Parashat Toledot (5760)

With God's help, eve of the holy Sabbath, Parashat Toledot, 5760

Two Criteria for Moral Evaluation

At the beginning of the parashah, Rebecca’s suffering during her pregnancy with Jacob and Esau is described: “The children struggled

within her, and she said, ‘If so, why am I thus?’” Therefore she decides to ask the meaning of the matter: “And she went

to inquire of the Lord” (Genesis 25:22; and Rashi explains that she went to the study hall of Shem and Ever to receive an explanation from God).

The answer Rebecca receives appears as though it is unrelated to the question, and apparently does nothing to bring

relief to her suffering: “Two nations are in your womb, and two peoples shall separate from within you…” (Genesis 25:23).

Some commentators fastened upon this difficulty in the verses and explained the matter as follows. What troubled Rebecca

was not only the pains of pregnancy, but an internal contradiction in the behavior of the fetus in her womb. Rashi on

the first verse we cited explains that when Rebecca would pass by idol temples, Esau would

try to emerge, and when she would pass by study halls, Jacob would try to emerge. Rebecca, who

did not know that there were two fetuses in her womb, did not understand this internal contradiction: what did that fetus want,

idolatry or a study hall? Rebecca says to herself: if I have such a fetus, then “why am I thus?”

For what purpose am I suffering the pains of pregnancy? In light of the answer she receives, she understands that two

fetuses are in her womb, and then she calms down. She does not have one confused fetus, but two, each of whom knows

exactly what his path in life is. One wants to practice idolatry, and the other wants to study Torah and serve

the Lord. From the verses one can hear her sigh of relief: for this it is certainly worthwhile

to endure the suffering of pregnancy.

We must now ask ourselves why this message truly calmed Rebecca. Are two sons,

one of whom practices idolatry and the other serves the Lord, really a more encouraging situation than one

confused son? Surprisingly, the answer that emerges from the verses is: indeed yes. It is preferable to have two

people who choose, even if one chooses evil, than one who does not choose at all but is dragged each time after

his surroundings: when they pass by study halls he is ‘righteous,’ and when they pass by idol temples

he is wicked. A person who is influenced by his environment and has no path of his own

is worse than a situation involving two people, each of whom follows a clear path, even if one of them is wicked.

With Elijah the prophet at Mount Carmel we find an even more extreme statement. From Rebecca we do not learn

that decisive evil is preferable to confusion, but only that the overall moral sum of decisive evil and decisive good is preferable to one

confused individual. Elijah the prophet turns to the worshipers of Baal at Mount Carmel and says to them: “How long

will you keep wavering between two opinions? If the Lord is God, follow Him; and if Baal, follow him” (I Kings 18:21).

Here the statement is even more extreme: it is preferable to worship Baal than to continue in indecision

and be dragged in both directions.

This determination seems, at first glance, illogical. Why is it preferable to be wicked rather than to remain in a state of

‘intermediate status’?[1] In my remarks for Shabbat Shuvah I noted this briefly,

and said that because of the centrality of the power of choice as an essential characteristic of the human being, failure to use

the power of choice is worse than misusing

that power.

There is a story I once heard from Rabbi Amnon Yitzhak about a community rabbi who rose early in the morning and slaughtered a sheep,

covered it with a prayer shawl, placed it on the road, and began to lament bitterly: “A righteous man has died. The righteous man has left

us; how great is our calamity,” etc. The residents of that town began to rise from their beds and saw the

rabbi lamenting the righteous man who had died; immediately they all joined him and began to weep as they walked

to the cemetery. When they lowered the body of the ‘righteous man’ into the grave, everyone saw that it was a sheep.

The anger at the rabbi was, of course, great. The rabbi answered that he was merely adopting their own statements. When

he would rebuke them for their behavior, they would claim that they were righteous, since they did not rob,

did not harm, and did not trouble anyone. If that is the criterion, said the rabbi, this sheep is a greater righteous man

than all of you: it does not murder, does not steal, and does not even speak slander about anyone. Find

the mistake!

Even so, one cannot ignore the fact that these things still raise questions. As an extreme example,

the Nazis seemingly used their power of choice in the direction of evil. Are they better

than those who neither harm nor help anyone? There is a clear intuition that they are not.

It seems that the matter depends on two ways of evaluating a person’s actions. A good action is evaluated

according to the effort required to perform it, and according to its consequences (the benefit it brings). When a person

does good for another where that is his role, or where it is obvious that the matter costs him no effort

or investment, this is not valued as highly as benefiting another in a way that involves great effort and is done voluntarily. On the other hand,

it is clear that evaluation of an act by its results is not impressed by the investment involved in doing it. If

a person has done much good for another, that should be valued more than a person who has done little good (even if

the same effort was required of both).

There is an ongoing dispute among moral philosophers whether to define ‘good’ by the utility it brings

or by the intention that accompanies the act. It seems that both components are important for evaluating

the moral act. The precise weighting of these two criteria in moral evaluation does not concern us

at present. It is clear that in the Nazi context, the weight of the results in moral evaluation is enormous, and not only

that. It is also clear that their very choice arouses horror, and not only its results. Simple intuition

indicates that the choice of such people is incomparably worse than the complete absence of choice. This is connected

to the above question regarding the weighting of the two criteria. This is a very complex issue, and this is not

the place for it.

