An Understanding Heart

  Science is a matter of knowledge rather than belief. Belief can be countered by the suggestion that "I believe differently" whereas knowledge is subject to empirical investigation. This is exactly why there is so much rejection of medical expertise at the moment: Many people have confused knowledge with belief. One believes in a given political system -it is very hard except in extreme cases to demonstrate that one system or approach is absolutely better than another. It takes centuries to decide a debate of this sort. Therefore politics and philosophy remain in the realm of belief. Science either stands up to scrutiny or doesn't. Since our knowledge is always changing and growing, what we know today is incomplete compared to what we will know tomorrow. As Jews, Jewish law and ethics require us to make our decisions on the basis of the best knowledge held by the mainstream of each profession in any given moment in history. Does that mean that medicine found in t...

Shimon and Levi were punishing the perpertrators and enablers of Dinah's abuse for her sake as an individual person, not because she "belonged" to the family - as is sometimes suggested. I would point to a subtle point in the syntax of the text. But throughout all of the Torah many things are taught to us with that subtlety of the classic exegesis. Often, when a sibling is described it says the "sister of X was Y" making the "sister(Y)" subordinate to the "X" as in our Parsha, later, "ואחות לוטן תמנע" But here, we it is written "אשר טמא דינה אחותם" that Shimon and Levi used deception and violence because Shechem defiled "Dinah their sister" the name first. Dinah as a person first then the relationship. It was the harm and abuse to Dinah that primarily drove them. Nachmanides explained that they slew the men of Shechem because they stood by and did not stop the attack on Dinah. Those who do not stop an evil...