Off of the internet this week, I printed up the following page. Its called, "Some major multiple shootings this year." It lists ten horrible incidents that happened from January 14, 1999--when someone opened fire in an Atlantic City office Building--till Aug. 5, 1999, when someone opened fire in an office in Pasadena. The list stops on August 5^th, and so it does not even mention the terrible tragedy that just happened in the Los Angeles Jewish Community Center.

About two of those incidents our Torah has a specific message. I am referring to what happened on April 20^th in Littleton, Colorado and on May 20^th in Heritage High School in Conyers, Georgia. In both cases teen-agers of the high school brought in guns and attempted to kill as many students as possible.

The kids who committed these crimes were rebelling against everything around them. How do we treat such rebellious children?

The Torah, in Parshat Ki Tetsei, discusses how one should treat a rebellious child which the Torah calls "ben sorrer u-moreh." The Torah states, "ve-tafsu bo aviv ve-emo ve-hotsi-o oto el ziknei iro, the parents of this child must grab him and bring him out to the elders of the city." And what is the punishment of this child, the Torah states, u-regamuhu kol anshei iro ba-avanim va-met, the entire city shall then execute this child by the punishment of stoning.

So what was the crime of this "rebellious child"? The Torah tells us exactly what his parents say: "Benenu zeh sorrer u-moreh eininu shomeah be-kolenu zollel ve-soveh, Our son is a rebellious child who does not listen to our voice, he is a glutton and a drunkard." And the rabbis explain that the words zollel ve-soveh, glutton and drunkard, mean that the entire crime of the rebellious child was that he stole a certain amount of meat and then drank too much wine. And it is for this crime that the Torah demands stoning for the child.

Now, this week I was studying this passage with some of the teen-agers of our Bayit. They were immediately horrified by this passage. One of them so beautifully said, "If someone does something wrong you don't just take them out and beat them. You talk to them, you reason, you work things out in a nice manner." Why is the Torah treating this child so severely?

Rashi and the Midrash were also bothered by this exact question. Rashi explains, "Ben Sorrer U-moreh neherag al shem sofo, the rebellious child is stoned not because of anything he has done till now, but because he will eventually do something terrible." Rashi continues, "ve-omed be-farashat derakhim u-melastem et ha-beriot, because in the end this child will stand in the intersection and become a bandit."

According to this approach, the rebellious child has not yet done anything wrong. So why does the Torah instruct us to punish this child as though the child has already killed a person? Because the Torah is convinced that the child will eventually kill someone and therefore we must punish the child now.

This is a very difficult idea. In the first place, because the severity of the punishment stands against everything we value today about individual rights and punishing someone for a crime they have not yet committed. And secondly, this notion of punishing someone for what we think they will do in the future contradicts a central teaching of our rabbis.

Rosh Ha-Shanah is coming soon and our rabbis tell us how we will be judged on that day. Says Rebbe Yitshak in Massekhet Rosh Ha-Shanah, "ein danin et ha-adam elah le-fi maasav shel oto sha-ah, a person is judged only according to the actions that such a person has done until now." Meaning--according to the rabbis, God will not punish a person today because eventually this person will become a wicked person. Instead, when judging us, God only looks at the actions of the person up until the present time.

So what we have here is a fundamental contradiction. According to Rashi, the rebellious child is not punished for what he has done until now but for what he will eventually do, while according to Rebbe Yitshak of the Talmud, we are assured that God judges us only on the basis of what we have already done.

Please understand this question is only a theoretical one. The Gemara records the position that "Ben sorrer u-moreh lo hayah ve-lo nivrah, there never was such a rebellious child and there never will be such a rebellious child." Still, even though this contradiction is a theoretical one, we still need to address it in order to figure out what the Torah is teaching us.

The Ramban, Nahmanides, helps explain the contradiction, and in doing so, he brings to us in a very clear fashion the relevance of this teaching. Ramban focuses on the words in the Torah at the end of this paragraph that explain why this child is punished. The Torah writes, And you shall stone him, "ve-khol yisrael yishmau ve-uyirau, And when all Israel hears about it they will fear."

To which Ramban explains, ki lo humat be-godel chet-o ela lisar bo et ha-rabim ve-shelo yihiyeh takalah le-acherim." The meaning of the phrase, and "All Israel will see this and fear" is that he was not executed as a result of the sin that he committed but only as a deterrent to others. According to Ramban, this rebellious child is killed only because we as a community want to impress upon people in our community the importance of not rebelling against one's parents and against society.

The individual child here really has done nothing deserving of death. What the Torah is stressing here is that even though in terms of the inalienable rights given to individuals, this child should not be so severely punished, still we as a community have the right to say that our rights come before the rights of any individual who lives in the community. We therefore are permitted to decide that we as a community have the right to suspend the basic rights of this rebellious child in order to protect ourselves.

Understand. This idea was never practically applied to any child that ever existed. But still the message is a powerful one that should resonate with us today. We have to start seriously discussing if individuals in our community can continue to demand their own freedom and rights, when the upshot of their demands is a very dangerous situation for the community as a whole.

Gun control is a perfect example. Advocates of the right to bear guns will often argue that I have the personal right to carry a gun, whether it be to go hunting or to protect myself. The message of the Torah is that we as a community can say to that individual: "I'm very sorry, but our needs as a community, override your personal rights. We need to protect our own safety, and we have to severely limit access to guns."

I think another issue that has to be revisited in this context is the idea of free speech. Old ideas allowing great permissiveness in speech, for the sake of our physical safety need to be reexamined. I don't know what the answer is. But I do know that we have to seriously discuss how we can allow impressionable children to have 24 hour a day access to internet sites that preach violence and hatred.

This is a very complex issue. Everyone knows that it's very dangerous to allow society to limit an individuals rights. But this is the message of the Torah in its discussion of Ben Sorrer U-Moreh. The concept of nidon al shem sofo, judging a person based on what we think they will eventually do to society, shows us this idea that sometimes in order to prevent any larger danger to society we have to unfairly punish an individual. And in my opinion, this is a message which in light of the recent events of Littleton and Heritage High School, should now seriously be discussed in our modern society.