I cannot believe Boteach would be proven wrong so clearly.  Even more surprising, he won’t accept that he lost the challenge issued to Hitchens.

He doesn’t believe his source??? Are you kidding me!

This just tells me that he will find any way to dodge the fact that he was completely embarrassed by this whole challenge and throughout the whole debate.

Boteach lost; stop trying to create a technicality that isn’t there.

Boteach is clearly correct on this matter. Seems that Shahak fabricated a falsehood and Hitchens, maybe because of his relationship with Shahak, believed it. Not everything in print is true, and especially not when one is trying to perpetuate a skewed position which at least in this case is not supported by reality.
So, strict observation of the Sabbath CAN be broken to save the life of a non-Jew!

I don’t think strict observation of the sabbath can be broken. This was a case of allowing your phone to be used which is not strictly forbidden, and not making the call yourself which is strictly forbidden. I assume if the person themselves would have to make the call it would be a different story and would probably be forbidden.

“I will await Christopher to bring more sources to justify the “many” he cites.”

The rabbi asked for one source in his challenge, not many. He lost the bet. Asking now for further sources is intellectually dishonest.

Start buying those 100 books rabbi.

Christopher Hitchens is right, the rabbi is changing the rules and weaseling out of the agreement.

Mr. Hitchens, I’m from Ohio and I beg one thing of you, please remember that awful travesty known as the “Creation Museum” is in KENTUCKY, not OHIO!

Rabbi Shmuley claims that the Chief Rabbi of the United Kingdom exposed Shahak’s story (published 1965) as a fraud a year after it was written.  Immanuel Jakobitz, who incidentally was not the Chief Rabbi of the UK until a year after he refuted Shahak, said that Shahak personally admitted the story involving the telephone was fabricated.  But if Shahak actually made such an admission, it seems rather unlikely he would’ve reprinted the same account in a book nearly 30 years later.

After the initial publication, the Chief Ashkenazi Rabbi of Israel offered a responsum to Shahak, stating that “the Sabbath must be violated to save non-Jewish life no less than Jewish lives” but he further explains that the rationale is not the equal value of human life but enmity instead.  That is, not saving the life of a gentile might create hostility toward Jews and thus it would be wrong not to save the life on those grounds alone.  It would seem to follow that in such circumstances where there is no risk of enmity, the Sabbath ought to take priority, but the Rabbi does not address this specifically.

Even so, just because one Rabbi said that Gentile lives must be saved, it does not mean that a certain Rabbinical court could not have told Shahak that it was pious to let a gentile die.  Jewish law does not have a central authority like the Vatican, and there were and are discrepencies of thought among varying sects and leaders.

I have a feeling this dispute won’t get definitively settled unless there are court records that show Hitchens is right.

The rabbi lost the debate that he chose to conduct in the most unfair way, through ad hominem attacks against Hitchens, by mis-representing facts, asserting bold lies, and resorting to all sorts of logical fallacies. It is no surprise to me that he would now attempt to move the goal-post, rather than facing up to his obligations.

The rabbi is a very sad figure, who never was appointed rabbi at Oxford, never debated professor Dawkins (he only moderated those debates), never was a “good friend” of professor Dawkins’, and clearly never cracked a book by S.J.Gould, otherwise he would know that Punctuated Equilibrium is a theory within the theory of Evolution, and not a competing theistic interpretation.

What would motivate professor Hitchens to debate such an inferior and dishonest opponent is beyond my grasp.
It was like watching Einstein debating Paris Hilton on nuclear physics.

Citing a source whose veracity has been challenged and found, in most publications, to be fabricated and false, does not count as valid proof. There is lots of material on this available on the web and elsewhere. Shahak’s ideological positions have resulted in his making a number of claims which have been refuted, and this is one of the more prominent ones.

Though I agree that Boteach’s presentation was poor and often tangential, Hitchen’s does not cite a valid source for this item. All sorts of things are published; that does not make for truth or accuracy. Hitchen’s claims to be writing the truth; therefore he has an obligation to search for truth.

Eli, by challenging Shahak’s credibility in general, you are engaging in the poisoning the well logical fallacy, a subset of the argumentum ad hominem, which isn’t going to help to shed any light on the issue.

What is at stake here is the veracity of the specific allegation that a rabbinical court has deliberated in the manner stated by Hitchens, and written by Shahak.
No doubt, this will be investigated further and the final outcome of the inquiry will not rest on anyone’s unsubstantiated claims.

So far, it doesn’t look good for the rabbi.

Eli,
where is if “found to fabricated”
rather than said to be fabricated?
I cannot find proof on either side,
only assertions.
Have you seen a solid fact on this?

“Shahak’s credibility in general, you are engaging in the poisoning the well logical fallacy, a subset of the argumentum ad hominem, which isn’t going to help to shed any light on the issue.”

Checking the validity of Shahak’s credibility is of utmost importance in this matter. Shahak doesn’t provide any *sources* for his assertion (e.g., no written responsa, corroborating witnesses, Talmudic citation or name of the Rabbinic court). For someone, such as Hitchens, who prides himself on observable proof, bringing a friend’s unverified (and refuted) claim, seems comical.

