Is Morality in the Gut or in the Head, and Why Does It Matter? (Column 86)
With God’s help
In the previous column I concluded by noting that very often our moral values are slogans absorbed from the environment, and we do not subject them to logical criticism before using them. Things seem immoral to us, full stop, without thinking again whether this is indeed so. At first glance, this is only to be expected in light of the somewhat arbitrary and subjective character of moral reasoning. In this column I want to argue that this is not the case. Despite the vagueness and the difficulty, there is room for logical and rational criticism of moral values and moral conceptions, and it is very important to be careful not to adopt slogans automatically as binding values.
The example of gender segregation: a preliminary analysis
A good example of this may be seen in a question I was asked in recent days regarding gender segregation in universities. The questioner took it for granted that of course we would all agree that separate cities for women and men, or for blacks and whites, are bad. And I (as did Moshe in his brief response there) wondered why this was so obvious to him. In my eyes there is nothing wrong with it, so long as it is done with the agreement of all the parties involved. I would not live in such a city, and it seems absurd and foolish to me, but there is no moral problem here so long as it does not involve coercing anyone. The same goes, of course, for slogans about “the exclusion of women,” even when the women themselves want it and agree to it (as in the Haredi world), or when they do not agree but are imposed on people who are not interested in hearing them (as in military ceremonies). Try talking to fanatics who think with their gut.
I do not mean to argue that moral values can be logically derived from facts or from clear premises. I am aware that this is a complex process of formation, and that usually one cannot present an argument for one value or another. Moreover, I have already written several times in the past (following Leibowitz) that a value cannot be justified, because moral justification by its very nature relies on our values. Values are the axioms of ethical argument, and therefore by definition they themselves cannot be rationalized within ethics.
And yet, reliance on intuition (moral or otherwise) does not mean absence of thought and inability to criticize. Thus, for example, if I stop and think again about the value of gender segregation, and arrive at the conclusion that despite all that is said around me there is actually nothing intrinsically wrong with it, then my initial intuition has turned out to be mistaken. True, even now I cannot explain in a logical and orderly fashion why I believe specifically in such a view, since this too is still a moral intuition (namely, that if no one is harmed and all involved agree, there is no reason to see this as wrongful—exactly as people argue regarding homosexuality), but in this process I have nonetheless thought about it again and clarified for myself that my real intuition is different from what I had previously thought.
When I speak of the need to subject moral intuitions to intellectual criticism, I do not necessarily mean constructing a logical argument, but simply giving the matter a second thought. In the example of gender segregation, it seems to me that the initial intuition was implanted in us by society in the form of a slogan. We adopted without criticism slogans hurled at us morning and night, and did not notice that there is no logic in them. That we do not really think that way. Another similar example is a woman’s right over her body, which was discussed in Column 73. There too people chant an implausible moral slogan, and after enough time it seems that everyone really begins to believe it. The same is true of the examples of “the exclusion of women” already mentioned above.
In other words, even if a value judgment is the result of moral intuition, and not an empirical observation or some other objective process, it is still a cognitive process that takes shape in thought, and is subject to criticism. We must not allow the environment to dictate values to us through the unconscious and uncritical implantation of slogans.
Fictitious party registration
The example discussed in the previous column is fictitious registration in a party for which I do not vote and with whose values and platform I do not identify (to the extent that, in rare cases, such a platform exists). People keep repeating that it is immoral to register in a party whose values you do not believe in merely in order to influence it from within. In the previous column I put this slogan through the crucible of criticism and came to the conclusion that there is no real substance to this claim.
But there I nonetheless argued that this really is an immoral act. Not because of the desire to influence, which is entirely legitimate (especially since it is impossible to define sharply how many of a party’s values you need to identify with in order to count as a legitimate member), but because of the problem of double representation, that is, a failure of representation. In this respect the example of party registration is different from the previous examples, because here the slogan does have something behind it.
It seems to me that in this case people really do understand at some subconscious level that there is a problem with this phenomenon, but because they do not think about it in an orderly way and instead merely recite slogans, they all keep repeating that it is immoral to register this way, even though it is very easy to see that there is no logic in that formulation. In this case, it seems to me that they are misinterpreting their feelings. I assume that intuitively many people understand that there is a real problem here, and rightly so, but because they are not used to thinking about it systematically, or do not wish to, they cannot quite put their finger on it and define it clearly. Therefore they attribute the problem to the very phenomenon of registration without identification. The real problem emerges after more orderly analysis, when one sees that a failure of representation is thereby created.
As I mentioned, at first glance this is a different case from the previous examples. There we saw that the slogan concealed a value-vacuum behind it. People feel that there is a problem here when in truth there is nothing. By contrast, in this example there really is a problem and everyone senses it, but they do not diagnose and define it correctly. This difference is not terribly significant, since in the final analysis even in such a case the mistake and the lack of thought have practical consequences. In the previous column I tried to show that when one correctly understands the problem of fictitious registration, one rather easily finds a solution for it, whereas others run around in circles in failed attempts to deal with it. Beyond that, the analysis also makes it possible to see that the problem is much more severe when the registrants’ home party (the one for which they actually vote at the polls) is not democratic, that is, when it has no primaries. This is much harder to understand if one treats the matter as a problem of fictitious registration pure and simple. A problem of fictitious registration exists in every situation in which a member does not identify with the party he joined.
Here too, an orderly analysis of the moral intuition is important. It does not reveal a problem we had failed to notice, but it does assist us in analyzing it, applying it, and finding solutions. If one is satisfied with reciting the slogan, one may perhaps sometimes hit upon a case that is truly problematic, but that is accidental. The interpretation and the consequences are handled incorrectly and lead to mistaken conclusions. In that sense, this example resembles the previous ones.
Dealing with terrorists: castration and other animals
One of my friends (a man of the Left in the clearest sense; a veteran kibbutznik from the valley) sent me a proposal to castrate terrorists as a way of dealing with them:
| Hi Miki Following the horrifying murder in Neve Tzuf, when once again the demand is being raised for the death penalty for murderers, I recalled an idea of mine from the 1970s. Back then too there were several despicable murders by terrorists, and then it occurred to me to strike at the Arabs’ soft underbelly: masculinity! A terrorist murderer who is caught and declares that he is proud of this deed should be castrated! Back in the 1970s I had no one to whom I could propose this idea. But now I remembered it, and I thought that perhaps now, when the whole world is coping with monstrous terror, this idea could be raised for public discussion—not only here, but throughout the world, because it can be justified! The reasoning: a person who is proud of taking the life of innocents, blameless and guiltless, does not deserve to be able himself to create new life. I would be glad to hear your opinion on this issue. All the best |
I replied to him in the spirit of my remarks here:
| My dear A., there is no chance this would pass. Our idiotic doctors are not willing to force-feed. Other idiots are not willing to bury terrorists in pigskin (which prevents them from reaching paradise). Others are not willing to withhold the bodies and simply throw them away. The idiotic “morality” of our world is located in the gut instead of the head, and that is a trouble that is very hard to deal with. So do not even think of trying to advance an idea like yours. Not a chance in the world. |
He added in a return message:
| Hi Miki The field guard in my kibbutz—Meir Shapir—caught Bedouin grain thieves in the early 1940s; he stripped them naked, and that is how they returned to their encampment, and from then on there was quiet in the fields. At roughly the same time, an Arab resident of Beit She’an raped a Jewish woman from one of the kibbutzim in the area. Palmach men caught him and castrated him. But when in 1992 the cattlemen of Moshav Moledet caught 2 Palestinian Arabs in their grazing areas, they assumed they had come to steal cattle, stripped them, and painted them green, the Palestinians complained to the police, and the cattlemen from Moledet were sentenced to prison and to compensation payments to the Palestinians. At the time I was a volunteer in the Border Police, and we “regulars” felt great frustration because of this sentence, because we had to deal with many thefts. As outrageous as this sentence may seem—it must be understood, because the cattlemen took the law and the judgment into their own hands, without anyone authorizing them to do so and without even having evidence against the suspects! In response to my proposal to castrate murderers you mentioned another proposal that was rejected—to bury Muslim murderers wrapped in pigskin. For the sake of the discussion I am ignoring the question whether these murderers would be executed as punishment, or whether they would be killed in exchanges of fire with the security forces; in such a case perhaps they would not be considered murderers at all. In any case, Muslim clerics would be happy to issue a fatwa determining that these are shahids (martyrs), and therefore they are entitled to paradise and the 72 virgins. But if a murderer is castrated, he will have a problem vis-à-vis the social norms, whose force, as you know, exceeds that of the religious ones! I relate to one punishment method or another as a weapon, and therefore, like any weapon, however sophisticated it may be, we must take into account its duration before expiry: at some point a countermeasure will be devised that will neutralize our weapon. In this case I of course mean some sort of conceptual weapon. |
The examples I brought in my reply are all products of morality from the gut. People are horrified by burying terrorists in pigskin, by burning their bodies and casting them to the birds of the sky, or by force-feeding them. You may imprison them, kill them, pursue them—but not force-feed them or bury them in pigskin. Perhaps the terrorists’ tender souls may be hurt, heaven forbid. Why? The physician’s oath. In my life I have never heard such a foolish argument (and believe me, I have already heard a few). As though the doctors’ oath (a widespread ethical fiction) were the value that overrides all the security considerations in the world and justifies taking risks. Why? Because! Because that is what we are always told.
