Is The Torah Cruel? - The Parshah On Fire - Matos/Masay

What’s said in this shiur

The opening of this shiur, in Rabbi Hillel Eisenberg’s own words — taken from the captions, so names and Hebrew terms may be approximate.

[Music] If you were to look at the Tyra with a bird's eyee view, you would find that it seems to contain an unexpectedly strange attachment to violence. In the very second para of the entire Torah, humanity at large was acting below Hashem's standards and it just prompted him to exterminate the entire human race with the mobble the great flood. Men, with the mobble the great flood. Men, women, and children dead. Just a few parios later, the city of Saddam was acting in a way not approved of by heaven and the city was completely burnt in a sulfur firestorm. Again, men, women, and children dead. Next, we read about how Kamar, the prince of Sham, went ahead and violated Dena. The men of the city were cunningly told to circumcise. And then, while recovering in bed, they were all slaughtered, every single one of them. Then we read about how the sons of Yakov plotted and nearly how the sons of Yakov plotted and nearly executed the murder of their own brother, Yoseph. This is not exactly a book of butterflies and cupcakes. And the violence doesn't stop there. We were given the commandment to hunt down descendants of Amalik and annihilate them. We were charged with eradicating the seven Cananan nations inhabiting Eritis, an effective ethnic cleansing of the previous dwellers of the land. And finally, in this week's para, we are instructed to wage a vengeful war on the

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1. 0:00[Music] If you were to look at the Tyra with a bird's eyee view, you would…
2. 2:01Hashem commanded us to kill every last midyani male including the male infants and all females…
3. 4:37bereft of morals. It was a city that threatened and intimidated others into following its morally…
4. 6:38Rashi, who maintains that we are not required to ask our enemies for peace, only holds…
5. 9:14Hashem requires us to carry on lives of love and compassion, even while waging war on…
6. 11:17were put to death. 8 to 20 million. The Egyptians built their cities while throwing babies…
7. 13:48the animal and the insensitivity it would foster in us. We cannot take the eggs of…
8. 15:51legislative ban on Shita of animals. Arguing that it was immensely cruel and insensitive to the…
9. 18:23new method that would satisfy both Jewish hala and German law. Because the German legislation did…
10. 20:25Norway and Sweden on the basis of Jews are cruel to animals with their as the…

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