Q&A: The Need for a Religious Command When It Already Exists in a Moral System
The Need for a Religious Command When It Already Exists in a Moral System
Question
Hello Rabbi, according to your view, the commandments that are assigned to the category of “moral commandments” because they care for others and the like belong to that category only because they add a religious value on top of the existing and natural moral value that I am obligated to anyway (?). I am obligated, regardless, not to murder; it’s just that now there is also a spiritual problem involved. So I wanted to ask: if that is the case, what need is there for the religious command if there is already an “objective” moral prohibition? I am obligated to morality, so why is there a need for a reminder about something I am already obligated to? Is the “moral halakha” a system of reminders of the Torah’s view within the given framework of commandment? Just so that we know that Jewish law also thinks this is important?
I’d be happy to clarify if I wasn’t clear.
Answer
This is not a question of need but of truth. The truth is that there is also a religious prohibition here, not only a moral prohibition. In other words, someone who murders causes two kinds of harm: spiritual-religious harm and moral harm. The halakhic prohibition is because of the spiritual-religious harm, and the moral prohibition is because of the moral harm.
Something similar applies to the prohibitions of interest and usury. The Talmud itself, at the beginning of the chapter “Eizehu Neshekh,” says that these are two prohibitions, meaning that in every interest-bearing loan there is both the prohibition of neshekh (“biting” the borrower) and the prohibition of tarbit (wrongfully increasing the lender’s wealth). They always come together, although later authorities discussed cases in which perhaps one might exist without the other. So what is the point of having two prohibitions here? Because in an interest-bearing loan, both things really happen: the borrower is bitten, and the lender’s money increases wrongfully.
By the way, as for the enumeration of the commandments, these are in fact not counted there as two separate prohibitions. From this we can see that the enumeration of the commandments takes practical application into account, and if there is no practical novelty in a given commandment, it is not counted. But as far as prohibitions are concerned, there is no problem with overlap on the practical plane as long as the essence is different.