Halacha and Ethics – Lesson 4

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[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It depends on the letters of the Torah regarding distancing measures, whether there are distancing measures at the Torah level. He brings medieval authorities (Rishonim); generally, the accepted view among the later authorities (Acharonim) is that there is no such thing, that Torah-level laws are never fences or distancing measures, but rather they are all values, in the language I’m using here. But he brings a few examples there. There is the Ran, I think, on seclusion and on “it shall not be seen and it shall not be found,” that this comes as a fence around the prohibition of eating leavened food and deriving benefit from leavened food. So he says that there are medieval authorities (Rishonim) here and there who do see certain Torah prohibitions as fences, even though they are Torah-level. His whole discussion there is whether there is such a thing as a Torah-level fence or not. So it could be that there are certain Torah prohibitions that are themselves fences and not values in their own right. That’s a discussion. The accepted way of thinking is that there aren’t any. The accepted view among the later authorities (Acharonim) is that there aren’t any. In any case, that’s not our topic. For our purposes, I want now to return to moral conflicts.

I want to argue that when I decide in favor of fighting evil or in favor of helping my mother, that decision is not a lottery. That decision is a determination of which of the two actions is better under the given circumstances. Okay? And then I can determine which of them is preferable to the other. I can’t do both; I have to choose one of them. So I’ll choose the one that is better.

Does that contradict what I said earlier, that values can’t be measured because they don’t serve anything outside themselves? My answer is no. A value is not measured in the currency of something external to it. It does not come to serve another value, and therefore it is measured in terms of… take poultry with milk, for example, which comes to serve meat with milk. Now I’ll ask myself, for instance, could soy with milk also lead me to eat meat with milk? After all, that too could be confusing, right? So should we prohibit that as well? No, no. Poultry with milk brings me closer to meat with milk, and therefore its instrumental value is higher than that of soy with milk. So poultry with milk is prohibited and soy with milk is permitted. Because I can rank those things, since they are not values. They come to serve something else. So that something else helps me measure them and rank them against one another.

But if something does not serve something else, then, as I said earlier, it can’t be measured, and therefore it also can’t be ranked against something else. Now I’m claiming that this is not true. Since moral values do not come to serve something else, but they do realize some category called good—how good something is—and that is a measure shared by all moral values. They all come to realize, in some sense, the good. There is an obligation to do good. So they have something in common. Even though they are not instrumental, they do not come to serve the good; they come to realize the good. Do you understand? It’s not the same thing. It’s not that the good is some other value and they are instrumental, that they come as means to realize the good. They are not means. They are realizations. They are not branches or extensions. They themselves are good. They do not come to serve the good.

So this does not contradict what I said earlier, that a value does not come to serve anything outside itself. I’m only claiming that nevertheless this does not mean that values cannot be measured. They can be measured. And I measure them in terms of that same amorphous, general currency called good. Where do they stand on the scale of good? And through that I can measure them. That’s why I say that, in fact, people do rank values and build for themselves a scale and decide moral conflicts. Every person does this.

To say about all this that it’s ultimately all just lotteries—that’s possible. More important in what currency? It’s like saying there is more water in the ocean than in the good-heartedness of human beings—that’s meaningless. What does “more” mean there? I told him no, it’s not meaningless, because there is a shared currency here, and that currency is good. The point is only that the good is not a value. The good is, in essence, the way—or the way to realize the good is through the various moral values. And then it is possible to rank them according to the extent to which they realize the idea of the good.

Now, that does not mean that I have a systematic way of doing this. I don’t know; I don’t have a method. If that student had come to consult with me, not exactly—I’m not sure exactly what I would have told him. I have ideas, maybe, about trying to raise various considerations one way or another, but it is very hard to guide someone to a systematic decision in such a dilemma. But the fact is that somehow in the end we do reach a conclusion and decide.

