Hello and blessings, we continue, as is our good habit, studying from the book Brit Shalom, which is a collection of laws for the children of Noah. We are also continuing in the fifth chapter, which deals with the laws of shedding blood, murder.
Today we begin section 21. From here on, we will not be discussing actual murder, where one person kills another, as we have already covered these laws. However, there are things similar to murder, which include any harm I cause to another person. Here we have a series of laws on this subject.
Halacha 21 - One must not harm their fellow, whether a man, a woman, a great person, or a small one, by injury, harm, hitting, or seduction and rape. Here is a list of damages one person causes another. There are bodily injuries where one person harms another, injures them, or strikes them. And there is also damage to another’s property.
Here we are talking about bodily harm. There can also be seduction, where one person seduces another. One might say, "but this is with both parties’ consent," true, but seduction is essentially an intrusion into another’s world, which is certainly inappropriate, all the more so in the case of rape.
Rape: We already see how the Torah treated the rape of Dina, the daughter of Jacob, with great severity. There are three different explanations in the literature of our sages regarding this case. Some say that Dina’s rape was severe because it was theft. This is the opinion of Maimonides, who says that Shechem stole Dina. The opinion of Nachmanides is that it is because it is related to the laws of the children of Noah. According to Nachmanides, the laws of the children of Noah include everything that is necessary for the repair of the world. There is also a Midrashic opinion that says it was because of the prohibition of incest. Although Dina was not married and she was not a close relative of Shechem, there is a boundary that one must protect oneself from anything involving sexual corruption, and this includes the prohibition of rape. This is, in essence, an important list of offenses related to harming another person’s body.
