On Survival and Truth: A Sober Look at Orthodoxy and Sociology (Column 597)

With God’s help

Disclaimer: This post was translated from Hebrew using AI (ChatGPT 5 Thinking), so there may be inaccuracies or nuances lost. If something seems unclear, please refer to the Hebrew original or contact us for clarification.

In a response to column 122, Aharon brought up my friend Moshe Koppel’s fascinating article (yes, the one from the Kohelet Forum), “On the Shtreimel, Rights Talk, and the Future of Society,” written in 2017. Shortly thereafter, the article became part of Koppel’s book published in English and later translated into Hebrew under the title Live Like a Jew (here I was asked my opinion on the outlook expressed in the book). After this disclosure I’ll add that, as a rule, I highly recommend reading Koppel’s articles and books. He is a very wise man who writes and presents various ideas clearly, originally, and engagingly. In many cases I disagree with parts of what he says, but I always enjoy reading him (see about him and some disagreements between us in column 480). In that column I explained that what chiefly characterizes his view is pragmatism (apparently an American influence), and this is the root of my disagreement with several of his positions. The article I mentioned here also came up in that column, and it also touches on Jonathan Haidt’s distinctions that were discussed here not long ago (in column 595). So I thought this was a good time to address it. You’ll see that here, too, the disagreement between us revolves around the question of pragmatism.

Before I begin, I feel obliged to point you to a similar article that appeared on the same platform (Hashiloach), “Imagine: On John Lennon and Love,” by Ze’ev Maghen. That piece, too, is wonderfully written and heads in almost the same direction as Koppel’s (praising particularism and opposing universalism), even if it doesn’t deal with the religious plane. I strongly recommend reading it as well. Both articles are long, but for me reading them was truly a delight.

The Form of the Discussion: Pragmatism

There are two principles that Koppel’s article sets out to argue for: conservatism and particularism. The connection between them is not self-evident, but as a matter of fact one can see that, at least on the ground, they go together (therefore from here on I will not separate them; in describing Koppel’s arguments I will point out and comment on this connection).

I have dealt with the question of conservatism more than once in the past (see, for example, columns 217, 249, 263, and more), and there are also several other articles that addressed it in a similar way (see, for example, the discussion by Baruch Kahana and Ronen Ben David and the article by Eliezer Malchiel written in response to Rabbi Chaim Navon’s article). I have also touched on the question of particularism in the past (see column 188). Here I will focus on the method of argument and justification rather than the ideas themselves, which will lead us to my disagreement with Koppel over the pragmatism mentioned above (and in column 480. On pragmatism see also column 588). These are different planes of discussion, since conservatism and particularism are principles and ways of relating to reality and to life, whereas pragmatism deals with the form of justification and discussion regarding these principles and others.

Already here I must note that in the two articles cited above, the critique of conservatism is characterized by the same form of discussion that characterizes Koppel’s article that argues in its favor: pragmatism. Koppel argues for conservatism, and his justifications are pragmatist in nature (what benefits it brings and what harms there are in liberalism and innovation). They indeed point to the shortcomings of conservatism, but they too discuss it in terms of its outcomes—in other words, they also focus on the pragmatic plane and do not discuss it in itself.

Both conservatism and particularism require a substantive discussion as well: are they true or not? Only afterward can one comment on the consequential meanings of these approaches. And yet, these discussions usually take place only on the pragmatic plane and thereby miss an essential part of the matter. Moreover, even if one deals with pragmatics—that is, with a consequential examination—this can be done only after we have decided what results we actually want. In many cases the writers have hidden assumptions about which outcomes are desirable, but they don’t put them on the table. In Koppel’s case, I will point out this issue as well. To conclude this introduction, I’ll just add that in column 188 I also addressed the question of particularism versus universalism on a plane that could ostensibly be seen as consequentialist. Below I will explain when and where this has a place.

Heidi and Shimen: Pleased to Meet You

In the article and then in the book, Koppel contrasts Heidi, a young American progressive student with a universalist worldview (and later her daughter, Amber), with Shimen (Shimon in Yiddish) from a Gur shtibel, who of course holds a particularist and conservative position. The article is long but wonderfully written, and here I can only summarize its main points.