So the fact that I don’t have a way to do it does not mean that there is no answer. And here I return to what I said earlier: in essential incommensurability, the problem is not that I have no way to reach the answer. The problem is that there is no answer. What I want to claim here is that maybe I have no way to reach the answer, at least not a systematic way. We do have some way, because in the end we decide, but not a systematic way. I don’t know how to give the algorithm. But that does not mean there is no answer. My claim is that there is an answer. There is an answer because the currency of good is the currency that measures all moral values. Therefore there is an answer. How do we get to it? I don’t know. We have some kind of moral intuition that tells us how good each step is, and that sometimes helps us decide. And sometimes we fail to decide; we are in a dilemma. Okay? But the fact that we fail to decide is not because there is no answer, but because we have no way to decide. We don’t know. We’re not wise enough, I don’t know, we don’t have the tools to do it. But that does not mean there is no answer. That’s my claim.

In other words, my claim is not that there is a way to decide, or a systematic, algorithmic way to decide, but that there is an answer. That is what I basically want to argue here. How do we arrive at that answer? That same intuition that tells us that a certain value is indeed a value probably also tells us how good it is. Because I also don’t know how to justify why fighting evil is a good thing. It is obvious to me that it is good; I have no sort of justification that can explain it. Or why the Nazis are evil, even before the question of fighting evil. Why is helping one’s elderly mother good? All the explanations will be naturalistic—because it will make her feel better. Okay, that’s a fact. But why is it good to make her feel better? So we talked about naturalistic explanations and their problem.

I have no way to decide. So how do I know that a certain thing is correct from a value standpoint, that there is such a value? So I said: there is some sort of intuitive recognition, moral intuition, conscience, or whatever you want to call it, that tells me this is good and that is bad. I grasp it directly. I do not know how to explain it in terms of something else. What I want to argue is that we also build the scale with that same tool. The intuitive tool not only grasps what is a value and what is not a value, but can also, at least sometimes, place it on the scale and determine how important it is. We do that too with that same strange tool that I call moral intuition. Okay? That is the claim regarding decisions between moral values.

I’ve basically finished here the introduction to the topic, which was really an attempt to define what morality is and what a moral dilemma is. I remind you that our goal in the end is to get to Jewish law and morality, or Torah and morality. And that of course requires us to understand what morality is, what Jewish law is, and what one does with dilemmas. So I used the introduction on morality to gain two things: first, to explain what morality is—that will be important later—and second, to show the problematic nature of conflicts and deciding conflicts, and yet how we still decide them.

Now look where this is going. Before I move on to Jewish law, I want to make a few comments about the scope of the concept of morality. In other words, what are moral values? There are values that many times we may use terms like good and not good in relation to them, but on second thought it is not clear to what extent they are really moral values. Let me give an example: sexual prohibitions involving forbidden relatives. Yes? A person has relations with his sister, or with animals, has intercourse with an animal, okay? There are many people who will say: what, this is obviously immoral. But I don’t know—on second thought, when I think about it, I don’t know if it is immoral. I’m talking, of course, about the consent of both sides. Leave aside the animal—“consent of both sides” there is… but let’s say, his sister. There were cases like this that were publicized; I remember there was some story in Germany. Someone who was living a full marital life, as a couple, with his sister. In Germany everyone was horrified by this. Both were adults; we’re not talking about pedophiles or anything like that. Both adults, both with full consent, living there as a couple in every respect, with all that that presumably implies, including all the physical relations, everything. Okay?

Now, is this immoral? I don’t know. People clearly have some sort of aversion to it. You can’t deny the aversion embedded in us toward acts like these. There are also all sorts of explanations for it, evolutionary explanations and so on. But to tell you that it is immoral? I’m not sure. Why is it immoral? What is the problem? Who is harmed by this? Usually we connect moral values with harm to society or harm to another person or something like that, some problematic consequence. Here there is no problem at all. Both sides consent, everything is fine. Will you tell me that their children will come out with defects because there is a problem with marriage between relatives? Then they don’t have children. Fine? They use contraception, don’t have children, or in the end the children turn out fine. There was no problem. That also happens sometimes. So what now? Is this problematic? No, it doesn’t seem so to me. I don’t see why this is immoral.

