Q&A: Uniqueness
Uniqueness
Question
Honorable Rabbi,
I watched several of the Rabbi’s lectures on faith / belief. I have a difficulty regarding lecture 3, where the Rabbi said that from a religious perspective it is worse to eat pork than to murder, since the prohibition of murder belongs to the category of morality, which is not Jewish but universally human, whereas refraining from eating pork is particular to Judaism and sets it apart, and therefore the murderer is a vile person and also a flawed Jew, but still a Jew, whereas the pork-eater is “not a Jew,” since he violated Jewish law in a way that nullifies Judaism’s uniqueness. Quite apart from my principled opposition to these claims, I do not understand the argument: what does uniqueness have to do with it? What importance does uniqueness have simply as uniqueness, and what is its religious value in itself? Separation from the gentiles for the sake of separation from the gentiles? And if this really is uniqueness for the sake of uniqueness, is that not nothing more than a purely folkloristic argument? A matter the Rabbi opposed (rightly, in my opinion) in lectures 1 and 2. I would be glad for some further explanation.
Answer
I no longer remember exactly what I said there. I’ll tell you what I think, and I assume that is also what was said there.
I have no doubt that nowhere did I say, or even hint, that eating pork is worse than murder. That is simply a logical and halakhic mistake.
Let me preface that my position is that there are two independent categories: Jewish law and morality. Morality is universal (there is no such thing as “Jewish morality”), and therefore what defines Judaism is Jewish law, and only Jewish law. But Jewish law itself includes both murder and pork. The difference is that murder also has a moral dimension, whereas pork does not.
So do the math: the prohibition of murder contains both a severe halakhic prohibition and a severe moral prohibition. So how could the prohibition of eating pork, which is a lighter halakhic prohibition, be more severe than murder in the final analysis?
In my view, uniqueness is not a measure of severity but the right parameter for defining something. If you want to define a Jew (as in a conversion process), choose parameters that are unique to Jews. Therefore, in defining a Jew it is more correct to rely on the prohibition of pork than on the prohibition of murder. Someone who refrains from murder may also be doing so because of other values, and not because of Jewish law, and therefore that is a poor measure of whether he is faithful to Jewish law. This has nothing whatsoever to do with the question of severity, and I described my position on that above.
Discussion on Answer
If you are asking what I meant to say in the lecture, I’m sorry, but I simply no longer remember. That was years ago. In any case, I explained my position on the matter, and I do not understand what the question is here.
Indeed, the Rabbi clearly said that murder is worse than eating pork (forgive me if that was not clear from what I wrote), but he distinguished between the general-moral parameter and the specific-halakhic one, and in this way the Rabbi created a divide between what is distinctive and what is moral. I do not agree (I follow the approach of Hirsch and so on), but the point is completely understandable. My question is different: what is the religious-faith value (the lectures were about faith / belief) in giving preferred importance to what is distinctive and separating? Why is that important? Aren’t such definitions the domain of scholars who see Judaism/religions as a sociological/anthropological phenomenon or as relativistic nationalism? After all, obligations are imposed on us, moral as well as ritual ones, and we are commanded in them regardless of what is unique about them; and in proportion to our sins, so is the “gap,” כביכול, between us and Him, may He be blessed (in the sense of: “your iniquities have separated…” ). Therefore, in my view, there is no religious value at all in the uniqueness of the commandments / laws as such; their uniqueness, or lack of uniqueness, is a byproduct of observing them, and is not the concern of a religious person. Does introducing such a definition into the religious-faith layer not “surrender” to that same traditionalism that the Rabbi himself argues against?
In short, can there be religious value to the uniqueness of Judaism?