Apropos doctors, I cannot refrain from mentioning here the discussion in Column 16, especially the case of Dr. Sudi Namir and his attitude toward homosexuality. I showed there that battalions of medical zombies went out to desperate battle against Namir with empty slogans on their lips (about up-to-date medical knowledge and the like)[1]. Try convincing them that they are talking nonsense when their absolute trust in slogans is so deeply implanted in them.[2]
The same is true of the sacred value of “honor of the dead,” which is raised here with that same infantile moral pathos. I am quite convinced that many of those who hold these strange views would retract them if only they were willing to move their values from the gut to the head and weigh them again. But it is rather frustrating that one cannot contend with a stubborn and irrational adherence to empty slogans, especially when it is done with such decisive moral pathos. That prevents any possibility of rational discussion, and perhaps that is precisely the goal.[3] There is a mortal fear of thinking about moral questions, because that may lead people to independent positions that do not obey the rules of political and social correctness. The priests of the Left who are responsible for this collection of nonsense sweat in their beds at night for fear of losing control over the conscience of society and of all its citizens, and of losing their hegemony and their official appointment as the social conscience and the moral luminaries of us all.
And again I stress that there may be people who would genuinely hold these positions even after weighing them seriously. Strange, but possible. With such people I have no principled problem (only a moral disagreement). My problem is with the slogans and the poster-like superficiality, that is, with the unwillingness to weigh things at all.
Dealing with refusal to grant a get
A few weeks ago (16.7), an article by Rabbi Shilat was published in Makor Rishon’s Shabbat supplement, in which he calls for applying against husbands who refuse to grant a get (a Jewish bill of divorce) the full range of halakhic sanctions, that is, to beat them until their soul departs. In the following week, Professor Aviad Hacohen’s response was published, expressing shock at the proposal. He writes as follows:
The proposed solution is also improper, because the State of Israel is not only a Jewish state but also a democratic one. Physical torture was once a common means of bringing vile criminals to confession and punishment. No longer. Similar to the change that took place with regard to the four forms of capital punishment by a religious court and corporal punishments in Jewish law, in general law too these have passed from the world, despite being a fairly effective means of deterrence.
Why indeed should they be banished from the world? What is wrong with this excellent solution? Because it is not fitting for a democratic state. But why? Because! Because it is a democracy. We have moved here from the realm of reasons to the realm of definitions, and try arguing with definitions. Heaven is my witness that I cannot understand why not beat such a wicked man (assuming he really is wicked and is merely refusing to release his wife) until his soul departs. If a person pursues his fellow in order to kill him (and in Jewish law also one who pursues a betrothed maiden in order to rape her), it is permitted and obligatory to kill him. This husband is pursuing his wife in order to make her miserable and keep her chained for the rest of her life. At the price of a few good and faithful blows you can free her, so why not do it? There is no greater pursuer than this. But what can we do? We live in a democratic state. It is a state in which slogans replace judgment, and shock replaces rational consideration.
Between revulsion, shock, and morality
There is an illuminating article by Tomer Persico in which he reviews the book of the psychologist Jonathan Haidt. Among other things, he brings there two illuminating examples from the beginning of the book:
Haidt is speaking of a much more organic and emotional level of morality. In fact one could say that he is speaking of moral intuitions, or even moral impulses. Part of this is what we would simply call “conscience,” and part includes feelings of revulsion and disgust that are not usually identified as moral motivations, but according to Haidt they are part of our moral apparatus.
Think, for example, about the following case, which Haidt brings as an example:
The neighbors’ family dog was run over and killed in the middle of the night in front of their house. They had heard that dog meat is very tasty, and so they cut up the body, cooked it, and ate the dog’s meat. No one saw them do this. (p. 3)
Is there a moral problem with what the neighbors did? Most people will feel that there is a moral wrong here, although many in the West would not be able to say exactly what the problem is. Haidt immediately gives another example:
Every week A. goes to the supermarket and buys a slaughtered chicken. Before he cooks it, he has sexual relations with the dead bird. Afterward he cooks the chicken and eats it. (4)
Everything all right? Can we just carry on as usual? Or is there something immoral in A.’s actions?
Notice that in both stories no one is harmed, the matter is entirely private (family or personal), and there is even an efficient use of available raw materials in order to increase the total amount of pleasure in the world. So what exactly is wrong with these actions? Note well: the question here is one of conscience and feeling. Most human beings will feel revulsion, disgust, or inner reservation toward these acts. This is not because the acts are physically or bacterially dirty, for one can clean the dog or the chicken. There is here a reaction of moral intuition that arouses discomfort in us, if not more than that, with regard to these acts.
This brings me to the bottom line. My aim in this column is mainly to distinguish between morality and emotion, and between emotional revulsion and shock and moral judgment. In both of Haidt’s cases there is, in my opinion, no moral problem whatsoever. It is only disgusting or shocking, and that is all. [4] It seems to me that for many people homosexuality too is described as immoral when what they really mean is that it repels or disgusts them. One clear fact is that, as people become accustomed to it, the emotions on this subject are greatly moderated. People who are unable to define for themselves what is immoral about some behavior between two adults, done with the consent of both parties and harming no one, begin to talk about diseases, and about how it is not natural (?), or about other slogans. To the best of my judgment, all these are rationalizations after the fact, attempts to conceptualize the disgust and revulsion and fit them—unsuccessfully—under the heading of moral condemnation.
Science and ethics
Additional examples of value judgments from the gut may be found in various discussions of ethics and science. Take, for example, the question of cloning, about which great secularists and materialists speak with a pathos that would not shame an evangelical preacher. The feeling is as though this were an immoral act on roughly the level of the Holocaust. Sometimes you will even hear them say that it is “playing God.” But I, poor me, have never understood what is bad about it. One may perhaps fear problematic consequences (an army of cloned zombies in the service of a cruel ruler who takes over the world by means of them. Fear not: the good guys always win in the end. See The Lord of the Rings), and even that is usually not very convincing. But the feeling is that the act itself, the interference in creation, seems morally problematic to people. Why? Because!
A few final examples from our own politics
When proposals arise for population exchange between us and the Palestinians, passions run high. Newspaper reporters, radio broadcasters, and their shocked interviewees all speak of the moral horror involved. They claim that even by agreement (proposals to pay money to whoever is willing to leave) this must not be done. Why? Because! Such views too have become a taboo, and again we are dealing with moral sloganeering. In my eyes, if it were feasible (and it probably is not), this would be an excellent solution. One should remember that the alternative is that we continue to murder one another forever, and over that too of course all those people will go on wailing and blaming everyone and his wife (and especially us). But they themselves will lie down in front of the buses and prevent the solution with their own bodies. Such a thing cannot be done by someone whose morality is nothing but an expression of revulsion and shock that has not undergone cognitive processing in the mind. Never mind that in the world there are many cases in which such steps were taken and also solved various problems. Here it is a taboo, and heaven forbid one mention and discuss it. It simply does not even enter the mind, and that is that. Again, I am not speaking about a person for whom this really is the position. I am speaking about the phenomenon of those who refuse to discuss it, and who disqualify anyone who raises it as though he were a Nazi, anti-Semite, and racist. I am speaking about those who, if they were really willing to reconsider it, I have no doubt many of them would change their minds.
