On One Foot
RABBI JOSEPH KARO, SHULCHAN ARUCH , CHOSHEN MISHPAT 427:8 Likewise, one has a pos- itive duty to remove and guard oneself of any life- threatening obstacle, as it is said “beware and guard your soul.” If one did not remove said obstacles, one has can- celled a positive command- ment and transgressed. (Deut. 22:8).
4 RELATED TO THE SOURCE ABOVE is the Biblical commandment to erect a fence around one’s roof as a literal guardrail against harm. This law gets extended to any safety feature that is reasonable for a person to implement, and the lack of which would render some- one guilty of negligence in the event of a preventable incident. This is one of the main arguments brought by gun-control advocates within the Jewish community. Despite the possibility that a gun may protect its owner, the statistics related to gun deaths and gun own- ership lead many to claim that guns are inherently unsafe and argue that they should not be part of any community. For those who do own guns, this established a strong requirement for responsible ownership.
3 THESE PARAGRAPHS and the passages that follow, taken from the main code of Jewish law written in the 16th-century, discuss animals that are kept as deterrents. Unless security is genuinely needed, as might be the case in border towns, this is prohibited. Karo, living in Israel at the time, was writing in for a primarily Sephardic audience. Rabbi Moshe Isserles, the Rema, was writing around the
same time, but from the perspective of the Ashkenazi communities. He went further than Karo did, claiming that living among non- Jews is reason enough to anticipate danger, and keep some sort of protection. It is not a stretch to say that their vastly different living conditions explain their different positions and give us some guidance for how to understand the relevance of their rulings 500 years later. Contemporary defences may not generally take the form of guard animals, but the un- derlying question of setting up potentially dangerous defences against potential threats remains an open one. For some, the overall warm relations we have with others in the countries we live in weighs more heavily; others emphasize dangers that are always just over the horizon.
Rema, commenting on the above: And there are those who say that now that we dwell among the non-Jews and nations, in any case it is permitted, and go out and see what the people do. However, it seems that if it is a vicious dog that there is concern it will harm people, it is forbidden to raise it unless it is bound with iron chains.
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