s/o Can you be 'bought'?

louche

Mon, Sep 13 2010, 12:33 pm

Fact is, few of us will ever be faced with an offer of 45 mil to eat pork or sleep with a man other than our husbands--and if we were, I believe most of us would resist, if only because we wouldn't believe that the offer wasn't a trick.

The challenges we face are more subtle and therefore more dangerous. Have you ever bought a dress on sale despite it's having an iffy neckline or hemline, persuading yourself that it was your imagination that it was too revealing or that no one would notice? Have you ever bought a food with an iffy hechsher because it was half the price of the one with the reliable hechsher and what could be in canned artichokes anyway? Booked a flight on a Friday that was scheduled to arrive a bit later than you'd have liked, because it was half the price of an earlier flight? Dated a guy who wasn't really frum enough for you because he was so much fun to be with and surely he would become more observant for your sake?
Have you ever listened to someone speak LH and kept silent because you desperately wanted to be included in this person's social group--or because the person was your boss?

Then you, too, have your price and it's nowhere near 45 mil.

Ruchel

Mon, Sep 13 2010, 12:43 pm

Quote:

Have you ever bought a food with an iffy hechsher because it was half the price of the one with the reliable hechsher and what could be in canned artichokes anyway?

This may simply be common sense. We buy non Jewish artichokes all the time and we check them. Big deal.

Quote:

Booked a flight on a Friday that was scheduled to arrive a bit later than you'd have liked, because it was half the price of an earlier flight?

A bit later as in hurrying? Or as in mechalel shabbes? Not quite the same.

Quote:

Dated a guy who wasn't really frum enough for you because he was so much fun to be with and surely he would become more observant for your sake?

There is no halacha against having your spouse become frummer, or even remain less frum.

louche

Mon, Sep 13 2010, 1:22 pm

Ruchel, don't be deliberately obtuse. The point is that very few people are ever faced with the dramatic, in-your-face, multishmillion-dollar, life-or-death choices. Few of us will be offered a fortune to eat pork or take off our clothes in public, and I truly believe that most of us would in fact resist such offers because they are so preposterous, so offensive and so alien to our natures.

But we ALL are faced with day-to-day decisions, small, subtle, trivial, that nevertheless involve compromising or upholding our values. Perhaps the poster who spoke about buying something without paying sales tax was more on the mark. Few of us have the means or opportunity to perpetrate a multibillion dollar Ponzi scheme, but how many have a chance to hire a worker off the books, or work off the books ourselves? How many of us will inform a customer that the container of cottage cheese he bought is past its sell-by date, and how many of us will rejoice that some sucker finally took that expired container off our hands? How many of us would go back to the grocery store if we noticed that they failed to charge us for the pickles or accidentally packed a box of cookies that wasn't ours? How many of us would refuse to accept an award for submitting an idea to management if we had gotten the idea from someone else, and how many of us would rationalize that we deserve the award because the other person could have submitted the idea but didn't?

It's not that hard to do the right thing once in a lifetime when the eyes of the world are upon you; doing the right thing consistently, when no one but you (and the KBH, of course) would know the difference, is what takes true grit. And if we face ourselves in the mirror with our souls stripped bare of artifice, how many of us will find that we have sold our birthright, not for 45 mil but for a pot of lentils?

the world's best mom

Mon, Sep 13 2010, 1:36 pm

Doing an Aveira for monetary reward is really giving up the chance to have your schar in Olam Habah and getting Onesh instead. If you weigh the real benefits and losses of doing Aveiros, it does not come out to be worth it, ever.

However, being human, we live in this world with no real concept of what our reward or punishment will be like in the next world, so it seems tempting.

I think that I would not agree to do any less than my usual standards of Torah observance for a reward, regardless of what it may be. I would not go out with some of my hair uncovered because my Minhag is to cover all of it. It's not okay to switch to more lenient Minhagim, even just for 5 minutes, because you will get rewarded for it. The punishment far exceeds any reward anyone could possibly offer you in this world.

freidasima

Mon, Sep 13 2010, 1:39 pm

I'm with louche.
First everyone can be bought because everyone has his or her price.
for one it's money, for another it's their child's life.
If you had to steal to get money for a drug to save your child's life wouldn't you steal? I would.
If you had to kill someone to save your child's life? That's harder. Most people wouldn't.
But to eat treif befarhesia to save your child's life? sure. To be mechalel shabbos for that? Sure. To strip down in public to nothing? Sure.