Even more moderate proposals speak of land swaps. We are asked to hand territory over to the Palestinians. Thus Avigdor Lieberman proposes exchanges—for example, to give them Umm al-Fahm and receive Jewish communities from the territories. Here we are already speaking of leaving the people in their homes, while changing the sovereign umbrella above their heads. That is all. After all, their generations-long dream would thus be fulfilled. Their Palestinian brothers, with whom they identify and for whom they fight, would be the sovereign in their free state, and they would be its loyal citizens. But no, that is not moral. Better to leave them here so that they can continue to fight us from within and complain forever about discrimination (with the gracious assistance of the Israeli Left). The emotional taboo once again works against us, but heaven forbid one raise such a proposal or suggest thinking about it seriously. Just reject it out of hand, and that is that. A racist like me…
And on the margins of this I would add the issue of civil rights. We have here a kind of fixation around the moral problematic of denying people the right to vote. Every day one can hear some pathetic figure explaining to us that annexing territory without granting the right to vote is a moral Holocaust. Actual Nazism. As though if an Israeli Palestinian, or even a resident of the territories, does not receive the right to vote for the Knesset, we have inflicted a deep injury on his soul and his life. We have essentially committed civic murder. These absurdities are repeated again and again, and no one is willing seriously to rethink them (well, who wants to be a Nazi?!).
The fact that quite a few full-fledged democracies have colonies whose residents have no voting rights (such as Guam, which has made headlines these very days, or Puerto Rico—both American territories whose residents have no voting rights—and many more examples around the world), bothers no one. We will be a light unto the nations on this issue too, even if that causes us to sink into the sea. At least we will have died sanctifying democracy. As though the right to vote for the Knesset were the very breath of life of the Palestinian individual, and without it his life is no life. Better to kill him and let him kill us, so long as he has the right to vote (the right “to flock to the polls”—another idiotic slogan of the Left).
What do they want from the lefties?
Not for nothing did I repeat here these accusations against the Left (mainly secular, but not only) in this connection to morality. Why drag them in here too? What do I want from them? Is it really the case that people on the Right or religious people are always rational? I hope I am not suspected of such a thought.
Rather, the Left and secularism are usually perceived as more rational than the Right and the religious (forgive the stereotyping). They are seen as people who weigh things on their merits and not from the gut. Left-wing/secular people demand of the religious and the conservative Right an openness to reconsider their positions, for example regarding homosexuality or abortion, or regarding the conflict with the Palestinians (to be smart and not right; cerebral and not emotional). And indeed, homosexuality was once a taboo and it was obvious to everyone that it was forbidden, whereas today this has changed in the world of the lefties. Ostensibly, a splendid example of openness and rationality, and essentially of reweighing values.[5]
But as we have seen here, characteristically it is precisely their relation to values that is fanatical and slogan-ridden. To my mind, no less—and perhaps more—than that of religious people. Religious people at least rely on divine authorities from heaven or on human authorities (and that too usually through no fault of their own). The feeling is that one cannot conduct a discussion with a lefty because everything for him comes from the gut. When a religious person tells you something, one can at least try to conduct a discussion (though you will usually fail). Why? If you bring sources, possible interpretations, evidence, then perhaps some position may change (God willing). But what do you do with gut feelings? How can one conduct a discussion and deal with them? I addressed this in Column 31 (which was written following the discussion here, which also illustrates the point very well).
I think that among the religious Right the problem is secondary and solvable. People as such, of every sex and every kind, do not like, do not know how, and do not want to think. That is true everywhere and in every society. But only among lefties can you find people who love and want to think and yet do not do so.[6] The root of the problem lies in left-wing/secular skepticism, which does not believe in logical and rational judgment or in absolute truths, and therefore conceives morality as a gut feeling or emotion. No wonder that sometimes it identifies it with revulsion, disgust, or shock. When I am shocked and emotionally agitated, there is no possibility of discussing the matter with me. When there are no arguments, reasons, or sources, it is very difficult to discuss, and that naturally leads to an emotional, fanatical, and dogmatic attitude (yes indeed, there is dogmatism among lefties).
You may ask: how did our society’s attitudes toward abortion and homosexuality change? Ostensibly, this shows critical thinking about values, does it not? In my opinion, to a large extent these changes too are the result of brainwashing and slogans (though in this case I agree with the outcome. Just because you’re paranoid does not mean they aren’t after you). That is the nature of slogans: sometimes they have the power to change and sometimes precisely to fix and ossify. As for me, I would gladly do without them altogether—neither their honey nor their sting…
[1] Let me clarify here that the view that homosexuality is not a disease, or is not a problem, is entirely legitimate and reasonable. My claim is not against the view but against the stupidity of the speakers who represent it. See my remarks there.
[2] It is also worth looking at the debate with Professor Yoram Yovel in columns 25–26, and also at the discussion of abortion in Column 73.
[3] On the importance of rational and systematic discussion of charged issues, see Column 6, where I discussed the problematic nature of the prohibition on Holocaust denial and of religious prohibitions on thinking about and being exposed to heretical arguments.
[4] This recalls Rabbi Amital’s famous example regarding the eating of human flesh (see for example here, here, and also here). He used this example to say that there are values for which, even if there is no formal prohibition in Jewish law (according to most opinions; according to Maimonides this involves neglect of a positive commandment), it is still out of the question to do such a thing even in extreme situations. As for me, I do not understand what is wrong with eating human flesh. It is disgusting and repellent, but not immoral.
[5] By the way, the term “smolanim” was itself coined by condescending leftists, in order to express the contempt they feel for the sweeping criticism of the primitive Right. As our sages already said, the best defense is offense.
[6] This is, of course, a paraphrase of Dawkins’s nonsense, according to which in every society there are good and bad people, but good people who do bad deeds exist only in religious society.
Discussion
You are drawing the opposite conclusion from Tomer Persico’s article. By the same token, one could say that morality itself is merely a feeling of discomfort a person has when wronging another, and there is no real “obligation” to be moral – except that there is no justification for morality, and that is one of our axiomatic assumptions.
Likewise, these values of sanctity (not eating human flesh, eating the family dog) also rest on an axiomatic assumption, namely that they are additional values (even if they are not related to morality).
Incest too has no problem other than a feeling of disgust? (The generation of the Flood was punished for incest even before it was halakhically forbidden.)
You can say anything. The question is what is true. But I think you are mistaken in your interpretation of the term “axiomatic assumption.” An axiomatic assumption means that there really is a prohibition, as opposed to a feeling of disgust, which is just a fact. The fact that there is no justification for values is true under both possibilities here, as I explained at length in the post.
Of course, you can attach the term “axiomatic assumption” to anything imaginable, especially since axioms have no way of being justified. On the other hand, I claim that axioms are not something arbitrary (rather, they are true in and of themselves). Precisely for this reason I argued that while there is no way to prove to someone that his axiom is mistaken, if upon reconsideration he discovers a different attitude toward some act – that means that originally this was a feeling and not an axiomatic assumption.
Indeed, even in incest there is no moral problem whatsoever (only a feeling of disgust), except for a married woman and a married man, of course (unless the spouse consents). How do you know about the generation of the Flood? I have not merited to see any explanation in the verses except for robbery (hamas) and “corruption” (hashchatah), which is quite an ambiguous term.
I didn’t say that disgust is an axiomatic assumption, but rather that the axiomatic assumption is that incest is forbidden, and that eating human flesh is forbidden. (I added that if you interpret it as merely a psychological feeling stemming from disgust, one could say the same about morality, but at the base of both stands an axiomatic assumption of an evaluative obligation regarding how one ought to act.)
