I remember it like yesterday. It was a levayah held on Chol Hamoed. The nifteres was someone I knew, a fine, distinguished matriarch of a large family who had led a wonderful life.

I knew that the levayah would not be long because it was Chol Hamoed, and the Shulchan Aruch unequivocally does not permit hespeidim in such an instance. I figured that there would be some Tehillim and that’s it. Well, I guess I was naïve.

I remember a son getting up and saying, “It is Chol Hamoed and we are not allowed to be maspid… Nevertheless, for our choshuve mother, I will just say a few words of divrei preidah.” He then proceeded to deliver a full-blown hesped. By relabeling it “divrei preidah — words of goodbye,” he must have assumed, wrongly, that it was halachically permitted.

I know that perhaps there are bigger aveiros that a person can do than say a hesped on one’s mother on Chol Hamoed, but that incident got me thinking about what can happen when the Shulchan Aruch is not a “brick wall” that cannot be penetrated, but becomes like silly putty, molded by using different language to justify conduct that is not permitted.

When you decide that you are the arbiter of morality and simply change language to justify what you want to do, that is when things go off the rails.

When Reality Turns to Fantasy

I thought about this long-forgotten story last week after the assassination attempt on President Trump by a man named Cole Allen. I have always been fascinated by manifestos that people leave behind to justify murder. I remember trying to wrap my mind around the logic of the “Unabomber” when reading parts of his long manifesto and realizing how, at some point, his logic shifted from reality to fantasy.

Thus, last week, when I read the manifesto that Cole Allen had written as he fully anticipated being killed in his attempt to kill Trump, I was struck by how “normal” he sounded. He sounded like almost any commentator on left-wing media outlets and like many sitting members of Congress.

The only difference was his ultimate maskanah, his conclusion. If Trump was such an evil person, then he had to be removed. Murdering Trump, according to Cole Allen, was not a criminal act, but rather a heroic one that would save America and the world.

He then went into detail explaining the hierarchy of his moral code. Murdering Trump and members of his cabinet was, to him, the greatest mitzvah. But what about collateral damage? The Secret Service was also fair game, but he said that he would try not to kill hotel employees, and he would use the type of bullets that do not penetrate walls so that he would not inadvertently kill more people than necessary.

Let’s think for a moment about what was going on in the warped mind of Cole Allen, because it is a siman of what is going on in the warped minds of so many Americans on the left and even on the right.

They simply create their own moral code. There is no fixed definition of morality. I define morality by what I believe is moral. It is moral to kill the president. It is moral to kill members of the cabinet. It is even somewhat moral to kill journalists, because they are perceived as complicit. It is less morally justified to kill bystanders or minority hotel employees. You see what happens when there is no Shulchan Aruch, no fixed standard?

How Murder and Similar Crimes Can Become “Permissible”

Now let’s turn to a widely discussed podcast recently produced by the New York Times, because if you want to understand where Cole Allen got his “heter” to murder so many people in cold blood, all you need to do is listen to that podcast.

On the program, New York Times writer Nadja Spiegelman was joined by two far-left commentators, and they discussed topics such as stealing and murder, concepts that appear in the Ten Commandments and have been part of the moral code even for the umos ha’olam for centuries.

They began by discussing theft. All agreed that it is permissible to steal from wealthy individuals such as Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, because he is excessively rich and it is unfair that he earns so much at the expense of others. They described how they had stolen from Whole Foods, an upscale chain store in Manhattan and Los Angeles, and even coined a term to justify it: “microlooting.” Ms. Spiegelman admitted that she and her friend “microloot” — what in plain English is called shoplifting — because it is a political act, a form of retribution against large corporations.

Another guest on that program was Hasan Piker, an extreme left-wing commentator whose rhetoric has stirred significant controversy. Despite expressing admiration for figures like Hitler, he remains embraced in certain circles.

Recall Brian Thompson, the healthcare executive who was shot and killed in Manhattan by Luigi Mangione, another individual who operated under his own moral framework. Listen to how Piker justified the killing on that same New York Times podcast:

“Brian Thompson, as the UnitedHealthcare CEO, was engaging in a tremendous amount of social murder. The systematized forms of violence, the structural violence of poverty, the for-profit, paywalled system of healthcare in this country, and the consequences of that are tremendous amounts of pain, tremendous amounts of violence, tremendous amounts of deaths. And that was a fascinating story for me, because Americans are very draconian about crime and punishment. They’re very black and white on this issue. And yet, because of the pervasive pain that the private healthcare system had created for the average American, I saw so many people immediately understand why this death had taken place.”

So there you have it. When there is no clear, unchanging moral code, human beings can justify almost anything when their own seichel becomes krum.

This is what Yitzchok Avinu meant when he told Avimelech, “Rak ein yiras Elokim b’makom hazeh.” When there is no fear of G-d, when there is no clear, indisputable moral code of right and wrong, the distorted thinking of human beings can justify anything.

Because the Torah Said!

There is a beautiful story about the Gerer Rebbe, the Imrei Emes, that illustrates this idea. Not long after assuming leadership, the Imrei Emes declared that davening would begin at 7:30 a.m. every day, including Shabbos. Gerer chassidim throughout Poland adjusted their schedules and began to daven at that time.

The elder chassidim, however, found this difficult. They were accustomed to davening later, after hours of preparation, and felt that without that preparation, their davening was like a guf without a neshomah. But the Imrei Emes remained firm.

A chossid once told the rebbe that without the lengthy preparation, he could not feel sweetness in his tefillah. The rebbe responded by quoting the words recited in korbanos: “Tanya bar Kappara also said, ‘If they would add a small measure of honey into the ketores [it would smell so good that] no one would be able to resist the smell.’ Why, then, did they not mix honey into it? Because the Torah said that any leaven or honey are not to burn from them, it is a fire offering to Hashem.”

The message was unmistakable. Even if something would be sweeter and more appealing, if the Torah says no, that overrides everything. Zeman tefillah is a halacha, a din in Shulchan Aruch. No other calculations can override it. The Torah said. That is final.

Now, it is easy to take comfort in the fact that we do have a moral code, and that we would never justify murder or theft as acts of righteousness, as Cole Allen or Hasan Piker have done.

When Justifications Turn the Forbidden into Permissible

Nevertheless, even within our own world, we see people offering justifications for behavior that the Torah clearly forbids. We hear statements such as, “Our dor is a shvache dor. We cannot expect people to fully comply with the Shulchan Aruch.”

We hear arguments that girls must support a husband and therefore studying kefirah in college becomes acceptable. The Shulchan Aruch lays out standards of kedusha—what one may look at and what one may not — but, people say, this is 2026 and we cannot really demand that today.

There are countless other examples of this mindset and the reader can fill in the rest.

We must remember that in a world that has become so morally distorted — where murder, theft, and all forms of toeivah are justified — we must be especially vigilant not to adopt that same mentality, even on a smaller scale. The words “shehaTorah omrah” and “ein yiras Elokim b’makom hazeh” must always remain on our lips.

Whatever happens in the broader world inevitably influences the frum world, even the most insulated communities.

Beware.