Questions
Good week Rabbi, a few questions:
1) When we perform a good deed but outside of the halakhic law, such as being nice or humble, we are indeed performing a good deed but not a halakhic act that has religious value. What is the real difference between them? Both are good deeds, for both I will receive a reward, and for both I am fulfilling the will of God!
2) I don’t see the difference between when God says “I want you to do this” and “Do this.” Actually, “I want you to do this” = “Do this,” but in a more subtle way. As God’s servants, we are obligated to fulfill all of His desires, whether He expressed them or not.
3) You write over and over again that the source of our validity and obligation is the command (in Sinai), or in this formulation: The basic norm of the Israeli legal system (for example) is the obligation to obey it. But I didn’t understand, that’s the question itself, who said that the command in Sinai has validity, or in other words, the basic norm should be the justification for our obeying the system, and not the fact that we have to obey it!?!?
4) A: In the third book, page 89, you write, “The question of how the Torah commands immoral commandments is answered: it has additional goals beyond morality, such as religious goals.” But I didn’t understand the question itself, how can religious goals be anti-moral? You also wrote, for example, that the story of the beautiful woman does not teach about the Torah’s attitude towards the moral aspect because it does not deal with it at all; but again, the question itself is that the Torah should have dealt with the moral aspect since God is moral!
B: And specifically regarding a non-moral halakhic obligation, first of all I still don’t understand how it is possible that a moral Torah commands something like this, and secondly you wrote that when there is a conflict between halakhic law and morality, one usually decides in favor of halakhic law because God, who already knows what is moral and still commands halakhic law to the contrary, certainly has a good reason and therefore must be listened to. But there is a problem here, God (meaning his halakhic command) cannot itself tell me to obey halakhic law more than morality, as if it were not a fare, halakhic law itself cannot tell me to obey it more than morality when there is a conflict between it and morality.
4) What does lip service mean? ?
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1-2. I understand, thank you
3. So the basic norm for any normative system is "you must obey the system", right?
4. B. There is a difficult problem here. The Torah says a law (that a priest's wife who was raped should separate from her husband, for example) that opposes morality, and you write that since the Torah said so, then one should listen to it. But that is precisely the problem, that the Torah says A and morality says B. It is like in the chocolate dilemma of health versus deliciousness, there is a conflict here and I, as something external, have to decide, I cannot decide because health tells me "decide for me," and likewise in the dilemma of law versus morality I cannot decide because the law tells me "decide for me." In short, the decisive factor in the dilemma between x and y must be external to x and y. For example, the law says that it is forbidden to save a Gentile at the cost of desecrating the Sabbath. So here too there is a conflict between morality and law. But according to what you write, again there is no conflict at all, because one could say that the Torah says that the importance of keeping the Sabbath outweighs the rules of morality. But this can be said about any conflict, and it turns out that there is again a conflict between halakha and morality. Because halakha will always say that it prevails over morality, and vice versa, morality will always say that it prevails over halakha. This is the conflict itself, and the one who must decide on it must be external.
Very true, and I even wrote this. So what's the problem? The decision is indeed made outside of both systems.
Not exactly. It would be worthwhile to introduce content into the obligation to obey: one must obey the law because it is a divine command. One must obey the laws of the state because every citizen is a partner in determining them and has signed an implicit contract to uphold them. And so on.
The problem is that it is not done outside of both systems because it is the Torah that decided, that is, the Halacha (which is one of the two systems), meaning the Torah wrote, "There is a Halacha that a priest's wife who is raped should separate from her husband."
1. Not true. You identify Torah with Halacha, but Torah is the whole of God's word (including “You shall do what is right and good”, and every book of Genesis – see Rashi I and more).
2. The decisive factor is you, not the Torah or the Halacha. Where the conflict is substantial and not accidental, the calculation shows you that God's will is that Halacha prevail.
For example, when the Torah writes to prohibit a bastard, it always involves a moral problem. If morality prevailed here, there would be no reason to prohibit a bastard (this is the case with a substantial conflict), and therefore it is clear that Halacha prevails here (except in cases of a sin per se).
You wrote the first (halakhah) as obligatory and the second (moral behavior) as merely expected of us. What does that mean? It is merely expected of us, isn't it obligatory? The fact that God created us with a tendency toward moral behavior is not actually a call and a divine command to act well and honestly?
Morality is not a command, but an expectation. But still, since it is expected of us, there is a (moral) obligation to do so.
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