People embellish their enemies in order to improve their own reputation. Fighting a prominent enemy is a marvelous task. Thus Israelis attribute pan-Islamic qualities and freedom fighters’ aspirations to Palestinian peasants, and the Arabs, in turn, mythologize the IDF. Being defeated by the armed-to-the-teeth monster is not that insulting. Israelis, for their part, inflate the effects of terrorism out of proportion even though they are statistically insignificant, compared to road accidents.

Modern terrorism is a return to historically standard situation of no universal security. Every man stood – and stands – for himself. Medieval travelers were much more likely to fall prey to bandits than Israelis – to Arab terrorists. Terrorism is a normal mode of war where the enemies don’t match forces in the open, but undertake to crush each other’s will to fight. In moral terms, terrorism against non-combatants is no different from sieges which also affect non-combatants. In both cases, the status of non-combatant is dubious, since the entire population supports war effort by paying taxes and encouraging able-bodied males to fight. Indeed, the textbook example of non-combatants – pregnant women - give birth to soldiers, and babies will soon become soldiers.

Israel patently demands that Palestinian Arabs stop terrorism before the final-status negotiations commence. The British occupiers of the same land failed extracting the same concessions from Jewish guerrillas. Irgun and Lehi continued attacking the British until they withdrew, much like the Afghan mujahedeen attacked the withdrawing Russians, and like Hezbollah and Hamas pursued the Israelis. Israel negotiates with Palestinians only because of the terrorists. Should they stop, Israel would abandon the negotiations at once. Israelis want to hold on to Judea, but don’t want to pay even a minor price of suffering terrorism. Public support for abandoning Judea to Arabs grows with the increase in terrorist acts in Israel.

As a lawyer, I recognize that people have conflicting values which often cannot be reconciled. I encountered many situations where I could equally well argue both sides of the conflict. In the present Jewish-Muslim situation, both sides are right. Jews needed a land for our state and sensibly chose a religiously significant land. Palestinian Arabs settled the nearby hills for millennia and sensibly regarded the country as their own. No amount of debate can solve that contradiction. Jews used terror successfully against the British occupiers, and need not scream when Arabs use a similar tactics against the Jews.

Just fight the Arabs.

As the successive US Administrations employ the Old Europe’s cynical and corrupt approach to politics, their policies are twofold: pro-Israeli and anti-Jewish. US Administrations need Israel the bully to push Muslims into cooperation with America. But since the US politics lost the last shreds of morality, it works against everything that is Jewish in Israel. Thus the US demands destruction of Jewish villages, accepting Arab occupation of Judea and Samaria, and abandoning Jerusalem to Palestinians.

It is very different with American people. Public support for Israel in America is very high. Common Americans accept the Jewish right to Jerusalem and Judea, and agree to the overwhelming use of Israel’s force against the Arabs. Jews and Americans have much in common, though not the absurdities trumpeted by Jewish Diaspora barons.

Democracy is not central to Jews and Americans alike. Both nations are values-oriented. Americans fought a civil war in large part over the issue of slavery instead of democratically allowing the South to continue with it. America commonly took leadership in international affairs rather than seeking democratic solutions through the UN. In Judaism, too, democracy takes the second place to values: “You shall not follow the majority to evil.” Ancient Athenians could theoretically pass any decision democratically; Jews and Americans have doctrinal safeguards against such voting. Neither is tolerance a shared Jewish and American value. In fact, our nations are fairly intolerant. Europeans tolerated the Nazis until Germany swallowed them, but the US proceeded to fight the evil as a matter of principle. After the four decades of leftist brainwashing, majority of Americans still oppose homosexual families. Americans are religious, if superficially. So are the adherents to Judaism.

Anti-Semitism exists in America as in every Christian country. Polls indicate anti-Semitism among Caucasian Americans lower than in Europe. The real difference, however, is institutional. Americans lack the history of restricting the Jews. Americans are inbred with the idea of institutional equality. Anyone may dislike Jews, but almost everyone treats us as equals.

