Strangers on a Train

Abstract

Abstract This chapter considers the problem of moral luck, individual responsibility, and the death of the unknown stranger. It first describes a narrative that is a metaphor for our situation, that of passengers on a train that runs over innocent and unknown strangers. Moving from that example to a parallel narrative in the Talmud in which an unknown stranger is killed in the unincorporated area between two cities, the met mitzvah, the chapter considers how rabbinic tradition, itself an exegesis on a verse in the Hebrew Scripture, elaborates the duties of the witnesses to this death. The chapter considers the problem of “tipping points” in the larger discourse of climate change as an example of how one’s individual choices will affect the unknown stranger. It reflects on Arendt’s issue of bystanders. We are entangled in the world in complex ways, and while the death of others seems not to be directly our fault, it is an act in which we participate, a theo-political reality. Turning to the rabbinic text offers a theological response to this issue.