In my remarks on Parashat Noach I wrote that there is a difference between religious morality and secular morality. Secular

morality deals only with the relationship and obligation between one person and another, whereas religious morality, by contrast, also deals

with actions that concern only the person himself. In this context we may perhaps see a symptom of another difference.

Religious morality places greater emphasis on the act than on its results.[2] The choice of a given action

characterizes the manner of doing it (choice rather than drift). The results, of course, do not depend

on the manner of doing. Therefore, from the standpoint of the manner of doing, the chooser is indeed preferable to one who does not choose; but

from the standpoint of the results, it is clear that the act is measured in light of the benefit it brings.

This is a significant characteristic of the Jewish legal approach in general. Jewish law attributes very great importance

to processes, beyond results, something found less in systems of civil law. To give only one example,

out of many: when a person performs some prohibited labor on Shabbat through a non-Jew, or when he

does it in an unusual manner, the prohibition is only rabbinic (and not by Torah law). A secular person observing

this phenomenon generally feels that religious people are ‘trying to outwit the Holy One, blessed be He’: if it is forbidden to turn on a light on Shabbat,

why is turning it on with the left hand (= in an unusual manner), or asking a non-Jew to do it, permitted? After all, the light is now on,

and it was turned on on Shabbat.

Also in the affair of the ‘Mishchan,’ long may it live, which was transported on Shabbat and aroused great controversy, one could hear

similar claims, such as: what does it help religious people if the Mishchan is transported on Shabbat by non-Jews? After all,

it is being transported on Shabbat. Once again they are ‘trying to outwit the Holy One, blessed be He’ (or themselves).

This is a symptom of the difference in approach noted above. Jewish law prohibits the act of turning on a light,

not the state of the light’s being on. The Torah is not troubled by there being a light on during Shabbat, but only that a Jew

turn it on in certain ways. The Samaritans, as described in the Talmud, also understood that on Shabbat one must

sit in darkness (from the verse, “You shall not kindle fire in all your dwellings” [Exodus 35:3]). They too did not understand that the prohibition

is on the act of kindling the fire, and not on the result that the fire be burning; and, as stated, this error

recurs in many contexts even today. This stems from a conception according to which the process, or the manner of performing

the action, has no significance whatsoever, and only the result does.

In Torah study as well there is a level of study for the sake of study itself (“for its own sake”), and this is the most highly valued

form of study. This is, of course, a criterion connected to the manner of doing. There is also study in order to know the

laws, which is obviously study for the sake of a result, and therein lies its value. There is study that involves effort, again

an evaluation according to the manner of doing, and there is purposive study that achieves maximum knowledge and understanding (an evaluation

according to results).

It is worth noting that in the sphere of morality, contemporary secular philosophical thought also tends to evaluate

actions in this way. It is increasingly understood that the process and the manner of performing the action are important, from the

moral point of view, no less than the result. One must now draw the conclusions with respect to other areas of thought

and activity as well, and understand that when it comes to evaluating acts on the moral-value plane, one

must pay attention also to the manner of performing the action and not only to the result.[3]

Also at the point with which we opened the discussion—the emphasis on the importance of human autonomy, on his being

the chooser of his path and his actions—there has been a dramatic development in the modern world. The central value, and perhaps

the only one, in the modern Western world, beyond the prohibition against harming another and the obligation to help him

(interpersonal morality), is ‘self-expression’ or ‘self-realization.’ In the Torah this is

no less important, although it is sometimes ignored. It may be that the dominance of this value

in the surrounding world is a tool in the hands of the Holy One, blessed be He, to signal to the religious Jew, who sometimes tends to ignore

the importance of autonomy, and to return him to the desired state.

Rebecca our matriarch and Elijah the prophet teach us that in certain respects it is preferable to follow Baal

out of autonomous decision than to be dragged after those who walk in the path of the Lord; or alternatively, that it is preferable

(from a certain perspective only, of course) to have a son who chooses evil than one who does not choose at all.

Have a peaceful Sabbath

This may be placed with texts designated for respectful disposal in any synagogue or religious academy. Comments are welcome.

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[1] The term ‘intermediate’ is borrowed from the classification of people as righteous, intermediate, and wicked, which appears in the Talmud

and in Maimonides’ Hilkhot Teshuvah. Admittedly, an ‘intermediate’ in its usual sense is a person who has not yet overcome

his evil inclination, and sometimes stumbles into sin. Here we are dealing with a different kind of ‘intermediate’: a person

whose direction is unclear. That is, he does not fail in his deeds; rather, he has simply not chosen his values at all.

When one tries to sharpen this distinction, one can see that it is not entirely clear-cut, and this is not

the place for that.

[2] Since Kant, such a tendency has existed among secular thinkers dealing with moral philosophy as well,

and see below.

[3] It is possible that there is here an implication of the earlier difference to which I pointed between religious and secular morality.

A secular person understands that even if it is forbidden on Shabbat to kindle fire or light, this is not a prohibition of the moral kind,

for it does not concern any other person (another human being), and therefore he is likewise not inclined to evaluate

it in terms of process but only in terms of result. If we note that in the Jewish legal-religious conception

Shabbat prohibitions are of no less normative significance than harming another person, we will better understand

that there too the manner of doing has relevant significance and not only the result.

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