Q&A: Torah Morality
Torah Morality
Question
I believe this question has already been asked, and in any case I read your position on morality and Jewish law and wanted to ask whether you would be willing to accept a different proposal: since we perceive God as good, it is reasonable to say that He would not command immoral things (Amalek, a priest’s wife). And there is a deeper logic here: we would be prepared to give up our moral intuition in such a case in order to align with our understanding that God is good, and therefore it is not reasonable that He would command immoral things.
In places where Jewish law does not instruct us how to act, of course we would rely on ordinary human morality.
And the reason God commanded us to do moral things is to add religious value to the act.
(In addition, I think this is a bit of a word game, because I understand morality to be determined by our intuition, and therefore whatever our intuition points to is moral. So maybe one could call the killing of Amalek immoral, but it is still morally correct from a true objective standpoint.)
Answer
Not only has this question been asked, but I have answered it everywhere I have spoken about morality and Jewish law. This is the standard proposal, and there is nothing new in it, and it is precisely what I argued against. It empties our moral conceptions of content and plays with words. And since according to my proposal there is no problem at all regarding God’s goodness versus His commands, I also see no need to get into these unfounded notions. But all this has been explained ad nauseam.
Discussion on Answer
These things have been explained at length. Claims that the rule requiring a priest’s wife who was raped to separate from her husband is a moral principle, or the prohibition on mamzerim marrying, or exemption in cases of indirect causation, etc. — these are unfounded. It has nothing to do with intuition. It is unequivocally not moral.
Sorry, but in any case I’ll try my luck one last time: my claim is that it is not a moral principle if we understand the meaning of priesthood or of a mamzer.
I apologize, but according to my proposal God’s goodness would be more understandable. And in addition, it’s not wordplay; morality is always valid for me, but in certain places I will choose not to rely on my intuition because of better reasons.
As an example, I usually trust people and don’t think they are lying to me, but the rule not to believe malicious speech, or to judge favorably, means that I understand that what is expected of me is to be skeptical about what people tell me.