Heidi is a typical young American Jew whose takeaways from the Holocaust and from her Judaism are nothing but a collection of universalist, progressive values—no more. We know many such people in our parts as well: those who talk about “their Judaism,” and that the religious or the Haredim don’t have a monopoly, etc., etc. But when they try to explain what that “Judaism” of theirs is, you get a list of politically correct, progressive, universalist values found among any non-Jew on earth: equality, LGBTQ, rights, universalism—and oh yes, climate and environment, and if they have the energy then veganism, too. Go to any pluralistic beit midrash and you’ll find dozens of such clones. But who am I to wonder what any of this (even if I accept all these values) has to do with Judaism?! Who gave me a monopoly on Judaism?!

Shimen, by contrast, is a typical man from a Gur shtibel in America (where Elie Wiesel also prayed) after the Holocaust. He no longer has peyot, beard, and shtreimel, and it’s doubtful he even believes in God (he probably never thought seriously about it), yet he still sociologically affiliates with Gur Hasidism. Although he’s not truly a Gur Hasid, he feels an obligation (sometimes unconscious) to continue the tradition of his forebears who were annihilated in the Holocaust. Therefore, as Koppel writes, he also grants himself not a few indulgences and does not strictly observe every detail. He is stricter about customs and sometimes about dress (except for what he doesn’t feel like, such as beard and shtreimel) than about halakhah, as we all know. In a certain sense, this is a living memorial to a Judaism most of which was annihilated.

Koppel concludes his description of the “Shimens” with the following passage:

The guys from the Gur shtibel were energetic. They were quick-tempered. They were sometimes funny in a prickly sort of way. They were devoted. But there was one thing for which they had not a drop of patience: they loathed pompous moralism. Their devotion to Judaism was a way of life, and their devotion to Am Yisrael was as natural to them as breathing.

I’ll just note that I shortened the arc here. In fact, Heidi is still a Jew at least in terms of consciousness. She is liberal but not yet fully progressive. Her daughter, Amber, already criticizes her for even that. For Amber, Judaism has no meaning whatsoever, and her mother’s liberalism has turned into the progressive religion we know today. I don’t see a substantive difference between Heidi and Amber (it is a sociological rather than a content difference), so for convenience I group them both under “Heidi.”

On Old and New Conservatism and Traditionalism

In the following lines Koppel moves to himself:

For reasons not entirely clear to me, I, too, see the world that way to this very day. My instinctive judgment regarding most things is their judgment. My views are hopelessly old-fashioned and I’m proud of it. Strange: I see myself as a former Gur Hasid without ever having been a Gur Hasid.

I should note that the description in the last paragraph is not a bad description of today’s Israeli conservative (which I discussed in the above columns). Many of them have ultra-modern formulations and broad education, familiarity with modern literature and thought—all that characterizes the liberal progressive. In my opinion, many of them even tend deep down toward liberal-progressive thinking and values, but are in dissonance with the implications of progressivism and its war against religious tradition. These new conservatives use all the modern tools I mentioned to defend the conservatism of various “former Gur Hasidim,” which to my mind is as far from most of them as east is from west. Therefore it usually sounds artificial to me, in contrast to the naturalness of Shimen as so beautifully described above.

Shimen is essentially an Ashkenazi traditionalist, and his figure is very similar to the Mizrahi traditionalist familiar to us here in Israel. Like them, he does not devote an ounce of energy to forming a worldview, to discussions about conservatism and defending it, or to philosophy in general. He scorns critiques; they amuse him (and sometimes annoy him). I’ll recall that in column 480 I noted that Koppel, for example, is wary of philosophy. He says it bores him and is irrelevant from his perspective, and that is exactly like Shimen. But unlike Shimen, I should say that Koppel does this from a not insignificant familiarity with it. So, too, Koppel himself writes in the paragraph concluding his introduction:

Since I assume that my readers, whatever their religious feelings, spend, like me, a considerable portion of their time in Heidi’s world, my arguments will come mainly from that neighborhood: from the classic and contemporary literature of the social sciences, including anthropology and cultural evolution, moral psychology and repeated games, and signaling theory in economics.