But still, for many people there is some feeling that there is something here—I don’t know what to call it—ugly? I don’t know, some kind of repulsive thing? I don’t know, all sorts of concepts of that kind… What are these things? Are these values?

[Speaker B] Is this morality? A person who wastes his time consuming drugs. He’s not harming anyone. Same thing. There’s no moral problem with that?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, the same thing. So just an ordinary person who wastes his time tanning on the beach without doing anything useful for the world, for society, or for himself. You don’t have to go very far—even that can be discussed, right? A lot of people would see that as something problematic. I use the term problematic because it’s a very general term. But is it immoral? I don’t know exactly. In the accepted definition of morality, I don’t think it falls under that. So what exactly is the problem here? So here too, even if you want to say there’s a value problem here—and by the way, I’m not sure I agree in all these cases—but even if so, by the way, in the case of a brother and sister, for example, I tend to think not, that there is no value problem. In the case of tanning on the beach all day, I tend to think yes. Even though it sounds less extreme, less radical, less somehow jarring. But on second thought, with all due respect to things being jarring, that sense of being jarred is the result of cultural and evolutionary constructions. I don’t always buy that. In the context of wasting your time and doing nothing of value, that seems to me something degraded on the human level—I don’t know what to call it. Is it immoral? I don’t know, but it’s not fitting. I don’t think it’s immoral because you’re not harming anyone. If you’re tanning on the beach all day and you have enough money, you’re not relying on others, right? Everything is fine. It’s not that someone is being harmed by it. But still, you’re like an animal, like a rock. The rock is also there all the time tanning in the sun. What’s the difference between you and it? Other than the fact that your heart is beating and it has no heart—so what? There’s no meaning of any kind; you live like a rock. So is a person the tree of the field, as they say? So what does that mean? Does it mean you’re immoral? I don’t know why that would be immoral. I’d call it a degraded human level. So there are values, and here I would use the term value, perhaps, unlike the case of a brother and sister. In the case of a brother and sister, it seems to me I wouldn’t use the concept of value at all.

There was once a series of articles by Gadi Taub in the Haaretz supplement, where he talked about the problem—there was supposedly a problem with relationships within the family. And he talked about it, about the traumas it causes the child and the children who are born defective and all kinds of things like that. And I wrote a letter to the editor there—back when I was still a subscriber, before I got sick of them. So I wrote a letter to the editor saying that I don’t see any value problem in any of these things. Meaning, if a defective child is born, fine—if medicine has a solution for that defect, then it’s fine. Or if the child will have trauma, fine, we’ll give him a psychiatric pill and it’ll solve all the trauma and everything is fine. Or if by chance he won’t undergo trauma, and he’s fine, he’s a child built in such a way that he won’t be traumatized by it—then it’s fine? In other words, there’s something here…

After that I got several very interesting letters from various people—women, feminists, all kinds of people—who asked me; they found it very interesting… personal responses? Hardly ever, and certainly not in Haaretz. But I wrote there quite intensely, responses. But yes, there were all kinds of reactions, because somehow I suddenly felt there was a kind of awakening. People suddenly understood that all the rationalizations they make for this thing themselves show that it isn’t a value. Because if the thing is ultimately only instrumental, meaning it’s forbidden to do it because there will be problematic consequences, then what you’re really telling me is that the thing in itself is not problematic, only the consequences are problematic. If I solve the consequences—say I solve someone’s problem so he won’t come to eat meat and milk together. He’ll eat poultry and milk together, but there’s no meat—I’ll simply wipe out all meat from the continent he lives on. Maybe he won’t manage to get his hands on meat, okay? So then there’s no problem at all; he can eat poultry with milk, right? I’m not talking right now about halakhic technique; it may be that halakhically perhaps he still has no permission. But on the principled level there’s no problem, right? He can eat poultry with milk. He won’t come to eat meat with milk. I assume that if meat disappeared from the world, it is entirely possible they would abolish the prohibition of poultry with milk; there would be no reason for it to remain. Okay? Leave me alone right now with considerations of authority—I’m talking on the principled level.

