We are now in the midst of Sukkot, the ancient Jewish harvest festival.
In English, it would be called the Festival of Booths or Festival of Tabernacles after the huts (Sukkah) observant Jews build for this time. Participants are supposed to dwell in the Sukkah in memory of ancestors who spent 40 years in the desert and in thanks for G-d’s blessings. In modern reality, that means serving meals and observing rituals in the Sukkah though you don’t have to sleep there. This is a happy time when people feast and share hospitality.
One part of Sukkot involves the Ushpizin or holy guests. The holy guests are traditionally the biblical characters of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, Aaron, Joseph and David. The biblical Ushpizin are honored in various ways during Sukkot to get people thinking about their positive attributes and the lessons they can teach, but as portrayed in the wonderful 2004 Israeli movie “Ushpizin,” even some unlikeable living human beings can serve as Ushpizin. Sukkot is definitely a time of guests and socializing.
In Judiasm, hospitality has always been taken very seriously. This is true in all three Abrahamic religions, although some take it more seriously than others. Hosts owe very important duties to their guests, which teachers have often said are more important than any actual religious observances or proscriptions. One of those duties is a duty to protect. It’s not just one duty. Preserving life is the most important duty a Jew can perform.
In the case of hosts and guests, hosts must protect their guests from any danger or threat, even if the guests are complete strangers. Scriptures contain some harsh examples of this, like Lot offering his virgin daughters to a lustful mob rather than turning over to the mob a pair of strangers he was hosting. Ugly as some biblical examples are, they serve to show how important the duty to protect was and still is.
Today there are better ways than offering to throw girls to a mob. Effective arms are available to all who care enough to learn to use them and care enough about the duty to protect life to be prepared to use them. I ask Jewish antigunners, “How can you consider yourself prepared to protect anybody’s life if you are unprepared and unwilling to use best self defense tools available to you?”
That story with Lot always bothered me greatly. Why wouldn’t he have met the evil doers at the door with swords and protected both the strangers AND the girls. Sacrificing the girls would not be any better than tossing out the visitors in my book. They both needed to be protected.
Afraid that story is a complete FAIL to illustrate the duty to protect.
MamaLiberty, I agree it’s a terrible story and a terrible way to protect anybody. It just illustrates the point I was making how important the duty to protect guests is. To the ancient Hebrews protecting guests (never mind that Lot’s two guests were angels, which he didn’t know) was more important than protecting mere daughters. Definitely it’s a horrible story and the rest of the story of Lot and his family is even worse. Please though just look at the point about how important the duty to guests is relative to other duties.
I agree, Lot and his guests and his daughters and everybody should have been ready to defend themselves with the best weapons available.
Without the right of self defense AND the means to carry that out, you have no rights at all.
Is this ‘duty to preserve life’ part of the explanation for why so many Jews are anti-gun and even anti- self defense? You’re not preserving life by killing an attacker, but by not doing so you’re preserving his at the risk of your own. Or is the explanation more in cultural history than in religious adherences?
I’m Jewish but not a practicing Jew, so I can’t really delve into the whole basis in Jewish law or beleif as to what self defence is or what right a person has to act in such, but my 2 cents on the subject are that self defence is a natural right by virtue of our humanity.
Were a tool using species with an instict for self defence, so by natural law we have the unalienable right to own the tools of self defence, and use them if needed.
I belive this transcends religion or politics- its part of who we are as a species.
The account of Lot and his daughters has been mistranslated down through the ages. Our oldest surviving manuscripts of the books of Moses are in Greek, and the Greek alphabet did not even exist yet at the time of Moses, according to the Ink and Blood exhibit that toured the country recently. An inspired translation of the account, received by revelation to a prophet in approximately 1830, is as follows, starting with Genesis 19:9:
And they said unto him, Stand back. And they were angry with him. And they said among themselves, This one man came in to sojourn among us, and he will needs now make himself to be a judge; now we will deal worse with him than with them. Wherefore they said unto the man, We will have the men, and thy daughters also; and we will do with them as seemeth us good. Now this was after the wickedness of Sodom. And Lot said, Behold now, I have two daughters which have not known man; let me, I pray you, plead with my brethren that I may not bring them out unto you; and ye shall not do unto them as seemeth good in your eyes; For God will not justify his servant in this thing; wherefore, let me plead with my brethren, this once only, that unto these men ye do nothing, that they may have peace in my house; for therefore came they under the shadow of my roof. And they were angry with Lot and came near to break the door, but the angels of God, which were holy men, put forth their hand and pulled Lot into the house unto them, and shut the door. It then continues with verse 11, in the King James version of the Bible. Lot did not offer his daughters to be ravaged. There are several other corrections to the mistranslations of the Bible that Joseph Smith received through revelation. God has called prophets repeatedly throughout human history. Their purpose is to receive revelation. Scripture is the word of God received by revelation by those He has called. We continue to have prophets on the earth today, as we are told in Amos 3:7 and Ephesians 4:11-14. There is a prophet that presides over the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Jesus Christ directs his church through him.
Dr. Jim — Sorry to be a cynic, but I see no reason to consider Joseph Smith’s “inspired” translation of the Lot story as any more accurate than his “inspired” translation of the so-called Book of Abraham.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_of_Abraham