. The most famous of these is a
masterpiece called Shaarei Teshuvah, the Gates of Repentance, which offers a blueprint
to repentance.
In this work Shaarei Teshuvah, Rabbeinu Yonah reminds us the Torah commands us to
give up our lives rather than violate the big three prohibitions: Idolatry, (Giloi Ariot)
Adultery, and Murder. He then discusses a concept called, avizrayhu, or an accessory to
those prohibitions and writes that we must give up our lives not only for directly violating
those prohibitions but even if we are merely asked to violate an accessory to them.
According to Rabbeinu Yonah, thus, we must be killed rather than be an “accessory” to
the prohibition of lo tirtzach. (This source was shown to me by Rabbi Josh Hoffman.)
Here is what he considers to be an accessory to murder:
“Ve-hinei avak-haretzicha halbanat panim ki panav yechevaru ve-nas mareh ha-edom vedomeh al retzichah. The accessory to murder is shaming someone so that his face turns
white. His face turns white and its ruddiness disappears and this is like murder.”
In Rabbeinu Yonah’s opinion, this is not just a nice moral teaching. This is a legal
ruling. He writes that one should allow themselves to be killed rather than embarrass
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someone to the point where their face turns white. As the Talmud says and he takes
literally: “Le-olam yapil atzmo lekivshan ha-eish ve-al yalbin penei chaveiro be-rabim, a
person should throw themselves into a fire rather than embarrass someone in public.”
Since most of us—myself included—have violated this commandment, there are different
ways we can approach such a radical ruling like Rabbeinu Yonah. We can throw up our
hands and say it is ridiculous—clearly, embarrassing someone is nowhere nearly as bad
as murder. Or, we can ask ourselves if our society is correct in not equating hurting
people’s feelings with a physical infliction like murder.
Some might suggest that if we seriously equate embarrassing someone with murder then
we are devaluing the prohibition of murder. There is that danger. But the alternative—of
creating a society that is not sensitive to people’s feelings--is perhaps worse.
You can choose to take Rabbeinu Yonah’s teaching literally or you can choose to take it
as a nice homily intended to inspire you to be more conscious of people’s feelings.
(Maimonides happens to take the latter approach, whereas Tosafot in Sotah agrees with
the literal reading of the Talmud of Rabbeinu Yonah.) But what we cannot afford to do is
ignore it.
The story is told about the great Chofetz Chayim, that a certain person came to purchase
all of his scholarly writings.
The Chofetz Chayim said to him I noticed that you bought all my books except the ones
that talk about lashon hara (gossip). The customer said, “That one is pointless for me as
it is too hard for me to keep.” The Chofetz Chayim answered, “It is worth buying the
book even if your only reaction at the end reading the book is a sigh.”
Here too, it is our responsibility to work on ourselves in these areas of watching our
words and refraining from causing people emotional damage even if we sometimes feel
that we are hopelessly doomed to keep on sinning.
One of the ways we can improve is by studying the laws of interpersonal behavior. The
more we have these laws in our mind, the less likely we are to violate them. Everyone
should take it upon themselves to study these laws at least once a week—even if the only
reaction at the end of the session is a sigh.
But really we should demand much more of ourselves. Many of us are in professions
where it is taken as the norm that the way to get ahead is by insulting the competition; by
putting someone else down; by saying something bad about someone else. This is not the
way of Hashem.
Think about the example of Rabbeinu Yonah. He was a great rabbi and he was so
convinced that he was correct and that Maimonides was wrong. Indeed, he was
convinced that Maimonides was spreading heresy and so he criticized Maimonides. But
he realized afterwards that his approach was the wrong way to go. If he realized that and
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in his case he was a great rabbi concerned about a matter as serious as heresy, how much
more so as it relates to all of us who are not on his spiritual level and are concerned with
matters of lesser significance.
In all of our personal lives and in all of our professions we should be pioneers in
changing the culture of our society to become a society that does not tolerate
“accessories” to murder.
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