So what does that mean? It basically means that poultry with milk is not a value. It’s an instrumental value; it comes to serve something else. And the moment you present something—you rationalize something, like Leibowitz with the value of life, we talked about that—the moment you rationalize something, you’re basically saying that it isn’t a value for you, it’s a means. And means I can solve; meaning, if I solve the problematic consequence, then there’s no problem with the means. And therefore people suddenly understood that they see these things as a moral problem, and therefore there is no need and no point in making rationalizations for them through consequences. Because the moment you rationalize through consequences, you’re basically saying: without the consequences, it wouldn’t be forbidden. But someone who says it is forbidden in itself, forget the consequences, doesn’t need the consequences. This whole series of articles by Gadi Taub basically said one thing: that there is nothing problematic in any of these things. That’s what he said, because he said the whole problem is always this consequence and that consequence. That’s a psychology lesson, not an ethics lesson. It’s a psychology lesson that someone who goes through such a thing has trauma. Okay, so the psychologist is the one who forbade and the one who permitted—so the psychologist will solve his problem, or the psychiatrist. Suppose he can solve the problem, then we’ve solved the problem, so the problem is gone.

By the way, in my opinion maybe that really is true, as I just said. But I didn’t think that way then. Today, on second thought, I say that it really may be that these things are not a moral problem. If nobody is harmed by it and nothing happens, then what’s the problem? Okay? So these rationalizations really can’t solve the problem for me; on the contrary, they play into my hands when I say that the thing is not a value problem. Okay?

Now, someone who thinks it is a value problem—a brother and sister—I assume there are quite a few such people, certainly in the world, and I assume even here among you. So how do you justify such a thing? After all, it doesn’t cause harm to anyone. The consent of both parties, we solved the issue of the children, there’s no trauma, everything is fine, two consenting adults, everything is excellent. Let them conduct their romance, they love each other and everything is wonderful. Why are you getting involved in what’s on their plate? Or not on their plate—I don’t know where. What difference does it make?

This feeling that says there is a value problem here basically tells us that there are some values that don’t come to prevent social damage or harm to others, but rather there are values of another kind. Okay? That’s really what lies behind these things. Now I’ll take the other example I gave earlier, with the person who is constantly tanning at the sea, which in my view is a value problem—unlike the life of a brother and sister, this is a value problem. Now there too, he’s not harming anyone. So I also agree on the principled level that there can be problematic actions even if they don’t harm anyone. It’s just that specifically regarding a brother and sister, I don’t think that’s a value problem. But fine, that’s a debate. Others do think it is—doesn’t matter at the moment. I’m just saying: I have no principled disagreement with the idea that there can be values that are not really morality in the simple sense of the word. They don’t come to prevent harm to others or harm to society; rather this is some sort of thing—let’s call them human values. Your human level is degraded if all you do all day is tan and do nothing of value. So I’d call that a human value, not a moral value. Your human level is degraded. You live like an animal; you’re not a human being, you’re like an animal. Okay?

Or someone who stuffs himself all day long. And someone who stuffs himself all day long—the “you shall be holy” of Nachmanides—is that a moral value? The scoundrel within the permission of the Torah, yes, who stuffs himself and indulges in excessive sexual relations—permitted sexual relations, sorry, just multiplying permitted sexual relations—and everything is permitted, there is no halakhic prohibition. Nachmanides says, but this is something problematic. What’s problematic about it? After all, there’s no halakhic problem, and there’s no moral problem either. Who suffers from the fact that I stuff myself all day and enjoy myself? Everything is fine. The problem here is a human problem, not a moral one. And unlike “and you shall do what is right and good,” let’s say—“and you shall do what is right and good” as opposed to “you shall be holy”—in “and you shall do what is right and good” we’re talking about moral problems par excellence; in “you shall be holy” we’re talking about human problems, not moral problems. People mix up these two famous comments of Nachmanides. I think they are talking about different facets. These are two kinds of values outside Jewish law, but they are two different kinds: one is moral values and one is human values.