It is evident that he, too, understands that Shimen-types don’t bother writing such articles or reading them.

This is of course not an accusation. I am the last person to object to using general thought to defend tradition and conservatism as well. But I must say that, unlike Shimen—who is also very authentic in my eyes (I knew not a few such Shimens in our synagogue in my childhood in Haifa)—the new conservatism usually arouses in me a sense of artificiality. My sense is that many of these writers are also waging a battle with their own natural tendencies that nest within them as fruit of the modern (and progressive) world, not only with the ideology of their opponents.

We have to understand that one of the main features of progressivism is its orthodoxy (Koppel notes this at the beginning of the article. He writes that in meeting Heidi he encountered orthodoxy for the first time). Awareness, ideologies, formulations, conceptualizations and definitions, demarcations—who is with us and who is against us, who believes and who is a heretic, sons of light and sons of darkness, and the like—these are all features of orthodoxy. Political correctness is rooted in ideological awareness and an excessive preoccupation with well-formulated definitions (though in many cases they are circular and empty of real content). At least in this sense, the new conservatism is flesh of the flesh of modernity (not in the sense opposed to postmodernity), since it too is formulated and reflective and also develops an ideology. In the columns mentioned above I recalled that Shalem Center and the Kohelet Forum were established to provide an ideological and theoretical basis for conservatism—something that did not exist until a few years ago.

Incidentally, this very much reminds me of Meir Buzaglo’s project regarding the new traditionalism (which was also undertaken by an academic, a philosopher, deeply aware of ideology and dealing in arguments). There, too, there is a gap between the defender and the traditionalists whom he defends and purports to voice. Again, engaging in formulations and justifications is certainly not objectionable in my eyes. On the contrary, it is welcome and worthy of appreciation. I am only pointing out the lack of resemblance to original conservatism and therefore also a sense of a certain lack of authenticity. It is inauthenticity in the sense of conformity with the inner and natural mode of thinking. But of course a person has the right, and perhaps even the duty, to reject what arises in him naturally and to adopt something else “artificially.” Unlike old-style traditionalism and conservatism that proceed in a natural way, there is, in my view, nothing sacred in what happens to be natural to us. Therefore it is important for me to say that this is not criticism but merely a psychological observation.

A Note on Conservatism and Particularism

So far particularism has not yet explicitly come up. But it is clear that Heidi is a universalist and Shimen is particularist. She cares about the entire universe and his wife (including flora and inanimate nature), whereas he is primarily committed to Jews—and everyone else can jump in a lake. And unlike Koppel and Rabbi Chaim Navon, he of course feels no need to apologize for that. Koppel describes it thus:

Heidi, the very cosmopolitan one from Princeton, and the thousands of Heidis and Heidis-male I have met since, see the old Shimens as rusty-brained antiques detached from the spirit of the times. First, Shimen’s old-fashioned opinions are based not on the equality of all human beings but on what Heidi sees as an immoral preference for the good of the Jews over the good of all others. Second, Shimen is committed to social norms mediated by rabbis and therefore, in Heidi’s eyes, they do not sufficiently respect individual autonomy. Third, Shimen’s worldview is anchored in a system of beliefs that, in Heidi’s view, are ahistorical and unscientific.

Here the connection between conservatism and particularism appears. It is hard to deny that our tradition is particularist. Universalist interpretations of Judaism are not really convincing (see the entry “My Judaism is…,” in Heidi’s style). For this reason alone, conservatives are usually particularists, and universalists are not conservatives. Note that there is no essential connection between these two ideas. The connection arises from the nature of ancient, original Judaism. Since it was particularist, conservatives who continue it are particularists. That’s all.

Now Koppel defines his goal in the article:

This essay will be an apologia for Shimen’s in-your-face conservative worldview—well, for my in-your-face conservative worldview—against Heidi’s views. I fear, actually, that it will be less an apologia and more an indictment of progressive moral preening. My main claim will not be that the cosmopolitan critique of conservative Judaism misinterprets Judaism (though that is the case), but rather that this critique is rooted in Heidi’s inability to grasp the full minimal range of morality necessary for a society’s existence and vitality.