“Corruption” is an ambiguous term, but Hazal certainly understood it to mean this (and see Ramban there). The Torah also writes about incest that it is an abomination, and Hazal (in Yoma) say that had the Torah not been given, we too would have arrived on our own at the prohibition of illicit sexual relations.
– Of course, Hazal’s values do not “obligate” – but one should note that Hazal understood this “feeling of disgust” as a basic human value and not merely a halakhic matter, and one would have to say that Hazal and all of humanity were mistaken, thought from the gut, and mistakenly interpreted a feeling of disgust as an evaluative matter. (Of course, that still does not make it binding.)
By the way, this is an excellent example of my claim that one cannot learn anything new from the Bible. Someone who thinks incest is a moral problem will interpret “corruption” as incest, and someone who does not think so will interpret it as other prohibitions, or as adultery.
I was just asked about this now:
https://mikyab.net/%d7%a2%d7%9c-%d7%aa%d7%99%d7%95%d7%92%d7%99%d7%9d-%d7%95%d7%93%d7%99%d7%95%d7%a0%d7%99%d7%9d-%d7%90%d7%95-%d7%94%d7%90%d7%9d-%d7%90%d7%a0%d7%99-%d7%90%d7%a4%d7%99%d7%a7%d7%95%d7%a8%d7%95%d7%a1/#comment-6963
Regarding learning from the Bible – the difference is that this interpretation is agreed upon by Hazal, and they are not coming to learn something new, but rather something that accords with human values since the dawn of history, and incest has always been accepted as an ethical abomination.
As stated, one can say about anything that it is an axiomatic assumption and exempt oneself from giving an account. That is precisely what I was talking about. In Maimonides’ language at the beginning of the Guide, my claim is that this belongs to the “commonly accepted opinions” and not to the “intelligibles.” And when the convention changes, the feelings will change as well.
Hazal apparently did indeed think so, and therefore interpreted the Torah that way.
The term to’evah (“abomination”) in the Torah does not necessarily mean a moral problem (“you go astray in it” – Nedarim 51a). I think in the talkbacks on Column 16 I brought several examples of this.
Today this is beginning to change, and I assume it will continue further. In any case, my claim is that you did not learn this from the Bible.
The same goes for the organ trade: people tend to go with their gut feeling that the matter is wrong (on the grounds that it is ugly or cheapens human worth), whereas in fact, when you think about it deeply, what is wrong, ugly, and degrading to human worth is taking the trade outside the law (in my opinion, at least). Because of this folly, hundreds of thousands of people suffer from kidney disease for years and die an early death because of these illnesses (and in addition, poor people are robbed of an opportunity to escape poverty by selling a kidney).
Another example is people’s tendency to recoil from pharmaceutical companies that charge exorbitant prices, and their demand to cap drug prices. In fact, limiting drug prices will lead to a reduction in R&D for new medicines because of the diminished economic incentive.
And zimah too means “this – what is it?” (come on now…).
The abomination is not a moral abomination (because, as said, it harms no one) but a value-based abomination.
Take it up with the Gemara. That is how it interpreted it.
In any case, the moment you speak of a value-based abomination as opposed to a moral one, you have emptied the whole discussion of content.
(Is this notarikon really the “plain meaning” of the verses? Maimonides already mocks those who think such derashot (“do not read X but Y”) are meant to express the intent of the verse.)
Why does a value-based abomination empty the discussion of content? If from a value standpoint it is forbidden, then it is not just a feeling of disgust but a value like morality. Just as serving God is not “moral” but an axiomatic assumption that we are obligated to serve Him and heed His command, so too there is a value of sanctity (as T.P. evaluated there) that forbids incest and eating human flesh, even if it is not “morality.”
Hazal explicitly claim that a person should say, “I desire it, and I desire it,” regarding things the Torah defined as abominations, and Maimonides emphasized this.
The modern interpretation of the word to’evah (= disgust) is not necessarily what the Torah meant.
This is not a notarikon derashah. A notarikon derashah is when one derives some law or idea from a verse by way of notarikon. About that one says that it is probably not the simple meaning, but they wanted to anchor the law in a verse and found no other way. But here they simply asked what this word in the Torah means, with no constraint and no agenda. And the answer was: “You go astray in it.” The Gemara understands that this really is the meaning.
Let me clarify my intention further. In principle, I am willing to accept moral values or human values even if they do not harm another person (perhaps they run against our being in the image of God in some sense). That is not what the discussion is about. My claim here is that this applies only if, after examination, it truly seems to us that there is indeed a prohibition here. But if one takes a feeling of revulsion and immediately puts on it the label of a value or a prohibition (the indication being that if one rethinks it, it changes), that is what it means to follow a slogan.
As for the very existence of such values, I am doubtful. I once thought this was correct; see here:
https://mikyab.net/%D7%9B%D7%AA%D7%91%D7%99%D7%9D/%D7%AA%D7%92%D7%95%D7%91%D7%95%D7%AA-%D7%91%D7%A2%D7%99%D7%AA%D7%95%D7%A0%D7%95%D7%AA/%D7%92%D7%99%D7%9C%D7%95%D7%99-%D7%A2%D7%A8%D7%99%D7%95%D7%AA/
That cannot be the meaning when the word to’evah appears in several other places in the Torah where it cannot be interpreted that way (it is only a hint).
Obeying the word of God (keeping the commandments) is a binding value, and yet it is not a moral value. Is that not so?
And zimah too appears many times in the Torah, and there it cannot be interpreted as “what is this” – and likewise all the Rishonim who explained it differently from the Gemara did not think that this was an interpretation on the level of the plain meaning.
I agree in principle with your point – namely, that every value we use should undergo cognitive processing, and that one should not surrender to empty slogans. Regarding all the examples you wove through the article, I have to say that I disagree with you on almost all of them. Of course, you did not write that if someone disagrees with you in some example his view is illegitimate, but here it is a bit different… For example, you brought Persico’s example of the neighbor’s dog. I am not quoting exactly, but more or less you argued that most Westerners who would be horrified by the act are relying on absolutely nothing – emptiness and nonsense. In this example, and in others, with all due respect, complex thinking seems to have been lacking. If one looks at it a bit less binarily, one can discern a moral flaw (an intuition – and if you have not managed to define a moral value fully, I am certainly too small to do so) in disrespecting the neighbor, in disloyalty, and in not sharing in his grief, in such an act of exploiting the neighbor’s disaster for petty and selfish ends. (I am not speaking, of course, about the dignity of the dog itself. We are a little vegetarian, aren’t we?) It is not all that different from respecting a human corpse – say, that of a relative – and let us assume that no living person would be hurt by mistreatment of the corpse, yet it is quite clear that there is something wrong with damaging the corpse. Disloyalty, ingratitude, and the like. After all, we do not define something as immoral only when it harms a living creature (we defined immoral, roughly, as something about which there is an intuition that it is not okay. Here, of course, I agree that one should not accept slogans but rather think whether I really do have such an intuition).
In any case, as usual, thank you for the challenging articles.
If I remember correctly (I haven’t looked now), Persico is not talking about eating the neighbor’s dog, but rather he writes about a neighbor whose dog was run over, and the neighbor eats his own dog. There is no harm to others here, only harm to the person’s own feelings. (Persico associates this with another shade of morality.)
Is suicide an immoral act (after all, the person harms no one but himself)? Is this too simply the world’s mistake in matters of values? (In the world it is accepted as such an important value that one may coerce a person not to do it even when he does so of his own accord and it affects no one else at all – even though all other values, such as incest, can only be prevented when there is some link to the public, such as offending people’s feelings and the like.)
And so too one important rabbi wrote in the book Two Wagons and a Balloon (if I remember correctly).
At this point it has shifted into a factual discussion. The question is whether people who are presented with the alternative picture will remain in their position or not. That is, if we ask them whether there is something wrong here or whether it is simply disgusting, what will they say?
I do not see anything immoral in suicide, except perhaps from a religious perspective (that the Holy One, blessed be He, tells us that our lives are His and He forbids it). The same applies to incest. In any case, that is not the topic of discussion, but rather whether people will remain in their position that it is wrong and not merely disgusting even after reconsidering it.