But what matters for our purposes is that we suddenly encounter additional kinds of values, and regarding them too we can say fitting and unfitting. I don’t know if good and bad is the right terminology here—it may not be so appropriate—but fitting and unfitting. I don’t know, homosexuality. Someone who thinks this thing is problematic on the moral level—there are such people, lots of them think that. I don’t think so, but there are such people. Again, how do they explain it? Whom does it harm? That’s always what people ask, right? Whom does it harm? Two consenting adults, on the contrary, that’s what they want, they have no other option, they can’t have relations with members of the other gender, the other sex, call it what you like. What is morally problematic about this—that’s what people always ask.

So people get tangled up with that question, because religious people always get tangled up with “it’s unnatural,” it’s not—various bits of nonsense that you don’t know where they drop in from. It’s also unnatural not to speak slander. The most natural thing is to speak slander; that’s my natural feeling. I want to speak slander. It’s very unnatural not to speak slander. So therefore it’s not okay? Since when does something unnatural become morally defective? It’s simply nonsense, okay?

Why do they end up saying this nonsense, even intelligent people? Because they don’t know how to define for themselves what I just said: that there can be values even though they do not belong to the field of morality. Values—let’s call them human values—and in their eyes, again, I don’t agree, but in their eyes a life of a same-sex couple is something degraded on the human level. There’s no moral problem in it, but there is a value problem—that’s what they claim. Again, I don’t agree, but that’s what they claim. And I think that if I defined it this way for people, they would find it within themselves. Meaning, that’s what they’re trying to say. They’re not trying to say that there’s a moral problem here.

Now what do they do—again, like Gadi Taub—what do people do when they try to forcefully explain to you that there’s a moral problem here? They explain to you: “Look, when raising children, it’s a terrible home, because only a father and mother know how to raise children, and two fathers or two mothers can’t raise children.” It doesn’t really seem to be supported by research, though I’m a bit suspicious of research in these areas, because everyone recruits it for his own side and everything is biased there; I don’t know exactly what the truth is. But let’s say no one knows the truth—not just me, okay? Maybe except for whoever actually did the research. So anyone who says this is not really backed up. Why does he say it? Because he needs to explain to us why it’s immoral. He doesn’t understand that there are values that are not from the domain of morality but are other values. So he says, “It’s immoral.” Now you ask him why it’s immoral, who is harmed? Ah, I found it—the children will be harmed. If you raise children this way, they’ll come out wrong, because two fathers or two mothers can’t raise children properly. Again, these are attempts at rationalization like Gadi Taub. You’re trying by force to find problematic consequences in order to explain your feeling that there is something problematic here. Why? Because you always think that something problematic is always a matter of consequences. And what you really have in mind is moral values. But if you understood that on the categorical level there can be values that are not moral values, other values that are not moral values, you wouldn’t need all these rationalizations. You would say, “In my eyes this is ugly, period. It is humanly degraded.” Again, I don’t agree with this, but that is probably the feeling of those people making these claims. They’re just not equipped with the conceptual system to define properly what they feel, and I think that’s what they feel. And they try by force to make rationalizations about why the children will suffer and the environment will suffer and I don’t know what, and the world will cease to reproduce, and all kinds of nonsense like that. In our era that is really nonsense; you can solve all these problems without any trouble. So these silly rationalizations stem from a kind of distress of a person who feels something but cannot formulate for himself what he feels. He feels that this thing is not okay, but “not okay” here is not morally not okay, and I can’t point to what the problem is, what moral problem there is here, so I invent one: “There’s a moral problem because the children will suffer, because society…” What will suffer? Because it’s unnatural, all kinds of inventions of that sort. Okay? Very simply, I think the feeling is that in their eyes this is—I don’t know—what are these lives? Call them low, degraded. Again, I don’t agree with all this, so it’s hard for me to defend these views, but I think that’s what they mean to say.