Note that here the distinction also arises between substantive justifications (whether this is a correct interpretation of Judaism) and pragmatic justifications (what will bring about a society’s existence and vitality), on which he will focus. I’ll just point out that with regard to the Heidis of the world there is obviously nothing to discuss about whether they interpret Judaism correctly. What they propose is not an interpretation of Judaism in any way. So there indeed is no room for substantive arguments, and one may focus on the pragmatic plane. But in his discussion Koppel also needs pragmatic justification for details of halakhah, and I will comment on that below.

The Differences Between Shimen and Heidi: Who Is the Orthodox One?

Koppel continues immediately in the next paragraph and writes:

In short, between Heidi from Princeton and Shimen from Auschwitz, one is narrow-minded and orthodox and the other is realistic and grounded. Which is which? In this essay I will argue that the truth is the reverse of what most people mistakenly think.

One can see a sharp expression of this dilemma in the following cartoon (brought there):

He then lists three main differences between Shimen and Heidi:

The first difference concerns the scope of morality. Heidi is very sensitive to unfair behavior toward people and, in general, to causing others discomfort. In fact, as far as she is concerned, the question of harm is the main moral litmus test: no harm—no problem. By contrast, Shimen (I’ll speak of him in the present tense, though he has long since passed away) lives in a world saturated with moral rules. Your food, your clothing, your bed—all are laden with moral considerations, whether another person is adversely affected or not. Moreover, Shimen feels a moral obligation to particularist loyalty to the Jewish people, to reverence for its sages and elders, and to respect toward the institutions and objects that his tradition sanctifies—even if this comes at the expense of loyalty to other people and respect for other things.

The second difference between Heidi and Shimen concerns the mechanisms by which communities determine and enforce the boundaries between obligation, permission, and prohibition. For Heidi, the relevant community includes the citizens of the state; the mechanism for defining the dos and don’ts is legislation; and the enforcement system is litigation. For Shimen, the relevant community includes those who are committed to halakhah; the mechanism is the community’s tradition and practice, partly backed by a written code and decided according to the rulings of posekim; and the means of enforcement is social pressure. In short, Shimen lives mainly in a world of social norms that grow from the bottom up, whereas Heidi lives mainly in a world of laws that descend from the top down.

The third difference relates to the relationship between beliefs about the world and social and moral commitments. Heidi seeks to determine truth by studying science and history and to base her commitments on those truths as much as possible. For Shimen, by contrast, social and moral commitments are central, and his most important beliefs about the world—his religious beliefs—are derived from these commitments.

Koppel writes that in this article he deals only with the first difference (the book deals with all three), but I want you to keep all of them in view. For example, in the third difference he describes Shimen as someone whose religious beliefs are derived from social and moral commitments. This is a clearly pragmatic faith (roughly like the faith underlying Pascal’s wager). Contrary to what he casually noted above, it seems here that the substantive discussion (whether this is a correct interpretation of Judaism) is secondary and is subservient to the pragmatic discussion (moral and survival-related). Essentially he is speaking of observing commandments in order to sustain the Jewish people and help Jews, not because that’s what one ought to do. This tone runs like a thread throughout the article, and this is my main point of disagreement with him. In my view, observing commandments out of such pragmatic motivation is religiously valueless (see Maimonides at the end of Laws of Kings, and more extensively in column 71). In other words, in my opinion, one who keeps commandments from such a motivation—and I do not deny that there are not a few such people—does not join a quorum. He also does not truly believe in God or worship Him (since for him God and Torah are instruments of survival and of commitment to society and to the people). As I explained in the columns cited above (480 and 588), this is the main pathology of pragmatic justification: it subjugates what is (truth) to what ought to be (the desired outcome).