Anything that is reversable. Meaning not to kill. That's the red line for me. But anything else to save my kids' lives? you name it. Bow to the idol. Sleep with half the shul (not that they would have me!), I am NOT avrohom ovinu, I would NOT have the guts to go through with the akeida. That's why I'm only Freidasima and not Avrohom from the ovinu family. He is a one and only.

Ruchel

Mon, Sep 13 2010, 2:04 pm

Actually lots of stuff are allowed, if not mitsvos, to save a life.

I would kill an innocent to save my child, but after I would belong in a mental hospital.
Bow to an idol, some rule a woman may do it if she doesn't believe it (source? it was about Xtianity) if it saves her life.
Sleeping with half the shul I suppose I would throw up too much for them to want to go on.

joy613

Mon, Sep 13 2010, 2:42 pm

Why are people writing about saving their child's life? Where does that come in? That's not what this discussion is about.
Of course any normal person would do anything to save their child's life. That's not called "being bought". That's called pikuach nefesh or survival.
The OP was asking if you can be bought for gain. Would you willingly do something assur for physical, monetary or social gain?

amother

Tue, Sep 14 2010, 12:59 am

I don't think it's all about monetary gain.

Some things I would do when push comes to shove or in a weak moment. others I would never do $50 mil or not.

Pork is not allowed, period. (well, maybe if its mixed with kosher food .01% than it's not considered treif)

Tznius on the other hand has its guidelines and can be twisted and rationalized to non existence.

Ill be the first to admit DH and I do not keep harchokot at all. Am I getting paid for it? not $1. It is just something I'm weak at. (although as others have said, offer me $50 mil and I'll be on top of it asap)

So I think that everyone has their breaking point and they know what it is without any money being offered.

kalsee

Tue, Sep 14 2010, 2:23 am

Ruchel wrote:

Bow to an idol, some rule a woman may do it if she doesn't believe it (source? it was about Xtianity) if it saves her life.

Chas veshalom. Xtianity is avoda zara.

Actually, this topic reminds me of a book, called "behind the walls" which stirred up a controversy about 8-10 years ago.
The true story is about a young girl left in a monastary during the holocaust. At some point she was told that she can either get baptized and be Christian or die (get turned over to the Nazis).

Someone (an older uncle or friend) who used to visit her advised her to do this, and believe in her heart that HAshem is one and there is no truth to any of what she will be admitting to.
This is what she did, the story goes on that she lived, after the holocaust left and went to another country, became frum, married had children and grandchildren.

My father (who is a chareidi Rav) explained to me the problem with the book.
On the surface, it seems like she did the right thing! All she did was get baptized, annouce that she believes in J, etc, and for THE REST OF HER LIFE , for the next 70 years, she was frum , kept Shabbos, raised generations after her.
But you know what? She did the WRONG thing. No one is judging her, she did what she thought was right. But in this instance it's yehareg ve'al yaavor.
After all is said and done, after the beautiful life she had, the halacha states that she should have let herself be killed.

Sometimes it looks like she did just one little thing, and look what how many good things came out of it!
But this is wrong.

freidasima

Tue, Sep 14 2010, 5:23 am

Kalsee, you will definitely find rabbonim who disagree and say it is NOT yehoreg ve'al ya'avor, simply because the Holocaust was not a sha'as hagezero but a sha'as hadechak, and that being baptized forcibly under those circumstances is NOT avodo zoro.

Isramom8 gotta tell you, I don't put sleeping with the whole shul in the same category as murder in order to save my child's life. My rationale is simple. Murder does something to another person in which they are NOT participating willingly, hence the aveiro is mine totally. Is my child's life more important than that persons'? I don't know. To me it is, but to the Ribono shel olam who knows...and to the world who knows.

But sleeping with someone? Relations? Sorry. If they are doing it with me it is voluntary (or so I presume, although looking at me I can't understand why someone would do it voluntarily with me except my poor husband who doesn't know better or know what's out there...) then the aveiroh is half theirs too, and it is voluntary, not being "done to them". It is also not something that is "irreversable" in the sense of it doesn't remove a human life from this earth. Death, unless you are a eliyahu hanovi or elisha or whatever, is usually not reversable. In that case I'm willing to cope with the results of a yehoreg ve'al ya'avor of that type - relations, avodo zoro, not murder - to keep my kid alive. No one else but me will suffer involuntarily. With murder another person suffers involuntarily.

My convoluted logic but that's why the Ribono Shel Olam made us mothers.