There are of course many other examples of this. Lack of manners. Lack of manners or behavior that is not refined. Behavior that is not refined is not necessarily harm to others, but crude behavior—meaning, you’re just coarse. Not because someone is hurt, but because it’s obvious that you behave in an unrefined way. So here too, there is some kind of value, and it’s not morality because no one is harmed by it. Okay? Eating human flesh. Here is Rabbi Amital’s favorite example. Eating human flesh, which in principle is not prohibited—although according to Maimonides there is a prohibition, because according to Maimonides it is the nullification of a positive commandment, but never mind—in principle there is no prohibition in it according to most views, yet people still perceive it as something very ugly. By the way, not in my eyes. I don’t see what the problem is with eating human flesh, not at all. We of course have a natural revulsion from it; I have that natural revulsion too. But revulsion is not—so what if there is revulsion? Revulsion is like, I don’t know, eating excrement—sorry for the vulgar images, but these are things that are very revolting to me too. But does that mean there is something problematically evaluative here? I don’t know. Someone who thinks there is, I assume will explain that it’s some sort of degraded behavior on the human level. I don’t know, fine, maybe. But it’s not a moral problem in the ordinary sense of the word. Okay?

And so on. Of course we can move to positive values, not only negative ones. Modern values such as individualism, self-expression, freedom, liberty, education, things of that sort. What about them? All these are not values such that if I don’t realize them then someone is harmed. If I don’t express myself or don’t realize myself, you can perhaps say that I am harmed, but if I’m comfortable this way then who are you to determine whether I’m harmed or not harmed? I’m fine this way, without self-realization. I want to live the life of a slave. So what’s wrong with that? It’s my right. So who is harmed? Why is it not okay? “For they are My servants and not servants to servants”—that’s how the Torah expresses it, or not the Torah but a midrash of the Sages, but the midrash expresses it as something ugly, to want to be a slave. And in our world too, someone who does not aspire to freedom is perceived as humanly degraded. But there is no moral problem here in the usual sense. There is a problem of lack of self-expression or self-realization or self-completion, and therefore perhaps one can call it a human value, but not necessarily a moral value. Okay?

I can give many more examples. Maybe I’ll finish with one more example, related to what I just said. I’ve just remembered an article I once read by Tomer Persico—I wrote a column about it on my site. There is some American psychologist, Jonathan Haidt I think his name is, who wrote a book on morality, the psychology of morality, and there he really brings all kinds of examples of this sort. About someone who had sex with a frozen chicken he bought at the grocery store and then ate it. These are obviously fictional stories, but he says: is this problematic? Haidt asks: is there some sort of moral problem here? Everyone is utterly revolted. The neighbors’ dog was run over at night, so I took its carcass at night when no one saw, had sex with it, and then threw it away. Is there something morally problematic here? It doesn’t seem so to me. But for Haidt it’s obvious that yes, there is. And then he tries to explain that there are different levels of morality and how it is embedded in us and what it comes to achieve and all kinds of things of that sort—while all along his assumption is that morality is a psychological matter. And I claim that morality is a philosophical matter, not a psychological one. Therefore the fact that something is embedded in us in a certain way or comes to achieve something does not make it a moral thing. No connection at all. It only explains why it is in me, but it doesn’t say why what is in me is also morally valid or correct. It is an expression of the same thing.

Let’s go back for a moment to what I began with earlier. Rabbi Chaim Vital asks why the Torah does not command the refinement of character traits. It’s his famous question in Shaarei Kedusha. In Shaarei Kedusha he asks this and gives an answer, and Rabbi Kook gives an answer, all kinds of answers. But the question is no less interesting than the answers. Because at a certain point I suddenly caught myself. Everyone repeats this and looks for explanations and excuses and all kinds of things like that. But the truth is that the Torah does command this, the refinement of character traits. This is like a Tosafot-style observation, like the famous story about Rabbi Chaim, right? He asks why the Torah does not command the refinement of character traits and everyone searches for excuses, but the Torah does command it. So why look for excuses? There is no question. Where? “Just as He is merciful, so too you shall be merciful; just as He is gracious, so too you shall be gracious.” One must cleave to the traits of the Holy One, blessed be He. It is counted as a commandment by Maimonides: cleave to the traits of the Holy One, blessed be He. So why does he assume that the Torah does not command the refinement of character traits?