Jews and Americans share messianism. Both nations believe in their unique role as the beacon to mankind. Both nations act on this belief consistently. Americans see themselves as an example of liberty; Jews – of morality. Our roles are compatible. The British-American liberty was formulated on the Sinai; American liberty inherits the Torah values. That is not libertarianism, but a rigid system of moral values. Morals are regulated; in everything else, the people are free. Jews and Americans consciously developed their doctrines and made them the reason for national existence.

Israelis and Americans share the history. Both our nations encountered the lands settled by hostile aborigines. Both offered them coexistence, beneficial for the aborigines. Both were forced to kill and repress the aborigines, and eventually took over their land. The most enterprising Europeans left the Old World for America. The most zealous Jews left Europe to settle Palestine. Both countries, after they succeeded initially, were deluged by ideologically neutral immigrants who lack the settlers’ pioneer mentality. Israel admitted Arabs and Slavs, America accepted Mexicans; both countries shrunk from proudly pronouncing themselves different and refusing the newcomers of alien mentality.

Israel and America are both strangers: in the Middle East and the world, respectively. Arabs are zealous and ill-wishing of Israel, Europeans – of America. Both dominate and face perpetual military conflicts. Terrorism threatens both Israel and America, albeit unimportant statistically.

We just need to get rid of our governments.

Toward the end of WWII, Russian Army raped just about every woman in Germany. I’ve never had a problem with that. The wholesale rape was not a military measure by any standard; it didn’t serve to crush the German will to fight which was already at the low point by then. The rape was not an expression of Russian barbarity: female populations of Soviet-occupied Eastern Europe were largely spared. The rape was an act of vengeance, and I wholeheartedly approve of vengeance.

Societies punish criminals vengefully. In terms of prevention, it would suffice to ban, say, corruptioners from their jobs, but societies sentence them to prison. Relatives of the victims of violence long for revenge rather than mere prevention. Hebrews were commanded to exterminate Amalekites for the offenses of their ancestors. Vengeance is not nice, but it restores righteousness.

Defenders of the US nuclear attack on Japan bring up the necessity of crushing Japan’s will to fight to the last man. Nuking Hiroshima and Nagasaki didn’t achieve that end. After the first town was annihilated in nuclear attack, Japan did not react at all. The losses were actually much smaller than in Tokyo’s fire-bombing, and consisted largely of civilians – not a matter of the imperial army’s concern. Still, the US dropped the second nuclear bomb. The role of nukes in the capitulation is still a matter of historical debate in Japan, but most historians agree that exhaustion and the American promise of retaining the monarchy were the critical factors behind capitulation. Nuclear attacks on Japanese cities were a viable, but unnecessary military action. They were a legitimate act of revenge. Such was also the fire-bombing of Dresden – the answer to German attacks on Coventry.

Without vengeance, wars would become a limited liability affair. Aggressor can torture the victim’s civilian population, but the victim – once it gains the upper hand – ostensibly shouldn’t reciprocate. Such an arrangement, if ever implemented, would provoke the aggressors’ brutality: in the best case, they quash the resistance, while in the worst case, their civilians still won’t be harmed.

Fortunately, vengeance prevails in wars.

Readers often ask us where to donate in Israel or what is the best Jewish charity around here. First, never-never donate to Joint Distribution Committee, United Jewish Appeal, or your local assimilationist shop ran by the temple administrators. They are neither charities (huge administrative overhead), nor Jewish (cater to anything but the real Jewish interests).

It is hard to discriminate between many of the worthy Jewish charities in Israel. I won’t suggest the Jewish charities which cater to yeshivas or generic social issues: some of them are worthy Jewish charities, but their charitable causes are popular and such Israeli charities generally have no shortage of donors. There are narrow segments of Jewish charities which our readers are likely to donate to, but others would as likely skip in distributing their donations.