I do not remember what is written in Two Wagons, but I brought a clearer source here from the holy words of that great genius, and I already wrote that today I am doubtful about it.
With God’s help, 1 Elul 5777
The Holy One, blessed be He, fashioned human beings in such a complete way that what should be done on the basis of reason is also driven by the body or emotion. Thus a person feels hunger or thirst, directing him to refill the body’s “batteries”; thus a person feels pain, directing him to deal with a medical problem; thus a person feels love, directing him to seek a mate. And so too a person feels bitterness, shame, and frustration when he has wronged another or wasted his powers for nothing, or when he has deviated from the truth; and conversely, mental satisfaction when he walks in the path of truth, goodness, and uprightness.
And of course, just as illness or psychological problems can distort a person’s natural physical feelings, so too various causes, such as bad habits and the influence of bad company, can distort the natural moral feelings. Therefore, the critique of human reason and the critique of the divine Torah are vital, saving us from the distortions of the impulse.
Another difficulty in relying on moral “gut feeling” is that very often it represents genuine values, but does not take into account the need to balance them. For example: it is natural for moral feeling to deter criminals so that they not destroy the world, but on the other hand one must be careful that in the zeal to catch the offender we not cast suspicion on an innocent person without solid evidence. It is natural to avoid insulting another by “excluding” him, but on the other hand there are situations in which inclusion causes corruption, such as mixed company of men and women that may intensify passions.
To find the right balance between conflicting feelings and moral considerations, the Torah was given to us. In the words of the Maharal of Prague, it is the “order of the world,” and in it we find the proper evaluative balance.
With blessings, S. Z. Levinger
My friend SZL,
As usual, you brought a collection of nonsense, wrapped in irrelevant examples.
A few questions for you: Is it moral to sell your daughter as a maidservant, to steal from a gentile (his lost object and the like), not to return a lost item to someone who said “woe is me for my financial loss,” etc. etc.?
What can we do? The Torah permitted them (even animal suffering, according to most opinions in the Talmud, is only rabbinic).
The Torah is a legal document that is not committed to values, as long as we are dealing with the basic legal/dry layer.
All the concepts of lifnim mishurat hadin (“beyond the letter of the law”), “a scoundrel within the permission of the Torah,” and the like, are meant to discuss the moral aspects that are not included under the Torah’s legal umbrella.
And the Torah itself commands you to act compassionately,
precisely to tell you not to rely only on the dry side of law.
But when it comes to acquiring values, we have no choice but to rely on our human intuitions, using the filter of reason.
What I would very much like to say is that a truly Torah-based person
is more likely to adopt a more correct scale of values, by virtue of the Torah’s command and the constant striving for spiritual perfection, beyond the merely juridical tone of the Torah.
With God’s help, 1 Elul 5777
To Moishbb – greetings,
In my words I said the exact opposite of what you attributed to them. I said that the basic moral values are ingrained in the human soul, but they may become distorted, whether because of an inclination of desire and social influence, or because of conflict between two opposing values, where one clings to one side and ignores the other. In this, the Torah’s guidance supervises and regulates the natural moral feeling.
The three examples you mentioned add another dimension: the Torah raises the moral bar beyond the natural feeling ingrained in the human species, apart from exceptional individuals.
Until the Torah came, human morality determined that the father of the family was master over his household, entitled even to put them to death without any wrongdoing, as Reuben says to his father: “You may put my two sons to death if I do not bring him back to you” (Genesis 42:37) – all the more so he was entitled to sell his children into slavery. (And according to the laws of Hammurabi, a husband was also entitled to sell his wife for several years in order to pay off his debts…) And as Noah decrees concerning Ham and his descendants: “A slave of slaves shall he be to his brothers” (Genesis 9:25).
The Torah came and greatly restricted both the father’s authority and the institution of slavery. The authority to punish the stubborn and rebellious son passes from the father to the court, and requires the mother’s agreement – something that makes its implementation unrealistic: “Can a woman forget her nursing child, or cease to have compassion on the son of her womb?” (Isaiah 49:15).
The whole matter of the Hebrew slave is really a matter of a “hired worker,” except that a hired worker serves for three years, while here he was permitted to hire himself out at “double the hire of a laborer” for six years. When he goes free, he receives a severance gift; and if he does not wish to go free, he is punished by having his ear pierced. And all this only in the case of one who sells himself or one sold for his theft. (Incidentally, in a world where thieves are executed, the Torah is satisfied with a monetary penalty and community service with a “foster family” 🙂)
And even to this “employment,” a Jewish father may not send his son. Nor his daughter, for the Torah said: “She shall not go out as the male slaves go out” (Exodus 21:7), who are meant to serve six years. As the Or HaChaim explained, this is the Torah’s instruction that the purpose of giving the daughter as a maidservant is so that the master or his son will marry her, and the work is a period of training and testing in preparation for marriage. Only if the purpose of marriage was not realized, and the family was unable to redeem her, does the girl go free at the earliest opportunity – at puberty, at the Jubilee, or after six years. In any case, all her “work” is only assistance with household chores, which she would have done anyway in her father’s home. In short: the law of the Hebrew maidservant is fostering and preparation for marriage.
Even regarding the Canaanite slave, the Torah added conditions that no one at the time dreamed of. The prohibition on handing over a slave who fled from his master was the complete opposite of the norm throughout humanity, where one who helped a runaway slave was considered to have harmed the property of his master and was severely punished. The Canaanite slave was obligated in a substantial portion of the Torah’s commandments, and one of the aims of the Sabbath is “so that your slave and your maidservant may rest as you do, and the son of your maidservant and the stranger may be refreshed” (Exodus 23:12), and the Torah reminds the master, “for you were a slave in the land of Egypt.”
If, regarding slavery, the Torah’s “wrinkling of the nose” became – 1,500 years after the nations of the world were exposed to the Bible – a universal moral norm, then the commandments of returning lost property and preventing animal suffering, in which the Torah obligated a person to stop the rush of his life in order to restore his fellow’s property or care for an overloaded animal, are even today not considered obligatory by humanity at large. Moreover, even saving another person’s life is not considered obligatory in a large part of the legal systems of the world.
Returning lost property is a virtue of brotherhood that the Torah made obligatory regarding “your brother’s lost item” (Deuteronomy 22:3), and the sages showed by example that one should act likewise even toward a gentile. Certainly when the owner himself has despaired, the object is ownerless; there is no moral obligation to make the effort and return it, but certainly there is pious conduct in returning it even in that situation.
In summary:
The laws of the Torah not only regulate and supervise natural moral feeling so that it is not distorted, but also continually raise the “moral bar” that humanity demands of itself.
With blessings, S. Z. Levinger
And so Moses our teacher, peace be upon him, says (Deuteronomy 4:7–8): “For what great nation is there that has gods so near to it as the Lord our God is whenever we call upon Him” (excluding the one who says that God does not intervene in the world 🙂), and “What great nation is there that has statutes and ordinances so righteous as all this Torah that I set before you today” (excluding the one who says that the Torah is dry law without values 🙂).
With blessings, S. Z. Levinger
How did Hazal and all the halakhic decisors miss the moral principle that one must return a lost object after despair? Perhaps it is so lofty that it lies beyond even their grasp? Strange…
With God’s help, 1 Elul 5777
In Bava Metzia 24b:
“Rav Yehudah was walking behind Mar Shmuel in the market of Beit Deisa. He said to him: ‘If one found a purse here, what is the law?’ He said to him: ‘It belongs to the finder.’ He said to him: ‘If an Israelite came and gave identifying marks, what is the law?’ He said to him: ‘He is obligated to return it.’” – Is that not contradictory? He said to him: “Beyond the letter of the law,” as in the case where Shmuel’s father found donkeys in the wilderness and returned them to their owners after twelve months, beyond the letter of the law.’ In any event, even regarding conduct beyond the letter of the law, we do not find an obligation to make an effort and announce; only if the loser comes and gives a sign should one return it.
