Complicated Lies and Ethical Conundrums

This week, as I was trying to read the NYTimes Magazine (while my son ate the rest of the paper around me), I noticed that someone had written this letter to the Ethicist:

My wife’s sister and her husband keep kosher, so we have a special pot for their visits. Recently my wife caught me using the pot for my traif soup. She insists we must buy another pot, but I say as long as my in-laws believe it’s kosher, they won’t violate their faith by using it. Would I be unethical to keep this secret or simply cheap? — Paul Kramer, Montclair, N.J.

Now, from an ethical standpoint (according to Laurel) this is a no-brainer. What kind of person would knowingly trayf up a dish someone else needed to eat out of, and then be too cheap to replace it? I have no problem calling Paul Kramer a sleazy-cheapo.

But from a religious standpoint, I wasn’t sure what the answer would be. It’s an interesting question. I remember once I asked a rabbi about what happens when a Jew accidentally eats a bug in some kosher potato salad at a picnic (bugs aren’t kosher). And I was told that if—to the best of the frumster’s knowledge—the potato salad was kosher, said frumster is in the clear.

So it would stand to reason that this Paul Kramer fella, while a sleazy-cheapo, is actually protecting his in-laws from knowing transgression… sort of. Though he himself is a big fat liar of course.

The Ethicist’s response?

Religious laws, like secular ethics, often distinguish between knowing and unknowing transgressions. Menachem Genack, an Orthodox rabbi, confirms that this is so for Kashrut, Jewish dietary codes. Biblical law punishes deliberate violations more severely than inadvertent errors… This would ameliorate but not obviate your in-laws’ misdeed.

Which leaves us to ask about the difference between “ameliorate” and “obviate” I guess. But Paul Kramer, you’re still a sleazy-cheapo. And I bet your wife was PISSED when she saw this letter!