This is not the first time these questions have been raised. Pocket books called Stalags circulated widely in Israel during the Eichmann trial in the 1960s. They depicted American or British pilots being abused by sadistic Nazi female officers, and then taking revenge by raping and/or killing their torturers. Deemed pornographic by Israeli courts, these books were banned.
There is a not uncommon belief that the Torah sanctions revenge. But the precept of “an eye for an eye” is usually cited incorrectly, according to Rabbi Joel Roth, a professor at the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York. It is actually meant to refer to monetary compensation rather than bloodletting. And Leviticus 19:18 says, “Thou shalt not take vengeance, nor bear any grudge against the children of thy people.”
Rabbi Roth notes that Jews are prohibited from taking “the law into your own hands as a matter of legal punishment.” The scaffolding of legality””a fair trial and conviction””is paramount under Jewish law. Eichmann was the one person to ever receive a death sentence in an Israeli court, and not without much hand-wringing from Jews world-wide.
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Jordana Horn on the New Quentin Tarantino movie and the Problem of Revenge
This is not the first time these questions have been raised. Pocket books called Stalags circulated widely in Israel during the Eichmann trial in the 1960s. They depicted American or British pilots being abused by sadistic Nazi female officers, and then taking revenge by raping and/or killing their torturers. Deemed pornographic by Israeli courts, these books were banned.
There is a not uncommon belief that the Torah sanctions revenge. But the precept of “an eye for an eye” is usually cited incorrectly, according to Rabbi Joel Roth, a professor at the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York. It is actually meant to refer to monetary compensation rather than bloodletting. And Leviticus 19:18 says, “Thou shalt not take vengeance, nor bear any grudge against the children of thy people.”
Rabbi Roth notes that Jews are prohibited from taking “the law into your own hands as a matter of legal punishment.” The scaffolding of legality””a fair trial and conviction””is paramount under Jewish law. Eichmann was the one person to ever receive a death sentence in an Israeli court, and not without much hand-wringing from Jews world-wide.
Read it all