However, later on it appears that Rav Naḥman did not require his student Rava to return a purse found in the market of the leatherworkers or in the market of the rabbis, even when an Israelite came and gave identifying marks. Even when the loser stood and cried out, Rav Naḥman said: “He is like one crying over his house that fell or his ship that sank in the sea.” And he said nothing about returning it beyond the letter of the law. Does Rav Naḥman disagree with Shmuel and hold that even beyond the letter of the law there is no need to return it? Perhaps there it is a case where the chance of finding the lost item is negligible, and therefore there is no point even in returning it beyond the letter of the law.
As for the nature of returning it beyond the letter of the law, Meiri and Ritva wrote that it is a matter of “pious practice,” and this also seems implied by Maimonides’ wording, since he says (Laws of Theft and Lost Property 11:7): “One who wishes to go in the good and upright path and to act beyond the letter of the law returns the lost item to an Israelite once he provides its identifying marks.”
However, in the Hagahot Maimoniyot there, in the name of Ravyah, it is brought that a person is compelled to act beyond the letter of the law. But even he excludes from this a case in which the finder is poor and the owner of the lost item is rich. If this were a full-fledged moral failure, why should the finder’s poverty matter? It seems that according to Ravyah as well, this is a matter of piety, except that he holds that one may compel even pious conduct when the finder is not poor.
In light of the above, it is difficult to sustain Moishbb’s argument that halakhah supposedly permitted stealing the property of someone who said “woe is me for my financial loss.” We do not find any discussion at all of acting beyond the letter of the law in a case of explicit despair, nor do we find any notion of announcing beyond the letter of the law. Nor do we find any notion of acting beyond the letter of the law where there is no identifying mark. Only where the loser comes and gives a mark – and even there many decisors imply that it is a matter of pious practice. And even according to the Ashkenazic Rishonim who ruled that one may compel conduct beyond the letter of the law, they were lenient when the finder was poor and the loser rich.
In any case, none of this has anything to do with a discussion of natural morality. The whole matter of returning lost property, even when it is a full halakhic obligation, is tied to the virtue of Israel and the obligation of brotherhood among them. The Noahides are not obligated to return lost property to one another. Even the strict legal line of the Torah’s laws expresses a distinctive morality, and all the more so conduct beyond the letter of the law.
With blessings, S. Z. Levinger
SZL, this is a collection of misunderstandings and mistakes, and everything was explained. There is a complete moral obligation, agreed upon by everyone, to return a lost object after despair. (Obviously when there are no identifying marks there is no such obligation, since then you would be returning it to someone who is not its owner. What does that have to do with our issue?) What difference does it make whether or not one is compelled? The qualification of this as a social duty of brotherhood is precisely the distortion that ties halakhah to morality. Every gentile today understands that there is such a moral obligation toward anyone, but God-fearing and observant Jews think there is not. There you have the results of distorted conceptions.
See also my comments in Column 15 on the relationship between halakhah and morality.
The distortion in the view of the God-fearing and observant is not that halakhah does not speak morality (and for some reason says the same thing morality says, only in fewer cases), but rather the image of today’s gentiles as equivalent to gentiles of the past. The gentile society of old as described in Hazal – there is really no point in returning a lost object to it (if only because someone who steals from others has no reason to have his own property protected; but also because by virtue of his inferiority he is not worthy that his property be protected, just as one need not care for animals).
Both factors are present. Go out and see for yourself – in SZL’s notice above, and many other cases of the same kind.
I don’t think both, because I think halakhah does indeed speak morality (there is no reason to return lost property except a moral reason). What appears to be non-moral laws is because halakhic morality is sometimes anachronistic (and sometimes simply a moral conception different from ours).
– Although halakhah also has additional values beyond morality, for example the value of sanctity. Therefore a priest’s wife who was raped must divorce, even though that is not moral, because married life must be in sanctity, and a priest, by virtue of his higher status, cannot live with a woman who was raped. (Of course one could argue that this too is an anachronistic conception – that there is some defect in a woman who was raped – but that is a dispute between outlooks, not about the principle.)
That leaves us with the non-moral laws, such as dietary prohibitions and the Sabbath, and so on. Are there moral purposes there too? Or perhaps sanctity? If you broaden the notion of sanctity, then that is exactly what I call “religious” or non-moral laws.
And from there also regarding the “moral” laws, where the definition is also completely different from the moral one: for example, with regard to a murderer and indirect damage, returning lost property after despair (if there is no reason to return it other than morality – why not return it when everyone agrees there is a moral obligation to do so after despair), and more.
Some dietary prohibitions are for the sake of sanctity, like eating creeping things, as the Torah says: “Sanctify yourselves and do not defile yourselves with any swarming thing that crawls on the earth” (Leviticus 11:44). (Here too one could argue and say that this is only a feeling of disgust mistakenly interpreted as a value, but that is how the Torah sees it.)
The Sabbath is meant to devote a day to the service of God by refraining from all weekday labors, as explained in Isaiah (“then you shall delight in the Lord,” and the rest of the verses there).
A murderer and one who causes damage indirectly differ with regard to punishment, and that is a legal matter: the death penalty applies only where there is a direct connection between the actor and the act. (In my view the ancient conception of punishment was entirely different from our conception today; they did not see punishment as revenge but as something else – for example that a person becomes a gavra katila by being brought to trial, and there is ishtanei dina, and many other places. But it seems tied to a general conception of Hazal, and perhaps was accepted in antiquity, for Hazal innovated these laws without a source, which implies that their source was reason.)
Returning lost property after despair is morality that is not legally binding, a weaker moral matter that requires generosity of spirit.
In any case, even if there is a dispute on this or that point, there are enough explanations for this, which in my opinion are very convincing, to understand that there is such a side. And if one disputes it, either that is a moral dispute with halakhah, or halakhah is anachronistic and today it באמת no longer fits.
And one should note that most of these laws were innovated by Hazal through reason and have no source in the Torah, and they had some basis for that reasoning, which means that these are human values grasped by reason.
(If expanding values of sanctity is called religiosity, then there is no disagreement. But I don’t think this is connected to religion, but rather to things that were accepted as human values in ancient times, and Hazal understood them through reason.)
Do you have a criterion for when we are dealing with moral intuition and when with mere gut feelings? Why is the aversion to harming another person not also just a gut feeling?
With God’s help, 1 Raḥamim 5777
To RMDA – greetings,
In the previous comment we noted the difference between Ritva and Meiri, who speak of a “pious practice,” and Maimonides, who speaks of “one who wishes to go in the good and upright path,” on the one hand, and the approach of the Ashkenazic decisors, Ravan and Ravyah, followed by Mordechai and Hagahot Maimoniyot, who speak of compulsion to act beyond the letter of the law, unless the finder is poor and the loser is rich.
Even regarding the situations in which it is proper to act beyond the letter of the law, there is among the Ashkenazic sages a tendency to broaden the scope. While in the Gemara (Bava Metzia 24b), as well as in the Tur and Shulḥan Arukh (siman 259), the instruction to act beyond the letter of the law is mentioned only with regard to an item bearing identifying marks found in a city whose majority is gentile, the Rema (259:7) expands the demand to do what is good and upright also to cases of “saving from a lion or a bear or from the surge of the sea and the like,” where even though the chances of rescue are very slim, “nevertheless it is good and upright to return it” (and see Beit HaLevi, vol. 3, siman 48, on the words of Rashi and Ran in Shabbat).
The tendency to institutionalize conduct beyond the letter of the law and broaden its application continues among the later commentators. Thus says the Shakh (259, subsec. 3): “And this is the language of the Aguddah, chapter Elu Metzi’ot: ‘And so we practice, to return it; and so ruled Ravyah and Ravan, that we compel one to return it where the finder is rich.’”
The Alter Rebbe adds (Laws of Finding and Deposits, sections 18–19): “And if he knows with certainty whose it is, he should return it to him even if he did not claim it. And so too with something that has no identifying mark: if he knows with certainty whose it is, he should return it to him even if they have already despaired, for despair is not like full ownerlessness, since he does not despair and abandon it willingly.” The Alter Rebbe does not mention the possibility of compulsion to do what is good and upright, but neither does he distinguish between a rich and poor finder; and it seems that even in the case of a poor finder, he would hold that it is proper to return it and not benefit from abandonment that was not wholehearted.
