Does Judaism Prohibit Incest? Smoking? Sitting on a Table?
SHANKS, HERSHEL
BOOKS Does Judaism Prohibit Incest? Smoking? Sitting on a Table? What You Thought You Knew About Judaism: 341 Misconceptions About Jewish Life by Reuven P. Bulka Jason Aronson, Inc 1989.436 pp,...
...Far from being a forbidden union, it would be highly recommended, in order to prevent the total extinction of humanity...
...Because of its sanctity, sitting on a dining table is disrespectful and therefore incorrect...
...Smoking has been shown, beyond any doubt, to be linked to cancer, heart disease, and other causes of premature death...
...However, there are indications of a hierarchy that come from a most unlikely source...
...Hopefully, the next generation will have fully integrated the most up-to-date medical wisdom and will understand that because of medical truth, smoking is forbidden according to Jewish law...
...It would thus seem as if incest is never permitted, since it is explicitly prohibited...
...The fact that Yom Kippur occurs only once a year has given it a singular place of significance...
...If it is a table where one reads or writes, it may be permissible to sit on it...
...On Yom Kippur, six are called, and on Shabbat at least seven are called...
...In a family with seven children, nine candles are lit, and in a family with three children, five are lit, and so forth...
...Great contemporary sages have already declared publicly that according to Jewish law smoking is strictly forbidden...
...They simply did not know the dangers of smoking, and so smoking was permitted...
...If one should forget to light candles on any given Shabbat, then one is obliged to add a candle permanently from then on...
...However, there is no obligation to add a candle for each child...
...In the Sephardic community, children are often given the name of a grandparent who is still alive...
...If Adam and Eve only had sons, then the world could not have gone on...
...If this union between brothers and sisters was prohibited at that time, then all children born of these marriages would have been illegitimate...
...However, within the Sephar-dic community, this is not the case...
...It depends on the type of table...
...In fact, poison is prohibited to such an extent that if poison falls into a mixture, even in a ratio of one part per thousand, the entire mixture is prohibited...
...Can an entire community be wrong in its assumption...
...Misconception: Good news does not require any special reaction...
...They effectively face each other, united in the focus of their prayers...
...This is not to say that the Day of Atonement is not holy...
...But they also had daughters, and the world proliferated through the marriage of these siblings...
...Not only are they not common, few people ever thought of them...
...There is much significance to adding a candle for each child...
...One must, therefore, reach the unavoidable conclusion that incest is a prohibited relationship when viable alternatives to that incest are available...
...Within the domain of breaches that are considered of capital import, there is another gauge to assess relative importance...
...The table where one eats is the modern-day altar, the place upon which we energize ourselves for sacred service through the eating of God's bounty...
...All Jews face toward the same place, Jerusalem, although they do not pray in the same direction...
...We know that Adam and Eve parented Cain and Abel, but whom did Cain and Abel marry...
...It may come as a surprise to learn that the weekly Shabbat is, indeed, the holiest of the year...
...After all, each child adds a measure of brightness to the home...
...After childbirth, it is possible that the mother would spend a Shabbat in the hospital...
...The practice of adding one candle for each child may be related to another law...
...The Jews of North America do pray in the easterly direction, because Israel and Jerusalem are to their east...
...If the punishment is less severe, then one can assume that the breach is not as serious...
...Countries to the north of Israel pray in a southerly direction, and countries to the south of Israel pray in a northerly direction...
...However, Jews of the Soviet Union pray towards the west, since Jerusalem is to their west...
...This contrast in penalty assessment indicates that the sanctity of the Shabbat is, in fact, greater than that of Yom Kippur...
...But how can this assertion be justified...
...This conclusion may be based on having witnessed distinguished rabbis smoking, be it cigarettes, cigars, or pipes...
...Had they known then what we know now, they would not have smoked...
...Misconception: The Bar Mitzvah ceremony must take place on Shabbat...
...This call to the Torah can take place on any day when the Torah is read...
...If the capital punishment is to be administered by a lower court, that is, a court on this earth, then the breach is more serious than if punishment is left to the heavenly court...
...Each can and should maintain its own customs, while respecting the practices of the other...
