If a human being’s eye is only worth dollars and cents, a person with a lot of dollars and cents could just go around gouging out eyes one moment and handing out money the next. So if the Talmud rules that the punishment only involves money, why would the Torah use the language of one body part being equivalent for another? Because the Torah is trying to teach us that on some level an eye should be for an eye. Such a scenario never has, nor ever would take place within the Jewish court system because according to the Talmud, if someone damages or destroys another person’s eye, tooth, or any other bodily part, the punishment is not corporeal but rather monetary. The defendant was convicted of assaulting and paralyzing another man during a fight, and the court is searching for a sugreon who will agree to cut the defandant’s spinal cord in retribution for his crime. Which brings me to a case going on right now in Saudi Arabia where the Islamic court has sentenced a man to paralysis. When it comes to “an eye for an eye,” many Jews also misunderstand the Jewish view here and believe that this Torah verse is meant to be taken literally, much like it is within certain branches of Islam. So, for example, despite the fact that both birth control and abortions are allowed at times within Jewish law, many Jews nowadays confuse Judaism with Catholicism and believe that Orthodox law prohibits both in all circumstances. And being that we’re a small group, often living amongst many different types of people, it’s not so uncommon for Jews to confuse their beliefs with those from other religions.
What that amounts to is a very educated people which is very ignorant about its own heritage. Despite the fact that we Jews are the people of the book, for many of us in the last couple generations, the books we know do not include our own. Ask your average Jew the name of Jesus’s mother and you’ll most likely get a “Mary.” Ask him the name of Moses mother and you’ll most likely get a blank stare.
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