A. STANLEY DREYFUS
the situation is not quite so simple. Granted that in some people attitudes are innocuous and ephemeral, in others attitudes may function as a goad to action, even to rash and pernicious action. Some of the rabbinic comments we have considered mirror attitudes that, God forbid, could be made to reinforce prejudices we already hold; or, more likely, their insights might prompt us to reevaluate our own attitudes. At any rate, this discussion dare not be dismissed as much ado about nothing: it is timely, compelling, disquieting.
The Halakhah is devoid of discussion on the subject of exposure and abandonment, the sordid policy of destroying unwanted infants, especially females, and of excluding from the community the elderly who have outlived their productive years, so that they would perish of starvation or disease and by their deaths relieve society of an unwanted burden. This gruesome practice was carried out through much of the ancient world; it still persists in certain countries. In Sparta , every father had the right to commit infanticide; a child considered defective was hurled from a cliff on Mt. Taygetus , to be crushed on the crags below. According to Strabo , the Greek historian and geographer(b. cir. 63 B.C.E.), by the law of Ceos , all over sixty years of age were poisoned with hemlock.” Plato , advancing the interests of the state as he saw them, would deny medical treatment intended to prolong the lives of those who could not work and who therefore were of no use to themselves or to others.” Indeed, he condemned sickness as a crime. The Roman philosopher Seneca extolled suicide as an easy, painless method of escaping the annoyances of existence.
Contrasted with such examples of social engineering, such extreme selfishness, is the Jewish respect for life. It begins with the protection of the newborn and progresses to the act of showing hiddur to the aged in recognition of their years and the wisdom they have gained
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