...The lower court does not administer the death penalty for the transgression of Yom Kippur...
...rather, in comparison, the Shabbat ranks higher...
...That unlikely source is the punitive measures that are linked with breach of commandment...
...One may wonder how a hierarchy of importance can ever be established, inasmuch as the Bible does not explicitly state that one commandment is more or less important than another...
...The table is thus a holy place...
...There is no instance of the Torah explicitly allowing incest...
...Bar Mitzvah, the ceremony signifying a boy's entry into Jewish adulthood, involves his reciting a blessing over the Torah...
...It is certainly no better than poison, which according to Jewish law, is a forbidden product...
...That which occurs on a more regular basis is not as intriguing and exciting as that which occurs on a once-a-year basis...
...The only reason why smoking is still tolerated is because it is an old, addictive habit still catching up with the new findings...
...The fact that people may have smoked in past generations is irrelevant...
...However, if it is a table where one usually eats, then sitting on it is not correct...
...For example: "Misconception: The four separate portions of the head tefillin are easily and independently replaceable...
...ir, God forbid, a nuclear holocaust should engulf the world, and the only two survivors were a brother and a sister, they could renew the human race as husband and wife, without fear that this would be incest...
...Unfortunately, most of the "common misconceptions" sound silly...
...But not long afterward, many alternatives became available, and therefore an incestuous relationship became prohibited...
...On an ordinary day, the Monday or Thursday reading, three are called...
...What You Thought You Knew About Judaism: 341 Misconceptions About Jewish Life by Reuven P. Bulka Jason Aronson, Inc 1989.436 pp, $3000 Reviewed by Hershel Shanks This book is based on a marketing gimmick: Package some basic information in the form of correcting what you thought was the case, but isn't...
...On a festival, five are called...
...On the other hand, some of the misconceptions are intriguing and the corrections interesting...
...It could be on a Monday or a Thursday, on a Rosh Hodesh (New Moon), a festival, even on the Day of Atonement...
...However, with all due deference to the sagacity of rabbis, one should not derive from this that smoking is indeed permitted according to Jewish law...
...Although it is not obligatory to add a candle for each child, there certainly is nothing wrong with such practice...
...Misconception: Jewish law does hot forbid smoking...
...This signifies his new status as an adult member of the community, by virtue of doing that which only an adult can do...
...That illegitimacy would have carried down, through the generations, to the present...
...There are those who do add one candle for each child, beginning, upon marriage, with the two required candles...
...Here are some examples: "Misconception: There is nothing wrong with sitting on a table...
...Yes, it may take place on Shabbat, but that is not mandatory...
...Misconception: All Jews pray toward the east...
...That a breach of a particular commandment brings with it a capital punishment projects the severity of such a breach...
...Misconception: Incest has never been permitted...
...It is not rare that one finds families who light candles according to family size...
...The holier the day, the more people are called to the Torah reading...
...Misconception: In Jewish tradition, a child is named only after someone who is deceased...
...Custom is very important in the development of community...
...What is acceptable for the Sephardic community may not be customary in the Ashkenazic community...
...The biblically required punishment for the breach of Shabbat is stoning, administered by a lower court, while the punishment for transgressing the prohibition of Yom Kippur is the death penalty, administered by the higher court, God's court...
...This is in contradistinction to a product that is prohibited because of ritual requirements, which, when falling into a mixture, becomes neutralized when the permitted mixture is only sixty times the volume of the forbidden product...
...For the children of Adam and Eve, there was no alternative, and therefore no incest...
...Misconception: Yom Kippur is the holiest day in the Jewish calendar...
...Custom does not deal with matters of right and wrong, but with prevailing practice within a community...
...She might forget to light the Shabbat candles that week, thus necessitating the compensation of one extra candle from then on...
...This notion is reinforced by comparing the number of people called to the Torah on Shabbat and Yom Kippur...
...Misconception: For each child, one must add one more candle for kindling the Shabbat lights...
...However, it is instructive to go all the way back to the creation, to Adam and Eve, and their children...
...This statement reflects Ashkcnazic tradition...
Vol. 14 • December 1989 • No. 7