I suggest prospective donors, Jews and non-Jews alike, to consider donating to the three types of Israeli charities. One category is the charities that help conservative Jews: the extremely poor Jewish families who pioneer the settlements in Judea and Samaria, Jewish soldiers and policemen tried in Israeli courts for using firearms against the Palestinian enemies, helping the families of conservative Jews imprisoned for political expression in Israel, and the like charitable causes.

The second category of good Jewish charities includes conservative activism: developing Jewish self-defense groups in the villages of Judea and Samaria, increasing Jewish presence in nationally and strategically important places such as Hebron, or spreading the real Jewish values such as Meir Kahane’s writings and nationalist Judaism untainted by political correctness.

The third category of Jewish charities is possibly the best of them all, and is so far represented by a single Israeli charity, The Friends of Efrat. This is the smartest Jewish charity around, worthy of any donor’s attention. That Jewish charity unites everyone. It’s neither right nor left, neither religious nor atheist. The Friends of Efrat charity does the thing every Jew would agree to: bring more Jewish babies in Israel. And the charity does so with extreme efficiency and righteousness: they gather information from Israeli hospitals on the unfortunate Jewish women scheduled for abortions. Most of the Jewish women opt for the terrible procedure because of monetary constraints and fear of raising children alone. Friends of Efrat charity offers the women help, advice, and small financial aid to purchase the first necessities for the Jewish child. The charity maintains zero overhead as it employs only volunteers, and its efficiency is staggering: less than $1,000 for an extra Jewish child. Your $1,000 donation to the charity translates into you bringing up a new Jewish baby in Israel.

Given enough money, Friends of Efrat can do the most important job of any Jewish or Israeli charity: bring tens of thousands of additional Jewish babies to life every year. The charity is pro-choice in the ultimate sense of the word: they help Jewish women overcome anxiety and the immediate financial restraints, and make a true, free choice whether to bring a Jewish child.

If you want donating to a great Jewish charity, look at the Friends of Efrat.

The Bible promises the nation of Israel a huge country from Nile to Euphrates. Such country was unsustainable and utterly unnecessary for Jews in antiquity. “From Nile” includes Sinai, but even Egypt didn’t govern the Sinai in the times of old except for a narrow strip. The Promised Land was a technical impossibility and a burden to maintain. The land wasn’t prized, but consisted of deserts and steppes. If seducing Hebrews with a promise, a takeover of Egypt would be much more attractive.

Only in the late twentieth century did we understand the rationale behind the Promised Land. Israel critically needs the Sinai for depth of defense against Islamist Egypt. If not for Sinai and the Negev, the initial thrust of the Yom Kippur war would have drowned the Jews in the sea. Now that Egypt acquires missiles and cutting-edge aircraft, the depth of defense the Sinai accords to the Jewish state becomes all the more important.

The Promised Land includes a Frankenstein state of Lebanon. Jews so far failed to realize the commandment and conquer that land, driving the ever-fighting Lebanese tribes away to Syria – and the Lebanese tribes prove a perpetual source of trouble for Jewish Galilee.

Likewise with Euphrates. Jordanian monarchy won’t last long. Palestinian majority will take over that desert state and, unable to create a viable economy there, will turn to nationalism and militancy. Jordan will become a huge Gaza, rife with terrorist training camps. Jordanians will extend their influence to those Arabs whom Israel failed to expel in violation of the commandment, and they became “a trap for you,” “sore in your eye,” and “masters over you.” In order to establish security, Israel would have no choice but to extend toward Euphrates, relocating the hostile Arabs to Iraq. As if prompting Israel to fulfill the commandment, a strong and militant state of Iraq was invaded for no reason and destroyed; now the way for relocating Palestinians and Jordanians is cleared.

