 |
| Subj: The "Swindler's Mist" article on your web site Date: Thu, Dec 12, 1996 6:19 PM EDT From: dene@bebbo.demon.co.uk X-From: dene@bebbo.demon.co.uk (Dene Bebbington) To: mail_to@codoh.com I notice that on your CODOH web site you have a copy of Michael Hoffmann's "Swindler's Mist" article. Since you are interested in truth I would like to point out a serious error in something that this article asserts. Hoffmann charges that Spielberg is falsifying the Talmud by using the quotation "He who saves a single life saves the whole world", he then goes on to explain why he thinks this is false by giving the quotation that instead refers to the life of a Jewish person. Unfortunately the truth is that there are actually two versions of this quotation, including the one Spielberg uses, in different Talmudic books. Thus it is wrong for Hoffmann to accuse Spielberg of falsifying what the Talmud says. The information I have regarding this is attached below and comes from one of several posts on Usenet regarding this quotation, other posts said basically the same thing, but this one was the most detailed. Please note that I previously sent this information both to Greg Raven who has the same article on his web site, and also to the author Michael Hoffmann himself, but to date (after around 1-2 months) no response has been forthcoming from either of them. I make no opinion as to why Hoffmann made this error, but would ask that you consider changing the article to reflect the truth, certainly there should be enough information in the attached post to facilitate any cross checking that you may like to do. Regards, Dene Bebbington -------------------------------------------------------------------- ---- This question came up some time ago on scj. I cannot find my original post on the subject in my files, so I will reproduce it in brief. The source for this saying is in the Mishnah, Sanhedrin 4:5. It appears in several versions: 1. In the standard edition of the Mishnayot, the wording is: "Whoever destroys the life of a single human being [nefesh a`hat mi-bnei adam] ... it is as if he had destroyed an entire world; and whoever preserves the life of a single human being ... it is as if he had preserved an entire world". 2. In the Talmud Bavli, where this mishnah appears on Sanhedrin 37a, the wording is the same, except for the substitution of "life of a single Jew" [nefesh a`hat \mi-yisrael] for "life of a single human being". 3. In the Talmud Jerushalmi, Mishnah 5 is divided into subsections (Halakhot). In my edition the saying appears in Halakhot 12-13. Others divide Mishnah 5 differently: e.g. MTR locates it in Halakhah 9. It reads "destroys a single life" [ma'abed nefesh a`hat] and "preserves a single life" [meqayem nefesh a`hat]. There is no specific mention of either "human being" or "Jew", though the former is clearly implied. The question is: Which is the original version? Was the limitation to Jewish lives there to begin with, and then taken out as a result of Church censorship? This is suggested in the book of corrigenda, Hesronot Ha-shas. Alternatively, was the universal formulation the original one, and the limitation to Jewish lives introduced into it at some later date, perhaps in a period when particularly severe persecution of Jews generated a justified feeling of xenophobia? The answer would seem to be obvious from the context, which is the same in all three versions. The citation is preceded by the words: "This is why Adam was created alone. It is to teach us that ...". A bit father down it reads: "When a man mints a number of coins from a single die, they are all identical; but the King of the kings of kings, the Holy One blessed be He, minted every human being from the die of the primal Adam, and not one of them is like any other". Evidently, if the original had referred to the preservation of Jewish lives alone, the reference would have been to Abraham at the earliest. The repeated reference to Adam, progenitor of all mankind, makes it clear that the original must have referred to the preservation of human life in general. This is aparently how the Rishonim (medieval commentators) understood it as well. Rambam adopts the Yerushalmi version, (3.) slightly altered, in Hilkhot Sanhedrin 12:3, but also cites the Bavli version (2. above) briefly in Hilkhot Rotzea`h 1:6. Hameiri too bases his commentary on the Yerushalmi version, illustrating "the destruction of a whole world" by pointing out that Cain's murder of Abel eliminated all of his victm's descendents at one fell swoop. Abel, like Adam was not Jewish; he was not even the ancestor of Jews. The humanistic version was not universally accepted by the A`haronim (later commentators). MaHaRSh"A, for example, in Hidushei Agadot on Sanh.37a, stays with Version 2, and explains at some length why it is only important to save Jewish lives, even though the Mishnah bases the dictum on Adam's being the father of all mankind. I would be interested in learning what present-day Orthodox Judaism regards as the authentic reading. ----------------------- Headers -------------------------------- From dene@bebbo.demon.co.uk Thu Dec 12 17:18:34 1996 Return-Path: dene@bebbo.demon.co.uk Received: from relay-7.mail.demon.net (relay-7.mail.demon.net [194.217.242.9]) by emin30.mail.aol.com (8.6.12/8.6.12) with SMTP id RAA29312 for Received: from bebbo.demon.co.uk ([194.222.67.195]) by relay-5.mail.demon.net id aa516565; 12 Dec 96 22:12 GMT Message-ID: Date: Thu, 12 Dec 1996 20:43:40 +0000 To: mail_to@codoh.com From: Dene Bebbington Subject: The "Swindler's Mist" article on your web site MIME-Version: 1.0 X-Mailer: Turnpike Version 3.01 Back to Hoffman Review Go To: Response to these comments |