It seems to me that Rabbi Chaim Vital—I have no idea exactly what he knew and to what extent—but Rabbi Kook knew this, meaning he didn’t miss this point. So I don’t know, maybe Rabbi Chaim Vital also knew; he was a tremendous Torah scholar. I simply don’t know what his knowledge was in this area, because kabbalists are not always actually Torah scholars, as is well known. In any case, for our purposes, I think the explanation is as follows. What does it mean, “Just as He is merciful, so too you shall be merciful”? How do you know what the Holy One’s traits are? Did you penetrate His soul? Did you chat with Him around a round table over a cup of coffee? How do you know what His traits are? Do you know Him? You see His actions. Right? You see how He behaves in the world. And let’s look at this optimistically and say that indeed in the world one sees graciousness and mercy and patience and all that. Not everyone would agree with that. But that’s at least how the Sages saw it, okay?

So the Sages tell us that I must cleave to the traits of the Holy One, blessed be He. What does “His traits” mean? “His traits” here does not mean traits in the sense in which we speak about our own personal character traits, but rather cleaving to the ways of the Holy One, blessed be He. The intention is to be merciful and gracious, to behave toward others with mercy and grace as the Holy One behaves. Because after all, the traits of the Holy One are not something we can know anything about. According to the way Maimonides speaks about it, these are negative attributes; it’s practically forbidden to speak about this at all. But even if not, clearly we have no way of knowing anything about Him. What we can know somewhat is how He behaves in the world, not who He is. So if the Torah tells me to cleave to His traits, it apparently means that I should behave as He behaves.

And what Rabbi Chaim Vital asks is why the Torah does not command the refinement of character traits—not behavior of mercy and grace, but being merciful and gracious in my own traits, not just behaving mercifully and graciously. That, there is no commandment for. On that there is no commandment. And the question is why the Torah does not command that. It’s a good question. But that too can be discussed. Perhaps it doesn’t command it because there is no value in it. What’s the problem? The value is helping others, not harming others. What value is there in dealing with what my inner soul looks like? What difference does it make, as long as it has no practical expression? As for the practical expressions, there is already a commandment—that I should behave with mercy and grace and all that. That commandment exists; it’s covered. Okay?

It may be that in order to behave correctly I also need to improve my traits; that too may be true. But then improving my traits is not a commandment; it is only instrumental. We spoke about this—it is not a value, it is a means in order for me to behave correctly. And the commandment is the thing that is the value, namely correct behavior. Rabbi Chaim Vital asks this question and apparently assumes that there is value in refining character traits not merely as an instrumental value so that I will behave correctly, but that refining character traits is itself valuable, right? That is his assumption. Therefore he asks: so why doesn’t the Torah command it? And there are various answers, doesn’t matter. But the assumption in his question is that there is value to refined traits not only insofar as they bring about refined behavior. And there you have an indication—shall we call it a source? I don’t like calling statements of later authorities a source—but an indication that there is a non-moral value, a human value, what I called earlier—not a value of not harming others or helping others. There is a counted commandment to be merciful and gracious and cleave to the traits of the Holy One, blessed be He. The value of refining myself inwardly regardless of outward expressions, as an end in itself, not as a means to behave correctly—what kind of value is that? Is it a moral value? No. Whom does it harm if I’m not like that? That is what I earlier called, I think, a human value. In other words, someone whose character traits are not refined is degraded on the human level, but that is not a moral problem. Okay? At least that’s what Rabbi Chaim Vital assumes, and I tend to identify with it. So this is, I think, an example in which the distinction between moral values and human values becomes especially sharp.

Moral values are what the Torah commands. Human values—for some reason the Torah does not command them. But still, this too is apparently something that at least Rabbi Kook and Rabbi Chaim Vital and everyone who followed Rabbi Chaim Vital thinks exists, that such values are important. Even though they are not moral values according to the simple definition I gave above.