Israel also needs a huge territory to disperse her population. The hi-rise buildings in Israeli cities will become a death trap in a major earthquake – and Israel is located on the two lines of tectonic activity. Jews must live in light, single-story houses. Dispersing the population is also the best way to avoid or mitigate Islamic nuclear strike. Pakistan, besieged by the Islamists, has an unknown number of nuclear bombs, probably more than fifty. Saudi Arabia likely hoards some of the Pakistani nukes in return for financing its nuclear program. Iran, Egypt, Libya, Algeria, and Morocco have the critical know-how in nuclear technologies, and North Korea stands ready to help them. There is absolute certainty that Islamic terrorists will lay their hands on nuclear weapons fairly soon. Crude nukes are not that apocalyptic: a primitive bomb detonated at the ground level in Tel Aviv would kill something like 10,000 Jews – a sorrowful but statistically insignificant number. Looking at Nagasaki, the long-term effects of nuclear bombing are also tolerable. So instead of panicking, Jews should disperse into a single-storey society interconnected by the latest communication networks rather than Tel Aviv’s promenades. And that why we need the Promised Land in its entirety.

It’s great to live in peace. Persecuted for millennia, exterminated recently, and embattled for decades, Jews long for peace as no other nation does. We were ready to kiss Sadat when he came to Israel, signaling the peace. We accept hard choices and concessions for peace. Unfortunately, among the sea of Muslims, Israel will never live in peace. It is a heart-rending assertion, but true nonetheless.

And so the Torah instructs us to fight for safety.

Jews distinguish between neighbors and others; the latter category includes animals. Ethical norms equally apply to both. Prohibition of murder, for example, equally applies to humans and animals. In that sense, Gentiles are similar to animals: in Judaism, animals are high, not Gentiles are low.

The Bible does not ban polygamy, but condemns it. Prophet Samuel condemns the behavior of kings which includes having many wives, also condemned in Deuteronomy 17:17. Leviticus 18:18 which bans "taking your wife's sister" probably means that all Jewish women are sisters, just like the Jews are sometimes called "your brother." The Tenth Commandment speaks of a wife in singular.* Similarly, Genesis 2:24: “a man shall leave his father and his mother, and be joined to his wife; and they shall become one flesh” establishes monogamy.
The Torah allows polygamy only in narrow cases. Exodus 21:10 speaks of Jewish concubines. Deuteronomy 21:15-17 speaks of children of the second "hated wife" implying she is divorced. Levirate marriage (Deuteronomy 25:5-10) is a similarly specific case, and it does not even refer to polygamy but one-time sexual intercourse.
The Torah regulates minute aspects of family relations but is silent on treatment of several wives, presuming such case non-existent. Unlike the other nations, Jews in the Land of Israel were monogamous.

The Torah admits and regulates evil rather than unrealistically demands abandoning it. Seemingly barbaric teachings turn surprisingly progressive. Americans and Russians treated slaves worse in the nineteenth century than the Torah has prescribed three thousand years ago. The Tenth Commandment prohibits jealousy in regards to various objects, equating wives with oxen, houses, and donkeys in that regard. That seemingly barbaric piece of sexism is actually extremely progressive. Ox was a matter of pride to ancient men just like their cars today. House retained its role as the major symbol of male status. Hardly any man would speak disparagingly about his car or house, but many speak thus about their wives. The Torah’s listing of wife among the most prized assets elevated the status of females from a familial burden (as many men imagine their wives now) to the achievement a man should be proud of. Medieval poets praised women to the heaven, and frequented syphilis-ridden brothels. The Torah avoids unsustainable romanticizing but introduces a realistic guideline: treat your wife as good as your house.**

* The Tenth Commandment lists other items - house, donkey also in singular. They, however, are mentioned in a different clause from wife: "You will not covet your neighbor's wife; and his slave, and his maid, and his ox, and his donkey, and anything which is your neighbor's." Regarding those other objects, the commandment states that not even one (thus singular) item could be coveted. Wife, unlike other objects, is mentioned in Hebrew in constructus, your-neighbor's-wife, as a unique object with no implication that she is just one of a kind like donkey.

