Let’s see how much sense this makes to you.

I was listening to a Haberman Institute program yesterday. The presenter was the Haberman Executive Director Matt Silverman, and he gave a class centered on different approaches taken to matters of Jewish rabbinic law by varying individuals, including Jesus, during the latter Second Temple days.

Part of his discussion involved strictness and leniency in breaking the laws of the Sabbath. As you probably know, today traditional Judaism prohibits working on the Sabbath and has a complex set of standards as to what constitutes work and what does not. To someone who is not familiar with these varying rules, some may seem counterintuitive.

But throughout history, they have been most often taken quite seriously. I was listening to a lecture yesterday on the history of the Jews in Ukraine, giving by Fairfield University Professor Glenn Dynner, and he showed an old drawing of a Jew who was imprisoned by a chain around his neck, and connected to a building (presumably a synagogue) as punishment for violating the Sabbath. Dynner said that, in most instances, payment of a fine could forestall physical punishment, however, but that the failure to submit to one or the other could lead (but perhaps never did) to excommunication and banishment from the community.

But there were exceptions. There were certain times when you could violate the limitations of Sabbath activity without punishment. The most common of these situations was when you act to save a life. Saving a life is more important that avoiding “work” on the Sabbath.

During the time of Jesus, there were disagreements as to what types of activities would be allowed to save a life. Jesus was the most liberal of the cited sources. (This is opposed to, say, the rules on divorce, where Jesus was the least liberal.) Today, many of these disagreements are avoided in Jewish practice, because, after all, there have been 2000 years to work these details out.

Everything I have seen on this subject focuses on what types of actions are appropriate in saving a life, and I think the years have expanded permitted activity. Nothing I have seen has focused on how you know that a life needs to be saved. It seems (and since I really have never looked closely into the subject) that determination of whether action is needed to save a life is left in the hand of the actor.

So I began thinking about the states which have enacted (or will enact) strict laws prohibiting abortions, except in those instances where the life of the woman carrying the fetus is at risk. These laws have already ended in tragedy a number of times, and are causing tremendous anxiety, turmoil and confusion. They are worrying not only the pregnant woman (and her loved ones), but the doctors and health professionals, who might get in legal or financial trouble performing an abortion if they wind up being accused of performing an illegal abortion. The result is that doctors might wait until death is imminent, and then it turns out to be too late.

Maybe the thinking is wrong, and (if these terrible laws have to exist), the focus should not be on whether the medical professional wrongly guessed that the woman was in danger of death. Maybe that should be considered a professional judgement to be viewed with as much leniency as possible, and the focus should be on whether the actions taken were themselves medically appropriate actions (a type of judgement made in every malpractice case).

By the way, in Jewish law regarding abortion, this question also exists, although in a more liberal context. In Jewish law, the life and health of the mother outweighs that of the fetus, so a professional never has to get to the question of whether the patient is going to die. But, nevertheless, someone has to be the final judge as to whether the mother’s health is at risk, and here again the Jewish tradition, as far as I know, lets the health provider make that decision.

After running all this through my mind yesterday, I was innocently sitting watching CNN, when once again someone mentioned Haitians eating cats and dogs and defending J.D. Vance’s comments. And the conversation went on to show the total disruption being caused to the city of Springfield OH as a result of this beyond silly accusation. Death threats, schools closed, fear of some native Haitians to even leave their houses.

Then it occurred to me. This is exactly analogous to ritual murder accusations made against Jews throughout the ages. The oft recurrent claim is that Jews kidnap and kill Christian babies in order to use their blood in the making of matzohs for Passover. Of course this has never been an ingredient of a single matzoh, but that hasn’t stopped the accusations at the time of rampant antisemitism, and hasn’t stopped many people from believing them, or at least giving them some credence. (Google the Beilis case if you want a good example.)

The thinking here is just the same. Jews kill Christian children. Haitians kill their neighbors’ cats and dogs. Kamala Harris caused inflation and designed and implemented an open border policy. It used to be, as Hitler supposedly said, if you tell a lie often enough, people will believe it. That was obviously true. But today, maybe things have changed. You don’t have to tell a lie often; you only have to tell it once. As long as the lie reaches the ears of gullible people (you know who they are), those people will believe it the first time they encounter it.

And there seems to be no cure, even when the life of a nation or a planet is threatened.