At Rabbis for Human Rights you use nonviolent tactics, occasionally practicing civil disobedience. Does Judaism have a position on civilian disobedience?

I was on trial for civil disobedience back in 2004 - 2005, for standing in front of bulldozers that had come to demolish Palestinian homes in two separate cases, both in East Jerusalem [....] And the day the trial opened was the week that we commemorated the yahrzeit of Rabbi Heschel and the birthday of Martin Luther King, and also the weekly Torah reading was the first verses of Exodus . There we learn about perhaps the first recorded example of civil disobedience: the [Hebrew] midwives who defied Pharaoh. It would be great hubris to compare myself with any of those, but I certainly had a sense that I was standing on their shoulders and continuing their tradition, taking the road they had paved. So I think even from the Bible we have wonderful example of civil disobedience Rabbi Arik Ascherman 23 Religion Civil Society

At Rabbis for Human Rights you use nonviolent tactics, occasionally practicing civil disobedience. Does Judaism have a position on civilian disobedience?

I was on trial for civil disobedience back in 2004 - 2005, for standing in front of bulldozers that had come to demolish Palestinian homes in two separate cases, both in East Jerusalem. And the day the trial opened was the week that we commemorated the yahrzeit of Rabbi Heschel and the birthday of Martin Luther King, and also the weekly Torah reading was the first verses of Exodus. There we learn about perhaps the first recorded example of civil disobedience: the [Hebrew] midwives who defied Pharaoh. It would be great hubris to compare myself with any of those, but I certainly had a sense that I was standing on their shoulders and continuing their tradition, taking the road they had paved. So I think even from the Bible we have wonderful example of civil disobedience. Another very important principle we are taught is that there are levels, gradations of commandments, mitzvot. We are taught about all kinds of laws, and except for three laws, every law can and should be broken for saving a life, what we call pikuakh nefesh. It's the principle that some things are more important than the law. I want to say one more thing about the whole idea of Judaism and civil disobedience, and nonviolence and disobedience. There is a teaching I do often from the Talmud tractate of Sanhedrin that I use more in terms of when it is appropriate or inappropriate for the State to use force - when it's appropriate or inappropriate to go to war, but I think it also reflects on the ethics of civil disobedience. We are taught that if someone is chasing someone else with a knife to kill them, you are not only permitted but obligated to stop the pursuer - not only to save the person pursued, but to save the pursuer from him or herself. But we are taught if you stop that person by killing them, if you could have hurt their foot to stop them, even if you are trying to do the right thing - you are trying to save a human life - the Talmud says you are guilty of murder. And I draw from that a couple of rules. First of all, whether it is the State going to war, demolishing homes, or whether it's us activists doing civil disobedience, the first aspect is to what degree is your action going to have an effect? If I really thought you could save human lives by demolishing homes, I would probably grit my teeth and say, human life trumps and therefore we have to do it. And what you learn from that story that someone is guilty of murder if they kill somebody when they could have stopped them by other means, that is a doctrine to use minimal force. So even if demolishing a home would stop a terror act, if there had been another, less horrible way to do the same thing, there is not permission to do this collective punishment. But if we were to do civil disobedience every time we disagreed with a policy, there would be chaos. A reworking of this idea of using minimal force is the idea that you use civil disobedience as a matter of last resort not as a first resort, only when you have no other options. It is one thing to block the bulldozer coming to demolish a home, and another thing to block a road to protest. As we think about the ethics of civil disobedience even if there is no Talmudic tractate on how to conduct civil disobedience, I do think there are teachings that we can extrapolate to get to some kind of Jewish notions. Somewhere in the Talmudic tractate called Shabbat it is taught that everybody is responsible when they could have protested and didn't. We are taught - whether it is a family, community or the world, where you could have protested something and don't, you are responsible.