** True, there is an important difference between wife and house: unlike wife, house cannot make your life miserable or divorce you. Though the Torah doesn't directly allow women a right of divorce, they can always behave in such a manner as to make their husbands divorce them. Arguably, however, many women treat their husbands badly just because the husbands are unreasonably soft to them. Quite possibly, treating a wife as a highly praised object unquestionably owned by the husband improves familial relations greatly. In modern terms, that's sexism, but I'm old-fashioned. Moreover, that's exactly how we treat our small children. My guess is that most wives would gladly accept such assuredly high status instead of petty wrangling for dominance with their husbands.

Jewish tradition is adamant that the forefathers observed the law before it was given to Moses on the Sinai. Why, therefore, Jacob's sons slaughtered the people of Schem for raping their sister instead of allowing Schem to marry her, as he pleaded? The background is simple: upon coming back to Canaan, Jacob purchased a field near Schem; Palestinian Arabs call that place Nablus and claim Jews have no business there. Son of the ruler of Schem raped Dina, after which offered to marry her. At that point, Simeon and Levi pretended to accept the marriage, but demanded that the population of Schem circumcise. While the locals were incapacitated after the surgery, Jacob's sons killed them all, enslaved their wives, and took their property.

The immediate problem with Schem's offer to marry Dinah was him keeping her hostage. Schem did not deliver Dinah to her family and then humbly asked to marry her, but kept her in his house, thus making the marriage offer a sham. Accordingly, Jacob's family had every reason to be suspicious of Hamor's offer to live in that land. Just as his son kept Dinah hostage, he could one day lay claim on their possessions. The ruse of circumcision is suspicious: long before then, Abraham was commanded to circumcise before entering the land of Canaan to be like locals, and so were the Hebrews under Joshua. In historical perspective, the tribe of Schem was likely circumcised. Whether abetted by the post-circumcision fever or not, Simeon and Jacob chose to slay the Schemites.
In doing so, they rebelled against the common sense. Ever-fearful Jacob decries them for committing an unspeakable act of brutality which could cause other tribes to fight his clan. Jacobs’ fear is odd because his sons acted within the commonly accepted legal principle of blood revenge: they avenged their sister. Indeed, no Canaanite tribe rose against Jacob on that occasion. Simeon and Levi, however, exceeded the legal limits by killing the entire male population. They also rejected Schem's offer of hospitality. Probably for that reason, the narrative contains a suspicious interpolation: after credibly arguing before his people for welcoming Jacob’s clan, Schem drops a wryly remark, “Shall not their cattle and their substance and all their beasts be ours?” Such an evil intent justified the assault.

But what if Schem didn’t harbor evil intentions? What if held Dinah just because of his brutish nature rather than a deliberate act of kidnapping? That was likely the case.

Jacob's attack on Schem wasn't an act of conquest: immediately after the attack, his clan moved to Beth-El, leaving the large territory of Schem no-man’s land. Simeon and Levi plundered Schem, typically of Hebrews' retributive raids. They deceived Schemites, and the Bible explicitly sanctions military deceit: "For by wise counsel thou shalt make thy war." Shimon and Levi acted not without anger, but the Torah praises Pinchas who slew even a Jew engaging in idolatrous sexual rite; contrary to the stance of modern rabbis, Pinchas slew the transgressor on the spot without referring the matter to judges – obvious transgressions need not due process.

Their actions need not comply with legal norms or practicality. Simeon and Levi acted on the higher moral plane, that of revenge. And so their laconic reply to Jacob's lamentations was, "Should one deal with our sister as with a harlot?"

The lesson Simeon and Levi gave us is straightforward: there are cases when neither intentions, nor repentance matter. Society can deal leniently with a lone criminal, even a rapist, by allowing him to marry the victim. In the national matters, we are the one, and the sister is always ours. Like in the NATO charter, an attack on a single Jew is an attack on every Jew.

Israeli Arabs routinely rape Jewish women.

Jewish tycoons cannot get respect from Jewish masses that are only jealous at their illicit gains, and seek respect from Gentiles by misrepresenting themselves as Jewish leaders. The tycoons usurp the respect accorded to Jews as a whole, and discredit the Jews as a whole by their unprincipled wickedness.

