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The Talmud and the Tapes - article (1973)

Jewish Law & Secular Law
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Correspondence

Exchange with Lawrence Kobrin about Project on Talmud and Contemporary Legal Issues (1976)

Dear Rabbi Lamm: This letter is addressed to you in your role as consulting editor for Ktav on the law and ethics series. It is intended to furnish some specific examples of a line of inquiry in public discussion which we have occasionally discussed in general terms, but without specific illustration. While I am not exactly certain as to the appropriate method for following up these ideas, I wanted to share them with you. The pedagogy of Talmud is, for a variety of reasons, frequently "self-centered", in the sense that it is presented as an all inclusive and self-contained system, rather than as a jurisprudential effort to deal with ongoing business, human relations, or similar problems. The refinements of textural analysis and logical deduction frequently exclude any consideration of the actual application of legal rules to practical business for fact situations. The text of atonement and the practice of the authors of Responsa literature demonstrate that this was not the original intention of the masters of halacha. Presumably, it is only contemporary divorcement of halachic literature from practical application that leads to this result.As a result, the teaching of Talmud may frequently be unnecessarily difficult. For, if the student must be convinced that some particular discussion is important for its own sake, it might be easier to engender interest in thought where a discussion was related to a contemporaneous problem, still posed in courts and legal literature.Some recently reported decisions of the New York Court of Appeals (the highest court in this state), all of them coincidentally by a narrowly divided court, relate or may be considered analogous to matters discussed extensively in the Talmud. The fact that these problems are still current serve to demonstrate that the jurisprudential problems posed in the Talmud are still very much with us and that the solutions found there may be helpful in dealing with contemporary life, however commercial and compl…
Jewish Law & Secular Law

Correspondence

Exchange with Tzvi Berman about Article on Watergate and the Nixon Tapes (1973)

Dear Norman: Please answer directly if you wish to respond at all. In the November 12, 1977 issue of Sh’ma, Rabbi Norman Lamm attempts to bring Talmudic and various other Halakhic material sources to bear on the situation of Watergate and the new former White House tapes and satisfactorily proves the point that a ruler is not above the law. He has, however, overlooked at least one substantial argument which the President has used and which Rabbi Lamm, as a congregational rabbi, may well in the future be required to use. I am speaking of the governmental privileged information or material security at the governmental level. As a future rabbi, I expect to speak with my congregants concerning such problems as love affairs or business difficulties to which they may have belonged and the like which could irretrievably damage them, their futures, and their families should such information not remain confidential. I believe that it is the duty of a rabbi to refuse to disclose such information regardless of the penalty. On the national level, disclosure of national security matters is of even greater consequence as it may cause treaties to be broken, relations to become strained, and possibly even wars. The President, as the head of the country and the sole person in whose information is vested, must be entrusted with such matters and if he feels he is acting correctly irreproachably, then I must seek and believe him to be made public or even semi-public. Differences with the President must be ironed out in private consultation and not via international confrontation which I doubt is a valid or safe way. Even the “Jewish Chronicle” this summer, learned, and reported, that leaks and worst likewise be shunned. I believe that all Americans, especially congregational rabbis, and other professionals who are generally taken into one’s confidence, must realize that not all information is meant for all ears. While the President is not above the law there is a thin line between wh…
Jewish Law & Secular Law

Correspondence

Letter from Abraham Guterman about Halachic Parallels to the Patty Hearst Case (1976)

Dear Rabbi Lamm: I thank you for sending me the copy of your article on the Halachic parallels in the Talmud with reference to the Patty Hearst case. I was particularly glad to receive the footnotes which did not appear in the article, which touched upon various points that add to the completeness of your analysis. In that connection the difference between a single event and a series of events presents the heart of the controversy in that case. In the Anglo-American Common Law there are various situations in which the problem is dealt with under the heading of Res Gestae, that is, whether a given series of events are sufficiently related to be regarded as a single event. For example, in the Law of Evidence hearsay is excluded on the ground that the person who made the statement is not present in court for cross-examination. However, there are a series of exceptions to the hearsay rule where evidence is accepted even if it is hearsay, because of special circumstances. Thus, for example, a statement made by a person who knows that he is dying may be testified to by a third person who heard the statement on the basis that a person facing depth would be presumed to be telling the truth. Similarly, when a person, for example, cries out while watching a railroad train about to run over a person and the statement is made as part of the emotion generated by the event, then the test of admissibility of such evidence is whether it was part of the Res Gestae. Thus, if the statement were made while the accident was happening it is acceptable, but if it is made after the entire event is over it is not admissible in evidence, because it is not part of the Res Gestae.It is possible for the Res Gestae to be a series of events but normally such events must be sufficiently close in time for the purposes of this rule. In the final analysis the true test would be, as you point out, whether the original coercion continued to be operative at the time of the commission of the crime. This…
Jewish Law & Secular Law