However, this isn’t the first time Hitchens decided not to check his sources. In his latest book, he repeats as true the slander that Jews have sex through holes in sheets. I know Hitchens is busy, but at least check snopes.com!

I didn’t see the debate, so I’m reserving comment on their individual performances.

Dear MDR,
I stand by my previous post.

You say:"Checking the validity of Shahak’s credibility is of utmost importance in this matter.”
In fact,Shahak’s credibility is totally immaterial.
What you have to check for is independent confirmation of the validity of this particular claim of his.
Even if he were a pathological liar, he might have said the truth in this circumstance.

We both agree that we can’t rely on anybody’ s unsubstantiated claim and better evidence must be provided, if none is already available.

I hope that I made myself clearer.

Thanks for your attention.

Dear Decius,

Thanks for responding. In situations where concrete evidence is available, the credibility of a witness is not of utmost importance (however, the witness could twist and manipulate evidence, so knowing their disposition towards the truth is somewhat helpful).

However, in this situation Mr. Shahak provided *no* proof or sources. Looking for “independent confirmation” was and is therefore impossible.

I agree that “even if were a pathological liar, he might have said the truth in this circumstance.” In such a situation you would refer to corroborating evidence. Since none exists, we can only go on Mr. Shahak’s word. In this specific situation, his credibility is significantly material.

Imagine that there was no hard evidence and two people were giving testimony as to what happened. Would you give the same weight to the following people?: a) someone you’ve known personally as an honest and truthful person b) someone that you know personally as a pathological liar.  If not, then knowing Mr. Shahak’s credibility becomes relevant.

We agree on the fact evidence must be provided. I am not sure about you, but Mr. Shahak’s word wouldn’t stand as “evidence” in my opinion.

Why people have such debates is beyond me. They talk about subjects that have such a wide number of points that they can talk for all the time without ever addressing each other.

Why not focus on a single point that has a narrow focus and is possible to reach a solid conclusion so that it may be progress in this field.

“There is no prohibition in allowing one’s phone to be used on the Sabbath, as you no doubt know. The prohibition is using it yourself.”

And from the text from Gil Student.

“As we have seen from Ramban, we are allowed to violate Shabbat to save Gentiles who have officially accepted on themselves to live righteous lives. Third, and perhaps most importantly, the permission, or lack thereof, to violate Shabbat to save someone’s life is not in any way a valuation of that person’s life because no life, whether Jewish or Gentile, is more important than Shabbat.”

So basically Jews aren’t allowed to call someone for help on a Shabbat, and neither are they allowed to save the lives of the unrighteous.

Following the subject of the debate, “Does God Exist?”, if there was no idea of a God, or simplye it didn’t exist, jews would be frown upon for that behaviour.

Wheter or not Hitchens source is false, the subject he brings up is undoubtfully an important one, isn’t it a crime, let alone ethically wrong, to let someone die? We can try to define wheter someone deserves or not to be punished for something, but we try to be rational and agree on it, why should a single jew be allowed to let someone die because of what he particulary thinks of the dying? We shouldn’t, and anyone who thinks we should, is obviously deranged. As conscious beings we should all stand for each other.

MDR -
I certainly should have qualified the statement of “just one Rabbi” to include “even such a prominent one” but the point about there being no overarching authority to settle theological disputes still applies.  I’m not a scholar of Jewish Law and I hope you’ll correct me if I’m wrong about any of this, but doesn’t it say in the Shulkhan Aukh that “one must not lift one’s hand to harm him [a gentile], but one may harm him indirectly, for instance by removing a ladder after he had fallen into a crevice”?

Or as Maimonides puts it “… their death [gentiles] must not be caused, but it is forbidden to save them if they are at the point of death; if, for example, one of them is seen falling into the sea, he should not be rescued, for it is written: ‘neither shalt thou stand against the blood of thy fellow’ [Leviticus19:6] - but [a Gentile] is not thy fellow.”

From what I can gather there are only two exceptions to this 1. a case when hostility towards Jews might be created by the failure to save the Gentile’s life and 2. in the case of a Gentile who lives by the Noahide laws and prays to God (which would certainly exclude someone like Hitchens).  And as I understand it in both these cases, it merely removes the “ban” on saving the Gentile’s life rather than creating a moral imperative to do so.

If this understanding is correct, I don’t see any reason to think it unlikely that a Rabbinical court might have told Shahak that the telephone incident was pious (assuming the issues of enmity and rightousness were not evident).  While I agree that the story remains unverified and perhaps unverifiable, it remains in Shahak’s favor that he was a great scholar of Jewish law, as evidenced by his meticulously referenced works on the subject.  And regardless of whether the particular incident was or was not fictional, Hitchens’ rather tautological point still stands unchallenged - Jewish Law favors Jews.

I am firmly on the Hitchens side of this debate, but I am reluctantly of the view that he overstated this point.  Unfortunate.

But for me the underlying issue is much more important.  I find it ludicrous that the question of whether someone should be treated on some day of the week had to be submitted to any kind of court at all.  Any religious doctrine that even nudges in that direction should be seriously questioned.

Christopher Hitchens won fair and square. The rabbi needs to pay up.

Even if Hitchens is wrong, the point is quite esoteric and there was no need to quibble over it for so long. Unfortunately, this is what usually happens in debates over religion.