Jewish leaders imagine they can fool their Gentile colleagues. Rabin hardly went to Oslo to give Palestinian Arabs a state, and Olmert who campaigned against Barak’s partitioning of Jerusalem in the 2000 hardly intended partitioning it in 2007. Unfulfilled promises are a viable strategy on personal level, at least temporarily. That is not so on communal level because promises create expectations. Bizarre promises or examples recalibrate the scale of possible options. Intermarriage was rare in 1940s, but once the Jewish community accepted the bizarre couples, the range of accepted behavior was recalibrated and the torrent of intermarriage ensued. Rabin, likewise, was the first mainstream politician to promise the Palestinians concrete concessions at the expense of Jewish idea. Israeli population quickly got used to the suggestion; while almost everyone opposes dividing Jerusalem, few people protest. Political promises, even unfulfilled, are dangerous. The wicked, un-Jewish promises are especially harmful given the twisted Jewish mentality. Some of the Jews are the greatest moral beacons; they are offset by the majority who would rather abandon their Jewishness, who stay in Israel insofar as they cannot get a Canadian visa. The millennia of persecutions weren’t conducive to goodness; in the oppressive environment, wickedness is the evolutionary beneficial trait. Wicked Jews eagerly recalibrate their Jewishness according to the wicked promises of the defeatist politicians.

So it is not surprising that polls show about half of the Israeli population objecting to releasing Yigal Amir. They don’t care about Rabin: few Jews buy the government’s hysterical cult of Rabin’s personality. He was an ugly character by any measure. The mob opposes Yigal because he is a good Jew; the mob prefers defeatist, assimilated Jews like themselves. The concern about taking Rabin’s life is ludicrous: all people put values above lives. Of all people, Jews most surely put values above lives: why else did we suffer murder and persecution instead of baptizing into Christ? It is morally permissible to kill perfectly good people in perfectly senseless wars sanctioned by government, but is ostensibly reprehensible to execute clearly evil persons when no just, God-fearing court is available to sentence them. The WWI, fought on purely ideological grounds cost twenty million lives. Twenty million souls died over the arcane issues of monarchic politics. The concern over Rabin’s death is exaggerated.

It is mandatory under Jewish law to kill the Jews whose collaboration with Gentiles, even if legal, threatens the Jewish community. It is mandatory to uphold the Jewish values by executing those who conspire against them. It is prohibited to follow a democratic majority to evil.

Any way we look at it, the half of Israelis who favor releasing Yigal Amir are right.

Medieval knights and barons rarely fought the pervasive bandits who besieged their castles. Ransom was a more common outcome. Also, Torah requires the Jews to ransom our compatriots. We, however, proclaim ransom unacceptable.

The effect of ransom is shifting the risk from the current victim onto the other innocents. Ransom spares some, but encourages the terrorists to take other hostages. In our case, other hostages are also Jews, and we care about them.
Medieval barons, however, were too sparse to form a society. Each of them didn’t care about others, and averted the risk for himself by paying ransom and thus encouraging the bandits to besiege others.
The Torah’s case is also different. Modern hostages have no value other than for ransom; ransoming them increases the value of subsequent hostages (for exchange), while refusing ransoming them discourages the kidnappers from subsequent attempts. In the antiquity, hostages had intrinsic value – they could be sold as slaves. Refusing to ransom them won’t have discouraged the kidnappers who would just as well get their money by selling the kidnapped Jews into slavery.
When the hostages lacked intrinsic value (e.g., were old) and were only captured for extortion, they should not be ransomed so as to avoid setting precedent for the kidnappers; thus, Rabbi Meir of Rothenburg in the thirteenth century prohibited his community to ransom him. The rabbis long recognized the problem of intrinsic value, and Talmud (Gittin 4:6) prohibits ransoming fellow Jews for more than their market value as slaves. The sages recognized that no law can stop close relatives from rescuing their dear one; husband is allowed to redeem his wife on the first occasion for ten times her market value as a slave, but that is his right, not the community's obligation.