By contrast, the author of Arukh HaShulḥan (259:7) exempts the poor finder (when the owner of the lost property is rich) not only from compulsion but from the very need to act beyond the letter of the law. Regarding a rich finder, he brings that some say we compel him, and the rationale he offers is: “And why do we compel regarding a found item to act beyond the letter of the law? Because he suffers no monetary loss.” It seems to me that according to his rationale, the reason for acting beyond the letter of the law is not because of the problematic nature of despair, but because “it is good to do so…” For the finder loses nothing by returning it. This also explains why the poor person is not obligated to act beyond the letter of the law, since returning it is financially difficult for him.
With blessings, S. Z. Levinger
An explanation of the foundations of the Israeli Lost Property Law and its roots in Jewish law and the laws of the nations may be found in the book by Rabbi Dr. Michael Vigoda (head of the Department of Hebrew Law in the Ministry of Justice), Hashavat Aveidah (“Returning Lost Property”), on the Da’at website.
It seems that the demands of general law are far more lenient than the law of the Torah. There is no “you may not ignore it.” A person is considered a “finder” only when he takes the lost item into his hand. If he averts his eyes from it and goes on his way, there is nothing at all wrong with what he did!
Whereas in Torah law, from the moment the finder lifts the lost item he becomes its custodian, and his obligation to return it is not limited in time. He must guard it indefinitely, and the owner’s despair that occurs after the item has already come into the finder’s possession is of no avail – according to the law, if the finder turned the lost item over to the police and four months passed without the owner claiming it, the item becomes the property of the finder.
According to the law, where the lost property is of small monetary value, it is assumed that the owner has despaired. By contrast, under Torah law, even when the monetary value is low, if it has an identifying mark the finder must announce it.
In other words: humanity has progressed greatly since the days when it was obvious that, except for Jews – who were obligated by the Torah to trouble themselves with returning their brother’s lost property (and were instructed by Hazal to return a gentile’s lost property משום sanctification of God’s name) – there was no situation in which a person would make the effort to return another’s lost item. But even so, the demand of general law is still far below the Torah’s demand!
With blessings, S. Z. Levinger
I have no criterion, nor is one needed. Do you have a criterion for when your vision reflects reality and when it deceives you? A person knows when he is dealing with a moral principle (in his own eyes) and when with revulsion.
And therefore? What does this general lecture say about the laws of returning lost property and acting beyond the letter of the law for our purposes?
In short:
The Torah demands of its adherents far more than natural human demand. No human system would demand of a person “you may not ignore it” – stop the rush of your life, pick up the “small jars” that fell from your fellow, and guard them for months and even many years until you find their owner and return them to him. Certainly, no natural human legal system would come to a person who legally acquired an object whose owner had fully despaired of it, and demand of him – and according to many decisors even compel him – to return the object to its original owner.
However, in the end, the fact that there is a people that demands of itself high moral demands also seeps into all of humanity. Whether through the Bible or through the personal example shown by great and righteous people, and following them also by ordinary Jews, who were careful to return lost property even to gentiles, in a moral world that had no notion at all of “returning lost property” – these things seep in and at least partially influence the norms of general society.
From a situation in which it is obvious that in a city with a gentile majority there is little chance that one who lost an item will find it, and from a situation in which the authorities have nothing to say but “lost property belongs to the king” – humanity, after hundreds of years, reaches a state in which they still do not require the citizen to pick up, keep, and announce, but at the very least, if he did pick it up, he must bring the object to the police, who will keep it for a few months in case the owner comes. Even a partial achievement is an achievement!
With blessings, S. Z. Levinger
Exactly. It seems to me that most people would say regarding the examples you gave that this is definitely moral shock and not mere disgust.
And what I claim is: A. They are mistaken. B. When you present them with the two possibilities, many of them will understand this and retract.
With God’s help, 2 Elul 5777
The very fact that an act causes so-and-so shock creates a moral obligation for others not to cause him pain by doing it in his presence, as was said in Ḥagigah 5a about killing a louse before one’s fellow and spitting before one’s fellow.
As for the matter itself, in the example of eating a dog, a creature with feelings and man’s faithful friend, the shock is very understandable. Even someone who sees an animal being slaughtered will feel shock. And as Rav Kook explained, although the Torah permitted slaughtering animals and eating them, it itself commanded covering the blood in order to preserve a feeling of moral unease about eating meat, so that we should understand that there is an evaluative flaw here, except that it is overridden by another vital value.
A person’s moral feelings are a strong brake against intellectual distortions. Even S.S. soldiers, who had been philosophically convinced that the Jews were a grave danger to humanity, in many cases found it difficult to stand with a machine gun before old men, women, and children. At the very least, as a matter of stringency, it is worth being concerned that behind the feeling of moral shock there may also stand an intellectual truth.
With blessings, S. Z. Levinger
SZL, then eat the dog in secret so that nobody will be shocked.
Obviously there is also shock from an immoral act, but not every shock is from an immoral act.
There is a better solution:
Eat a hot dog. Both kosher and not shocking, and then one can even eat it b’apei telata and say “hav lan ve-nivrekh” 🙂
With the blessing “hav lan ḥayyei, hav lan mezonei,” S. Nitzler
Paragraph 3, line 1:
From a situation in which it is clear that in a city with a gentile majority the chance that the loser will find his lost item is small…
SZL, the “vort” about covering the blood sounds utterly absurd.
Why is eating birds more moral than eating cows?
Rav Kook’s words about the moral problematic of eating meat are found in Ḥazon HaTzimḥonut VehaShalom (“The Vision of Vegetarianism and Peace”), a work compiled from Rav Kook’s writings by his student Rabbi David Cohen, the Nazir. Regarding covering the blood, see chapter 8 there. It can be viewed on Wikisource.
With blessings, S. Z. Levinger
With God’s help, 8 Elul 5777
To Moishbb – greetings,
Rav Kook’s words about the reason for the commandment of covering the blood are based on the reason given by the author of Sefer Ḥasidim and by the Turim on the Torah, and your questions were raised by the commentators, who answered them each in his own way.
I will bring here the matter from the responsum of the Rishon LeTzion Rabbi Yitzḥak Nissim, Yayin HaTov, vol. 2, Yoreh De’ah, siman 1, where he brought from the Midrashim of Hazal and from early authorities several reasons for the commandment of covering the blood, and discussed them:
“In Sefer Ḥasidim (siman 772) it is written that the Holy One, blessed be He, commanded that the blood of wild animals and birds be covered lest the angel appointed over them say: ‘How can it be that this blood, which did not sin, was spilled by a sinner whose sins are red as crimson and scarlet?’ But he did not explain why this concern does not exist with regard to domesticated animals. *)
And I saw in Dammesek Eliezer on Ḥullin (folio 215) that he brought the words of Sefer Ḥasidim and wrote that he found written about them: ‘But with domesticated animals many commandments are practiced, before the slaughter and after the slaughter, and there is no room for prosecution.’
And the commentator there on Sefer Ḥasidim wrote that since the domesticated animal eats from what belongs to him, growing from his trough, he has some connection that entitles him to slaughter it and eat its meat. But in the case of wild animals and birds, whose sustenance does not depend on him, what connection does he have to them to slaughter and eat them?”
According to the author of Dammesek Eliezer, the prosecution against a person slaughtering a domesticated animal is weakened because of the many commandments he fulfills with it before and after the slaughter; whereas according to “the commentator,” the fact that the person raised and fed the animal (as opposed to hunting wild animals and birds) is what enables him to slaughter and eat it. And it seems to me that Rav Kook’s words in Ḥazon HaTzimḥonut VehaShalom, chapter 8, are close to this explanation.
With blessings, S. Z. Levinger
*) Similarly, the words of the Ba’al HaTurim (cited there): “The blood of wild animals and birds requires covering because none of it is offered on the altar, lest the attribute of justice prosecute: ‘How can blood eat blood?’ Therefore He commanded it be covered.” According to this, the sprinkling on the altar of blood from that species saves from the prosecution of “How can blood eat blood?” and therefore covering the blood is required to atone.