The second difference is less important for my discussion. On this I will only note that Judaism lived most of its days in exile, and halakhah was certainly formed mostly there. Does that tell us something about Judaism in a situation where there is a state, legislation, and enforcement, etc.? Doubtful. But this is a discussion more relevant to Judaism in Israel. Needless to say, Heidi does not deal with the law of the king in halakhah or with the powers of the Sanhedrin, nor even with the meaning and status of a Jewish state, but with obedience to the laws of any democratic state, even a gentile one (such as the U.S.).

But, as stated, our concern here is the first difference, regarding the scope of morality. The term “scope” here includes two components: scope in the sense of which people are included in this obligation, and scope in the sense of which kinds of actions are included. Heidi sees before her all people in the world, and in that sense her view is broader than Shimen’s. But the actions relevant to the discussion for her are only those that harm or help others (namely, only morality). In that sense, her view is narrower than Shimen’s. Shimen sees mainly Jews before him, and here his view is narrower than Heidi’s. But the types of actions included in his “moral” obligations include everything under the sun, even actions a person does in his own home (food, clothing, bed, and the like), even if they do not touch anyone else. In that sense, his view is broader.

Conceptual and Practical Notes Regarding Morality

I’ll note something about terminology. Koppel uses the term “morality” in a broader sense than usual (he apparently identifies “morality” with “values”). The terminology I prefer is that the obligations of Heidi are moral obligations (moral values), and the obligations that Shimen adds are religious obligations (religious values). Although this is ostensibly mere semantics, it is hard for me to accept that not eating pork or wearing tzitzit are moral obligations. One can perhaps say that the moral obligations in Shimen’s world can collide with Heidi’s morality. He has other obligations, religious in nature, which have nothing to do with Heidi. She does not believe in them but usually does not oppose them either (unless some collision arises between them and moral obligations).

I’ll recall that, as I have written several times, in my view the morality of Judaism does not differ in any way from universal morality. By definition, morality addresses every human being as such. The differences between Jew and gentile or between Judaism and other outlooks lie only in the religious plane (in religious values). True, halakhah is particularist—that is, it sees the good of Jews as prior to the good of gentiles—and in that sense there is a moral difference between Shimen and Heidi. But I don’t think that is what characterizes halakhah. As I explained in column 188, every person first relates to his circles of closeness—family, community, or state—before he relates to people from foreign circles, and rightly so. In this regard there is no difference between a normal Jew and a normal gentile (this includes Heidi, too; she will also care for her family before she cares for others). But in Heidi’s eyes, a people or a religion is not a relevant circle of closeness. This difference between Heidi and Shimen is not really a moral difference but primarily an onto-psychological difference with moral implications.

This is the place for another note on Koppel’s description. Scattered throughout the article are sentences assuming that Shimen has basic fairness toward every creature made in the image of God. He indeed prefers the Jew over the gentile, but as we have seen, that is natural if he assumes that this is a relevant circle. He will not harm a gentile needlessly and will behave toward him fairly. Therefore Koppel rejects Heidi’s suspicion regarding Shimen’s fairness.

Above I wrote that, in the moral plane, there is no difference between a halakhic Jew and a gentile or a universalist Jew. If so, why do progressives so despise conservative particularists? Ostensibly because, in the case of a collision between a moral value and a religious value, or between a moral obligation toward a gentile and one toward a Jew, they will prefer the Jew and the religious value. For the universalist, morality will always prevail, and thus he appears to himself more moral and more just. The first aspect is flawed, because even the great universalist behaves differently toward his relatives and community. As noted, the dispute is only about which circle counts as relevant closeness (whether a people or a religion are such circles). The second aspect seems correct, and yet I explained in the past that this does not mean Shimen is indifferent to morality. He has more values than Heidi (since he has religious values as well), and thus inevitably he finds himself in more situations where he is compelled to act against moral rules. This is not wickedness or indifference to morality but a commitment to additional values.

This is indeed how Koppel presents it. For example, he writes in the middle of the article:

Well then, there is some room for doubt. Shimen may have kiddushed over tears in Auschwitz, but he would not make kiddush over a stolen bottle of wine in Manhattan. He knows that under certain conditions one may violate a negative commandment in order to fulfill a positive commandment (“a positive commandment overrides a negative commandment,” such as wearing wool-linen tzitzit), but it would not occur to him that this principle would permit violating obligations toward other people. Shimen knows that to be a human being it’s not enough to be pious: he knows the difference between a frummer (stringent in commandments, in Yiddish) and a mensch.