Refusing to ransom fellow Jews from terrorists is no more morally objectionable than limited funding of free medical programs or road safety. We’re our brothers’ keepers only to an extent. Would an Israeli government promise to refrain from shooting at a thousand enemies on the battlefield in exchange for them not shooting at a single soldier?

The one thing worse than ransoming hostages is prisoners’ exchange.

Most of the commandments are eternal. Some commandments reflect the eternal truths, but must be viewed in the context. Such is the commandment of marrying a rape’s victim to the rapist. There is not much information about the crime rate in ancient Judea, but violent crime was rampant in Roman suburbs and in the feudal Europe. It is reasonable to assume that rural Judea was a violent place, too. Women had to venture outside the city walls to tend the flocks, bring water home, and to travel. The violent crime was unavoidable. Societies until the modern age ostracized the victims of rape, and primitive societies still do. They did so for sensible reasons. Rape often resulted in pregnancy, incurable STD, or even damaged the child-bearing functions. The victim was often utterly negligent (thus the Torah allows for blaming her for the crime), and so didn’t make a good wife.

The lawgiver, therefore, was solving the problems of integrating the victim back into the society, punishing the offender, and preventing the crime. He achieved all of those aims with harsh, no-nonsense means – and with the extreme efficiency. The Torah first cracks down on negligence and fearful submission to criminals. Rapists often intimidated their victims into silence where screaming would help. The Torah, accordingly, makes silence during rape into a capital offense. Before that law, the victims had a choice. They could scream and face the risk of being killed by the rapist, but also a chance of frightening him away. Or, they could keep silent, submit to the rapist, but assuredly save their (subsequently ostracized) life. The Torah took away that choice. The victim who doesn’t scream is executed. The rapist’s threat of killing a screaming victim became bleak in comparison with the assured judicial execution of a non-screaming victim. Rapists, therefore, knew that their victims will assuredly scream. By the exceedingly harsh measure of blaming the victim the Torah created a huge deterrent to rapists. (The same logic applies to the problem of terrorist kidnappings. Just like the rape victims are forbidden to cooperate with their assailants, so the government must not cooperate with kidnappers. Discouragement and prevention on the societal level take precedence over saving an individual.)

The rape endangers the victim’s life, and almost assuredly extinguished her social life. Following the “an eye for an eye,” the Torah proclaims rape a capital offense. Harsh, perhaps, but efficient. Even in the modern society, victims of rape and their relatives would gladly kill the rapist.

Integrating the victim back into the society is where the Torah’s practicality takes precedence over moralistic concerns. The rapist has to marry his victim, and is barred from ever divorcing her. Exceedingly wisely, the Torah allows the marriage option only to affluent criminals. There is little sense in marrying one’s daughter to criminal pauper. Before the marriage, the rapist has to pay the girl’s family a fine of fifty shekels – the amount equal to one’s Temple tax obligation for hundred years. As with any other monetary obligation, a failed debtor (essentially, a thief) was enslaved. The Torah, thus, implicitly allows the victim’s family to enslave the rapist.

Logical and thoughtful, the Torah differentiates between the cases of betrothed woman and the one who is not. In the last case, marriage to an affluent criminal makes sense when ostracizing is the only alternative. In the first case, making one’s bride to marry the rapist would be doubtlessly unethical. The rapist is executed, but what to do about the victim in that case? The Torah admits, there is no universal solution. The woman is considered a victim of accident; her situation is compared to “for as when a man rises against his neighbor, and slays him, even so is this matter.” In modern terms, the case of raped bride can be likened to the case of a bride who suffered heavy car accident. There is no single answer to the moral problem. The most the Torah can do is proclaim the victim without sin and enjoin others from harming her. The rest is up to her family and the bridegroom. Harsh? You bet. But realistic and practical now just as three thousand years ago.

The Torah doesn’t detail punishments for homosexual rape. Apparently, it was uncommon in Judea.