Q&A: Questions
Questions
Question
Good week, Rabbi, a number of questions:
1) When we do a good act that is outside Jewish law, such as being nice or humble, we are indeed doing a good act, but not a halakhic act that has religious value. So what exactly is the difference between them? They are both good deeds, for both I will receive reward, and in both I am fulfilling God's will!
2) I do not see the difference between when the Holy One, blessed be He, says “I want you to do this” and “Do this.” Basically, “I want you to do this” = “Do this,” just more gently phrased. As servants of God, we are obligated to fulfill all His wishes, whether He expressed them explicitly or not.
3) You write again and again that the source of our validity and obligation is the commandment (at Sinai), or in another formulation: the basic norm of the Israeli legal system, for example, is the obligation to obey it. But I didn’t understand: that itself is the question. Who says there is validity to the commandment at Sinai? Or in the other formulation, the basic norm ought to be the justification for why we obey the system, not the fact that we are supposed to obey it!?!?
4) A: In the third book, page 89, you write: “The question of how the Torah commands immoral commands receives an answer: it has additional aims beyond morality, that is, religious aims.” But I didn’t understand—that itself is the question: how can there be religious aims that are anti-moral? You also wrote, for example, that the passage of the beautiful captive woman does not teach us about the Torah’s attitude to the moral aspect, because it is not dealing with that at all; but again, the question itself is that the Torah should have dealt with the moral aspect, since God is moral!
B: And especially regarding a non-moral halakhic obligation: first, I still do not understand how a moral Torah can command such a thing; and second, you wrote that when there is a conflict between Jewish law and morality, usually one rules in favor of Jewish law, because God, who already knows what is moral and still gives a halakhic command to the contrary, surely has a good reason, and therefore one should obey Him. But there is a problem here: God himself—that is, His halakhic command—cannot itself tell me to obey Jewish law more than morality. It’s not fair, so to speak. Jewish law itself cannot tell me to listen to it more than to morality when there is a conflict between it and morality.
4) What does lip service mean??
Answer
1-2. I don’t know regarding the reward and whether it is the same (even between different commandments the reward is not the same). The commanded matters are Jewish law, and there you are fulfilling God’s will and His command; and whatever was not commanded lies outside it, and there you are fulfilling only His will, not His command. The first is obligatory, and the second is only expected of us.
3. The basic norm is not exactly a justification, but rather the top of the pyramid of the normative system. It is the source of validity, not the justification. It too needs a justification (usually from direct intuition and not from a prior principle). The law of gravitation is not the justification for why massive bodies are attracted to one another, but a description of the phenomenon in one general, unifying principle. The force of gravity is the justification. The basic norm describes the foundation of my beliefs or commitments, but why I believe in it / am committed to it—that is a question each person is supposed to answer for himself.
4.
A. That is not the question. The question was how it is possible that the Torah would go against morality, and to that I answer that it has additional aims (not only moral values that already exist in the world). The questioner had not considered that possibility, and the answer introduces that point. He can now ask why the aims outside morality are important, and to that I have no answer (just as I have no answer to why moral aims are important. Their importance is inherent). We may presume that if the Holy One, blessed be He, sets these values before us, they are apparently important.
The fact that God is moral does not mean that the Torah has to deal with morality. And even if it does have to deal with morality, that does not mean that it is identical with Jewish law. There are several difficult logical leaps here.
B. I’m not managing to understand what the problem is. When the Torah says that a priest’s wife who was raped must separate from her husband, that is not moral. But that is how the holiness of the priesthood is preserved. The Torah says that the importance of preserving the holiness of the priesthood overrides the rules of morality. What is unclear here?
It is not Jewish law that says it is preferable to morality. It is the Torah or the Holy One, blessed be He, who says so.
4)? Words said outwardly, without sincerity—mere lip service. https://milog.co.il/%D7%9E%D7%A1_%D7%A9%D7%A4%D7%AA%D7%99%D7%99%D7%9D
Discussion on Answer
4. B. There is a serious problem here. The Torah states a law—for example, that a priest’s wife who was raped must separate from her husband—that conflicts with morality, and you write that since the Torah said so, one must obey it. But that is precisely the problem: the Torah says A and morality says B. It is like the chocolate dilemma—health versus taste. There is a conflict here, and I, as something external, need to decide. I cannot decide because health tells me, “Decide in my favor,” and likewise in the dilemma of Jewish law versus morality, I cannot decide because Jewish law tells me, “Decide in my favor.” In short, the decider in a dilemma between x and y must be external to x and y. Another example: Jewish law says that it is forbidden to save a non-Jew at the cost of desecrating the Sabbath. So here too there is a conflict between morality and Jewish law. But according to what you write, again there is no conflict at all, because one can say that the Torah says the importance of keeping the Sabbath overrides the rules of morality. But one can say that about every conflict, and it comes out again that there is no conflict between Jewish law and morality. Because Jewish law will always say that it overrides morality, and likewise morality will always say that it overrides Jewish law. That itself is the conflict, and whoever has to decide it must be external.
Exactly right, and I even wrote that. So what is the problem? The decision is indeed made outside both systems.
Not exactly. It is worth giving content to the duty to obey: one should obey Jewish law because it is a divine command. One should obey the laws of the state because every citizen is a partner in determining them and is bound by an implicit contract to uphold them. And so on.
The problem is that it is not being made outside both systems, because it is the Torah that decided it—that is, Jewish law, which is one of the two systems. In other words, the Torah wrote: “There is a law that a priest’s wife who is raped must separate from her husband.”
1. Not true. You are identifying Torah with Jewish law, but the Torah is the entirety of God’s word (including “and you shall do what is upright and good,” and the whole book of Genesis—see the first Rashi and others).
2. The one who decides is you, not the Torah and not Jewish law. In a place where the clash is essential and not incidental, the calculation shows you that God’s will is for Jewish law to prevail.
For example, when the Torah writes to forbid a mamzer, that always involves a moral problem. If morality were to prevail here, there could never be any application whatsoever of the prohibition regarding a mamzer (that is the situation in an essential clash), and therefore it is clear that here Jewish law prevails (except for cases of a transgression for the sake of Heaven).
You wrote that the first one (Jewish law) is obligatory, and the second one (moral behavior) is only expected of us. What does “only expected of us” mean—is it not an obligation? The very fact that the Holy One, blessed be He, created us with an inclination toward moral behavior—isn’t that itself a divine call and command to act with goodness and uprightness?
There is no command regarding morality, only an expectation. But still, since it is expected of us, there is an obligation (a moral one) to do it.
1-2. Understood, thanks.
3. So the basic norm for every normative system is “one must obey the system,” right?