And at the end of the article he writes about the revulsion progressives feel toward the Shimens:

All these despise Shimen because he insists on standing as an obstacle in the way of salvation. They all share a common interest in denying the very possibility of reconciling a particularist tradition and particularist loyalty with fairness toward others. Each group among those we mentioned holds on to part of these components, and the possibility of holding all of them together undermines its path and essentially kills its messianic salvation in principle. Those who demand religious and racial supremacy hate Shimen for clinging to his own traditions and loyalties—which are not theirs—and for proving that one can cling to a particular tradition and loyalty and still be a tolerant person. In contrast, the enlightened, the Heidis, and the Ambers are sure that fairness can be achieved only by abandoning particularist commitments. They can tolerate supremacist Muslims, or at least look at them smugly, because those Muslims do not pretend to be fair; they came here to defeat others, and they say so out loud. But Shimen—and Israel—undermine the bedrock of the enlightened worldview: they arrogantly pretend to be fair while at the same time preserving their traditions and loyalties. In the eyes of the enlightened, this is unforgivable heresy.

The description is largely correct, but there is nevertheless a sort of naïveté here. It is hard to ignore the fact that, empirically, there is greater indifference to morality in religious and Haredi society than in the general society. This is particularly true regarding attitudes toward those not belonging to that society (the state, secular people, gentiles). Such Shimens will often harm gentiles merely to gain, even if this does not stem from some religious value or from preferring Jews over gentiles. I agree that, theoretically, it ought not be so; empirically, however, in many cases this is exactly the situation. Especially if one interprets the commandments of the Torah as a Jewish morality different from universal morality (and that is the common interpretation). From this arises a lack of commitment to universal morality, and that is certainly an opening to deviations from moral values not found in halakhah.

Therefore, despite Koppel’s theoretically correct description, in my opinion there is a real basis for the Heidis’ hatred of the Shimens, if not in theory then in practice. The Heidis may exaggerate in their demand to treat a gentile like a Jew and an enemy like a friend (cf. “Gaza”), but the Shimens also sometimes exaggerate in their lack of regard for the gentile and certainly for the enemy (for example, a non-combatant enemy—again, cf. “Gaza”). One can even think of various justifications for this (how much we suffered from gentiles throughout history), but as a matter of fact this is the situation. It is very difficult to preserve among all members of the group a full level of commitment to moral values when those values constitute only part of its commitments—and not necessarily the important part for many. It is worth mentioning a few examples: charging interest to a gentile, attitudes toward the prohibition of killing a gentile, returning a lost item to a gentile (prohibited by some opinions and not merely not obligatory), attitudes toward women, taking interest from gentiles (an obligation according to some), the prohibition against desecrating Shabbat to save a gentile’s life, and more. It is no wonder that many within this camp belittle moral values and especially their application towards gentiles. In certain groups this is even part of the ideology (tax evasion, exploiting gentiles or the state, etc.). Koppel’s description of Shimen is theoretically correct, but it does not quite pass the test of reality. There is a difference between a mensch and a frummer, but this difference was conceptualized because both types exist in the Shimen-orthodox camp. In short, I claim that Heidi is not entirely detached. These are two extremes, neither of which is at the proper golden mean.

Koppel’s Argumentative Framework

The gist of Koppel’s claim against the Heidis appears in the following paragraph:

I will argue that among the human societies known to us, all those that have endured have resembled Shimen’s society more than Heidi’s, because societies need rich systems of social norms—including public rituals and ceremonies, dietary prohibitions, family law, and trade arrangements—in order to cohere and to survive. In short, I will argue that Heidi’s world is futile.

That is, Koppel relies on the claim that Heidi’s world cannot survive (its expected longevity is low).

