The Podcast with Daniel Doshi
Hello Rabbi, I heard you say during the podcast that if you had an extremely radical act like killing someone that the Torah expects of you – you might not do it, because your faith in G-d is not absolute either.
This is paradoxical according to your position that a commitment to morality is only possible if we assume that there is a God who gives them validity.
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Would you act morally even if morality is not valid?
It is interesting in relation to a person who noted that he is cold and acts rationally, that is why the rabbi does not have experiences of faith. But does the rabbi have experiences of morality?
I of course do not intend to tease the rabbi (I enjoy the cynicism a little).
And in any case it bothers me a little that there seems to be more room for moral emotion than for religious emotion.
I wrote this as a possibility, because in a world without God, Noah would be completely different, and so would I and my feelings, so it's hard to discuss from my current perspective. I'm not even sure that a world without God isn't an oxymoron.
Beyond that, who talked about a moral emotion or experience? And do you think I don't have pleasures? Like just eating something delicious and the like?
And finally, what's the problem with me having a moral emotion and not a religious emotion? Each person has their own mental structure. You of course assume that there is value in religious emotion and therefore make a cynical comment, but that's your assumption. And in general, this is not a question of why there is more space. The question is factual: what is in me and what is not.
According to the fact that faith is more about morality than about Torah – If you come across something from the Torah that goes against morality, you are not supposed to do it
Like the example you give elsewhere – divorcing a priest's wife who was raped. In that case, you would not divorce her or cast her out because it is immoral and the law is looser…
Yossi, that was exactly the question, that he said on the podcast that he might not do an extreme Halacha act.
Beyond the fact that I did say this, the logic is incorrect. Even if my relationship to morality is more serious and trustworthy, it really doesn't mean that it will overcome halacha. If I am convinced that this is what halacha says, then it strives for religious value, and it also says that this must be done even at the cost of harming moral value. In such a situation, I will uphold halacha despite the harm to morality, regardless of the relationship between my levels of trust in both. Therefore, the degree of trust I have in both sides does not determine which of them will prevail.
Why not? Isn't that a contradiction?
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