When one of my Rebbeim was asked about the issue of Levi Aron he responded that in the times of Beis Din, you needed eidim and hasra’a to put someone to death. This means that 2 people have to warn the person that what he is doing is wrong and that he will be killed for it. If the person then goes ahead and does it anyway, he is put to death. My Rebbi said that if a story like that happened today everyone would immediately label the murderer mentally ill. After all, how can a sane person go ahead and do such a thing in front of witnesses, after just being warned of the consequences. The answer is that, yes, there are evil people in the world and they are accountable for their actions. The yetzer hara has the power to cause someone to stoop so low that he would actually knowingly do such a thing. The Torah doesn’t call this person a shoteh, it calls him a murderer. (That being said, it still might be true that Levi Aron is mentally ill, and we should probably be dan lechaf zchus to some extent, but we need to realize that there is a yetzer hara and not to underestimate him)
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