İ am still big, it's the posts that got small

advanced: beis din

Torah Ark from Conegliano, Italy in Jerusalem, ca. 17th century

The Mishnah moves on to examine the ritual of the red heifer, carried out when a dead body has been found murdered with the killer unfound. Obviously, the notion that the elders themselves are culpable of murder is unthinkable, so we must extend the web of actions that render one responsible, to sending the person in question away without food or accompaniment.

We may see here a parallel to Levinas reading of a different passage in Tractate Sotah, where he deduces that, in a halakhic society, we are all infinitely responsible for each other.

The Rambam then adds one interesting point:

"The Holy One, blessed be He, then forgives the shedding of the blood", that is, even though those present are innocent for all direct intents and purposes, as a society, the occurence of injustice, as exemplified by murder, still constitutes a collective failure.

Lastly, in citing Elisha, the Gemara adds a point that we find again reflected in Levinas: accompaniment is not merely for the purpose of preventing the person from being murdered, but also for preventing them from becoming a murderer. As per Levinas, not only do we have a halakhic responsibility to each and every human being, but we also have a halakhic responsibility to each others responsibility, a responsibility that becomes all the more pronounced in the face of institutional failure.

The Gemara here tells us a story with a seemingly simple lesson: do not push those who transgress away too forcefully, they may not be able to return, much like Jesus who would later found the Catholic Church with terrible consequences. From our present political and historical perspective, the damage Catholicism and its later offshoots have done is evident, yet we may nonetheless take a step back and ask, what is so bad about Christianity specifically? The Gemara seems to point towards its idolatrous tendencies, its casting off of the Torah, halakhically valid though not uncontested concerns – there is no exact consensus on whether Christianity, when taken in good faith, is idolatrous – but Leibowitz offers a different answer:

The call for obliteration of Judaism was not something grafted upon Christianity as a result of some historical development, something which Christianity is capable of overcoming and even rejecting. It is of the very essence of Christianity since the day on which the Christian god appeared on earth. It is nothing but the denial of the right of Judaism to exist; in a sense, a denial of its very existence. The relationship of Christianity to Judaism is unlike that of other religions or faiths, whether pagan or Islamic, which deny the Torah of Israel and would nullify it. Christianity does neither, but claims that it is Judaism and there is no Judaism apart from it. On this point, it bases its very legitimacy, and therefore can never concede this point. [...] Christianity regards itself as the legitimate heir of Judaism, and the heir cannot take possession of his inheritance while the testator is still alive.

Yeshayahu Leibowitz, Judaism, Human Values, and the Jewish State

This reading, of course, renders our sugya problematic. Do we really need to make merry with antisemites to avoid pushing them away? Noble as the wish to bring back bigots to a worldview of accepting and appreciating human difference, is it a practicable societal model to lay the responsibility for that onto those affected most by that very bigotry? İt does not seem quite just to blame poor R. Yehoshua for the slaughters implemented by the Catholic Church.

R. Faur takes a slightly different approach:

Like the Church, the anti-Maimonideans valorized martyrs, or holy men. In these systems, the devotee is required to surrender critical thinking and act the way the authority commands. Saints are venerated, their words displacing the Dual Torah canon, which, when read charismatically rather than grammatically, only means what the religious hero says it means. [...] The esoteric knowledge is not subject to review. But the canon could be changed because (like the Chruch's and Qumrani treatment of revealed Scripture) it is the canonical person who defines the canonical Book.

R. José Faur, The Horizontal Society and Political Thought

For him, the problem with Christianity is not merely its casting off of Torah, but its casting off of the horizontal society demanded therein, Christianity as carried out by the Catholic Church is a highly hierarchical model – a model that, as per R. Faur, Judaism is not immune to. This will become clear when we consider R. Benamozegh's appreciation for Christianity:

And now we will turn to the sons of the two great messianisms, Christian and Muslim. It is specifically to the Christians that we will adress our franc and respectful words, and God knows that we fear in our hearts that our advances not be taken for hipocrysie. No! No impartial and reasonable man can avoid recognizing and appreciating the high value of these two religions, specifically of Christianity. There is no Jew who doesn't rejoice in the grand transformation carried out by them in a world previously filled with errors and moral misery. We cannot hear the most august and beloved names of Judaism, the echos of its sacred books, the memory of its great events, its hymns and prophecies from the mouths of thousands of ex-pagans of all races reunited to worship the God of Israel in churches and mosques, without feeling ourselves penetrated by a legitimate pride, recognition and love for the God who was worked such miracles.

R. Élie Benamozegh, Israël et l'humanité, my translation

For him, what makes Christianity great is precisely what makes it gruesome in our modern eyes: its missionary doctrine and how that lends itself to colonial rule. İn this regard, both R. Faur and R. Benamozegh do not draw a harsh line between Christianity and Judaism, as we can see in our present day that in spite of all its horizontal aspirations, Judaism as a mode of thought is not immune to being used in service of neocolonial projects, as no system of thought is. İf the material incentive is great enough, previously horizontal Judaism, too, can be used for the upholding of projects such as the Zionist one, where we see Judaism becoming hierarchical and placing Palestinian Muslims and Christians under the sort of rule criticised in the Catholic Church.