To SZL,
Incidentally, I actually meant to ask the opposite:
Why is eating cattle more moral than eating birds?
But you answered it at length.
To Moishbb – greetings,
There is another consideration in preferring the eating of animals over birds: the meat of one animal provides food for dozens of people, and one act of slaughter is enough, whereas with birds one must slaughter many birds to obtain the same amount of meat.
And as Maimonides taught us regarding the mishnah “Everything is according to the number of acts”: a good deed that is divided into many instances is preferable to a one-time act, even if the result is the same, because the very act affects the soul. So too here we may say that one act of slaughter is less hard on the soul than many acts of slaughter.
With blessings, S. Z. Levinger
As for covering the blood, this explanation will not help, for the akko, dishon, teo, and zemer are large animals, and nevertheless they require covering.
With God’s help, 8 Elul 5777, Wednesday of the portion “Among the Ashkenazic books it is found written thus”
To SZL – greetings,
My friends and I very much enjoy reading your enlightening and informative comments on a variety of websites around the web, whether on this site or on any other site (for example, the “Shabbat” supplement website). It saddens us that among the many comments published on the many websites, it is hard to find an orderly doctrine across all your responses.
Why not open an organized website with blogs of your own discussing the various issues on today’s agenda, in the spirit of “May your wellsprings spread outward” 🙂
If you opened such a site, I am sure it would become a center of attraction for young people interested in the matters you deal with in your many comments.
About this, as is well known, the Rabbi of blessed memory already said: “The man of great thought, as soon as he engages in Torah, wisdom asks of him what the goal of the path is, how it works for creation, in what way it can be bound with illumination and with the world. All the worlds and the good, wherever they are in the natural human being, one must make them wise through faith, thought, and the desire for companionship. And the more they begin to be a power of faith and holiness, they must make all this life itself out of clear inner selfhood, and not out of great inner strength and illumination. Thus is the building of the spirit, in analogy to the triad: Torah, wisdom, and the holiness of the Torah.”
With blessings,
Y. H. HaKohen
With God’s help, Wednesday of the portion Ki Yeshvu Aḥim Yaḥdav, 5777
To RYH HaKohen – greetings,
My orderly doctrine across all the “many” websites – and “many” means four: “Mussaf Shabbat,” “RMDA – Responsa and Articles,” “Eretz HaIvriyim,” and “On What Was and What Is Happening” (and a bit on Yehuda Gezbar’s “Back Cover” and Mordi Miller’s “Footnote”) – is one and the same:
We did not discover America and we did not invent the wheel. The questions we ask on every topic are old questions, and they were discussed extensively by Hazal, by the Rishonim, and by later authorities. It is worthwhile also to hear what the ancients say on every subject, and not only to “stew in our own juice.” Usually the things that arise in the words of the ancients are much more complex than what we are accustomed to, and therefore they enrich and fertilize our thinking.
Morality is found, “at the end of the day,” both “in the belly,” in the moral gut feelings ingrained within us; also “in the head,” in our thought and common sense; and also “above the head,” in the divine Torah, written and transmitted to us, which gives moral depth beyond natural human reason.
With blessings, S. Z. Levinger
Since you mentioned (in the first line) “the Ashkenazic books,” I will note that in the two examples on which I elaborated – the question of acquiring a lost object after despair, and the question of the reason for the commandment of covering the blood – the Ashkenazic sages follow a distinctive approach that tends to bring moral consideration powerfully even into the halakhic layer.
Regarding the proposal to castrate terrorists, I seem to remember that during Yigal Amir’s imprisonment there was talk that for a certain period he was forbidden to be alone with his wife in a private room, on the grounds that a murderer like him must not be allowed to bring children into the world lest, God forbid, they continue in his path.
I remember being revolted by that idea and thinking it twisted (it was of course raised by clearly humane left-wing people who, even 10 years after Rabin’s murder, were still shocked by what he had done).
So Yigal Amir had already been tried and had received the full penalty set by law, and therefore in his case this was unnecessary and stemmed purely from hatred. But as a deterrent measure I would use it (for rapists, terrorists, and who knows what else).
Actually, I am probably really not up to date, because the punishment and the prohibition on being alone with his wife are still in force at this very moment, which seems utterly bizarre to me.
https://www.wikiwand.com/he/%D7%99%D7%92%D7%90%D7%9C_%D7%A2%D7%9E%D7%99%D7%A8
Hello Rabbi Michael Abraham.
You wrote here in one of the comments that you had already written once that you are doubtful regarding the immorality of suicide.
Could you provide a link to where those things were said?
(If you do not understand which comment I mean, I will quote:
“I do not see anything immoral in suicide, except perhaps from a religious perspective (that the Holy One, blessed be He, tells us that our lives are His and He forbids it). The same applies to incest. In any case, that is not the topic of discussion, but rather whether people will remain in their position that it is wrong and not merely disgusting even after reconsidering it.
I do not remember what is written in Two Wagons, but I brought a clearer source here from the holy words of that great genius, and I already wrote that today I am doubtful about it.” End quote.)
I don’t remember. You can search here on the site just as I will search.
Two questions: the first has already been discussed a bit, but not enough in my opinion.
First question:
The basic principles of morality cannot be justified; they are based solely on intuition, according to the basic intuitions we accept. If so, acceptance or rejection of Haidt’s examples is unrelated to the fact that they cannot be grounded in harm to another person, because the very claim is that there are immoral things that are not related to harm.
So there is no way to prove that Haidt’s examples do not represent something immoral, only that they are not derivatives of harm. If so, what does one do in a case like this, where the rabbi has no moral intuition regarding the matter, while I – and it seems to me others as well – do have an intuition that these things are immoral? In short, how can one know what is moral when different people have conflicting moral intuitions?
Second question:
What does the rabbi think about moral actions that have no consequences? For example, not paying into the state coffers, eating meat despite the suffering involved, etc. I seem to recall that the rabbi said (I think in Column 122) that these are immoral actions even though they have no consequences. Shouldn’t one conclude that in truth morality is not relevant to such actions, since they have no consequences?
A. I think that if you examine it, you will see that the intuition does not say it is immoral but that it is disgusting. Besides, if in your eyes it is immoral, then that is what you think. How does that relate to me? I formulate my position according to my intuitions, not those of others.
B. I wrote about this in the post on the categorical imperative (122) and in the fourth notebook, vol. 3.
Question A. Let me sharpen the question: it seems that other people’s intuitions, assuming they really are intuitions, should indeed interest you. If we agree that intuition is a valid epistemological tool for recognizing morality, then how can a person tell whether his intuition is better than that of others?
B. I don’t remember that in the column or in the notebook the problem is resolved, but I’ll read it again…
A. I don’t know how this happened, but in every field, when other people have intuitions different from mine, at most I check myself again. In the final analysis, my conclusion is what I think.
B. There is no problem here, and nothing to solve. I explained there why morality does not have to have consequences. If you disagree, then you disagree.
Well, maybe you no longer remember what you wrote 😅. You asked what is immoral about eating my dog after it dies, or about having sex with the chicken I buy at the store, and you argued that there really is no moral problem here. At first you caught me unprepared and I thought I agreed with the claim, but on second thought it seems that your moral outlook (and that of many others today) is that morality basically means not harming another person or his rights, and therefore when we look at the above examples we feel revulsion and disgust but cannot point to what exactly is wrong here. But in my opinion morality is a matter of values, and in a situation where you are willing to eat your dog immediately after it dies, you reduce the value of life and the emotional bond to zero. (Maybe this is the issue of covering the blood in the Torah – a kind of burial, to show that you are dealing with something living.) And so too with the other examples.
Unfortunately, I have no doubt at all that the purpose of clinging to slogans is to prevent rational discussion.
With a powerful media and shallow public discourse – it works wonderfully.
(By the way, regarding Rabbi Amital of blessed memory and the prohibition of eating human flesh – the moral problem here is the violation of human dignity, similar to the prohibition against leaving a corpse overnight unburied.)