From here on, Koppel raises various sociological and psychological arguments showing that conservative particularism is a more survivable stance than Heidi’s universalism. It doesn’t have much chance to survive. Here he also draws on Jonathan Haidt’s teaching discussed in column 595 (there, too, the term “morality” is used in a similar and imprecise way), and this is not the place to go into all of that in detail. I will bring here just one nice example he cites that expresses the “social capital” in Jewish particularism:

One evening in 1941, a boatload of refugees from Europe washed up on the shores of Mogador in Morocco, among them my father’s family. They were taken to a refugee camp; the only way out, they were told, was for local families to come and take responsibility for them. Seemingly this was only a theoretical possibility—for what acquaintances could Europeans have in a Moroccan city? By morning, not a single Jewish family remained in the camp—while not a single non-Jewish family left it.

In the course of his discussion he also offers nice explanations for several types of halakhot in sociological-survival-pragmatic terms.

In any case, for the sake of the discussion from here on I will assume he is right—that Heidi’s position is indeed futile and that only a stance like Shimen’s can survive. But now the unavoidable question is: what exactly does that mean? Why does Koppel see this as an attack on Heidi’s position (=progressivism)?

My Critique of Koppel

First, pragmatic-sociological justifications like that of social capital above (Koppel presents several such with respect to different kinds of commandments) cannot persuade the Heidis and their friends to observe commandments and accept strange restrictions on food, clothing, and intimacy. People do that only if they truly believe in the truth of all this. It is hard to believe that the residents of Belgium would accept halakhah with all its details just to survive as a society.

Second, even if the Heidis were persuaded to observe all this, it would have no religious value. Evidently, that does not interest Koppel in his discussion. Moreover, as we saw, according to his description Shimen himself does not truly believe, but rather fashions belief for the sake of his moral and social commitments. If so, Shimen’s deeds also have no real religious value. He is not very different from Heidi in principle, except that sociologically he will survive more than she will.

Third—and above all—does Heidi even care about the survival of Judaism? Why is that relevant for her? Especially if, in her view, Judaism is a system of universal beliefs, why should the survival of a chauvinistic and benighted Jewish group matter to her? On the contrary: she does not want those benighted values to continue and survive as a group (of course she does want the survival of the people, but that is not the issue here). Suppose Judaism as a group committed to halakhah disappears from the world (but the Jews remain alive)—so what? Heidi will only rejoice. That is exactly what her daughter Amber argues back at her, and rightly so. Humanity will survive, and that is what matters to her (within the bounds of column 188, where I discussed whether universalism leads to better moral outcomes. In my view, it does not. See the end of that column.)

True, in Koppel’s description Heidi herself does care about the survival of the Jewish people as a people, and therefore she is inconsistent. Thus Koppel writes at the end of the article:

The principal claim of this essay is that Heidi’s narrow moral world suffers from internal contradictions that are already bringing it to the point of collapse.

But criticism of an intermediate stage is never of much value. In Heidi’s doctrine there is indeed a contradiction, since, for some reason, Jewish survival and identity matter to her, and yet she adopts a position that does not allow that. That’s true, of course, but Heidi is only a temporary, somewhat confused inertia of ancient ideas. She is but an intermediate stage in the development of universalism. With Amber everything is already fine. Amber and her cohort in the next generation are already crystallizing fully, tossing Heidi’s contradictions into the dustbin of history and creating a consistent universalist doctrine. They certainly are not troubled by the question of whether Judaism will survive.

Incidentally, many of the people of “secular Jewish identity” (the pluralistic batei midrash in Israel) should indeed be troubled by this contradiction, since almost all of them are Heidis of this self-contradictory, intermediate sort. It is an attempt to create and preserve an identity devoid of substantive content[1] that is unlikely to survive for long. But the conclusion is not that they should become religious (since they do not believe in all this), but that they should give up their far-fetched desire to create a Jewish identity (because they don’t have one) and certainly the value they ascribe to its survival.

And perhaps one more note. We must understand that the Jewish people underwent a pathological history and therefore faced very significant survival challenges like the one described in the example above. A normal people living in its land does not disperse around the world, does not fall into captivity, and therefore does not necessarily require such cohesion to survive. The Belgian, Russian, or British peoples survive without religious matters (although the British have other oddities). It may be that if we reach the state of a normal people in its land, we will not need to adopt halakhah and Jewish norms in order to survive. Then secular Judaism (whatever that is) would also be able to survive and would not need to occupy itself with questions of survival. In such a state only the substantive discussion would remain (whether it is right to observe commandments), and the pragmatic-survival discussion (how we can survive without them) would become irrelevant—as it should be.

Two Additional Notes on Pragmatism

In many cases, debates between Haredim and religious-Zionists (or modern-Orthodox) are conducted on the pragmatic plane. The Haredim argue that the religious-modern education and society will not survive because they try to build a complex and insufficiently unequivocal conception. The rates of secularization in religious education always play an important role in these debates.

Beyond the question of whether this is true (I very much doubt it, certainly in the long run), the question is: what does it mean? I am not willing to adopt distorted conceptions—immoral and untrue—just to survive better. If the correct faith does not survive, then in my view that is God’s problem, not mine. One can compromise on particulars and forgo truth at certain points. But not to choose a path much of which—indeed its essence—is distorted. In short, the debate of Haredism versus modernity is also, in many cases, a debate of survival versus truth. It is worth noting that the new conservatives are almost all not Haredim. It seems to me that, according to their pragmatic approach, they should have considered that more seriously.

A similar dilemma in a more philosophical plane arises with respect to evolutionary explanations for morality. Many propose an explanation for our morality on evolutionary grounds, claiming that an altruistic group will survive better than an egoistic one. But here again we have pragmatism (in the moral context this is also related to the naturalistic fallacy). The fact that certain behaviors improve our ability to survive does not mean they are valid (morally correct). At most it means they make sense (for one who assumes that group survival is important). This is very similar to Koppel’s justification, and the ethical Heidis who do not assume that survival has moral value will reject it in the same way. I have often written that an evolutionary explanation can at most offer an account of the emergence of our moral sense, but it cannot confer binding force upon it. It explains why I want to help others, but it does not explain why I am obligated to help them (and why one who doesn’t help is in the wrong). Evolution is a fact, whereas binding force is a normative determination.

A Note on the Discussion in Column 188

In column 188 I discussed universalism versus particularism in the sense of scope of application. This is a purely moral discussion, since the question was: who should be my reference group—everyone in the world or the Jews? There I explained that a universalist position will lead to worse outcomes (that is, fewer lives and less good lives for more people) than a particularist position. The arguments were very similar to Koppel’s (such as social capital). If each person cares more for his immediate surroundings, the general situation will likely be better than if we demand that every person care equally for the entire universe. In such a world, it seems that all of us would be worse off.

At first glance this is a pragmatic argument exactly like the one I criticized in Koppel—but only at first glance. When the discussion is on the moral plane, a discussion about the outcomes of a moral policy is not a pragmatic discussion but a substantive one. The reason is that a moral system is assessed by the question of how much it improves the state of humanity. Therefore, to examine a moral policy one must examine its results. Although in the deontological view (that of Kant and yours truly), the moral motivation is simply the duty to act morally and not the outcome or utility, the outcome still defines the right action. The right moral action is the action that brings about the best outcome, even though the motivation to perform it should be the desire to be moral and not the desire to achieve the outcome as such. According to the naturalistic fallacy, the outcome as a fact cannot ground the moral binding force of the action.

By contrast, in Koppel we are dealing with a discussion about religious values, not morality. In this discussion, pragmatism and consequentialism are not the relevant, and certainly not the principal, planes of discussion, for the reasons I have listed above. True, if Shimen and Heidi were debating which course of action is morally preferable, it would indeed be relevant to compare the outcomes of the approaches they propose. But note that even there the outcomes we would need to discuss would be the physical survival of people (that is what matters ethically) and not the survival of groups while preserving their culture, as Koppel does. That has no moral value, certainly not when there is disagreement about the proper culture. As noted, Heidi—or at least Amber—is not much interested in the survival of halakhic Judaism, even if she wants the survival of Jews (that is, the continued lives of people).

[1] I won’t go into an explanation of this here. See my article here and columns 130, 336 – 339, 425, and more.