Now I’ll ask again: what about religious values? The value of not eating meat and milk together now—not poultry with milk—keeping the Sabbath, whatever, all the religious values. I’m not talking right now about “do not murder” and “do not steal”; we’ll deal with those later. I’m talking right now about religious values that are morally neutral. Not eating meat and milk together, creeping creatures, or whatever, impurity and purity, all those things. What are those? Here too we have some feeling that we can speak of them in the language of fitting and unfitting. But it seems to me that speaking about them in terms of good and bad is problematic. Because yes, of course, you can use those terms in whatever sense you want as long as you’re consistent. But it’s confusing, and in my opinion not advisable. Because good and bad are reserved for moral values. And these values, on the face of it, do not seem like moral values. They are other kinds of values. I’ll call them now religious values. Okay?

So if that’s the case, we’ve basically already discovered three types of value systems. There is a value system of moral values, there is a system of human values, and there is a system of religious values. And I think these are three different categories, which do not speak to one another, but all of them in some sense we call values. Why? Because with respect to all of them—if you remember the first lecture where I began this series, I spoke a bit about Maimonides in the eighth root. I tried to define the conceptual sphere of fitting and unfitting as against truth and falsehood. Truth and falsehood speak about facts, while fitting and unfitting speak about norms. But fitting and unfitting can be expressed as good and bad, transgression and commandment—that’s the halakhic context—and human, degraded, animalistic, human—let’s call it that—humanly degraded and humanly elevated. All of these we call fitting and unfitting.

So notice: we’re starting to discover a hierarchy of concepts, of standards—not of values, but of evaluative standards. If all moral values are measured on the scale of the good, and all human values are measured on the scale of the degree of humanity in them or the lack of humanity, the beastliness, and the religious standards by the degree of commandment or transgression—let’s call that minus-commandment, if you like—all these together are measured in a language we can call fitting and unfitting. Fitting and unfitting is a general term under which each of the previous three categories falls. Religiously fitting and religiously unfitting, humanly fitting and humanly unfitting, morally fitting and morally unfitting. In other words, we discover that now not only have we found one abstract concept—the good, which underlies all moral values—but there is a broader or more basic concept, the fitting, which underlies all values, not only moral values. Moral values, human values, and religious values—and perhaps there are more kinds. For example, aesthetic values. Fine. There are people who see aesthetics as a value—for example, arranging a house aesthetically. Maybe call that a human value; it may be that it belongs under human value, I don’t know. I don’t know whether it is a separate category; maybe it really belongs there. But I’m saying there are all sorts of such kinds, and I think they can all enter under some category. I’m using the terms fitting and unfitting; if you have a better concept, then wonderful—it doesn’t matter to me. But I think our shared sense is that there is nevertheless something common there that unites them all. I call it fitting and unfitting for the sake of our discussion. If someone has a better concept, no problem.

Okay? So what does this actually mean? Because understand now—what happened is I could broaden the question I was wrestling with in moral conflicts, and I could ask what happens in religious conflicts. We spoke about that: preservation of life and the Sabbath in the previous lecture. Moral conflicts—I said that if I can’t get around the incommensurability, I decide them through ranking in the currency of the good: how good is it. Human conflicts I rank through how human it is. For example, behaving impolitely—sorry, non-politely—fine, eating with the fork on the right and the knife on the left is not like, I don’t know, tanning on the beach all your life. It seems to me that’s a lighter offense on the human level, if at all. Okay? So there is ranking on the scale of how human or inhuman it is. That is a ranking that can decide conflicts between human values, one human value against another. Just as the concept of the good works in the moral plane, the concept of the human works in the realm of human values. In the religious realm, of course the question is how serious the commandment is or how serious the transgression is, right? The level of commandment-ness or transgression or religious severity—it doesn’t matter—is the currency by means of which I rank, or the standard by means of which I rank, religious values.

The big question is what happens when I get conflicts between human values and moral values, or between religious values and moral values—which is our topic. So after I already said earlier that there is a hierarchy of standards, then we no longer need to panic even over such a thing. On the face of it I would say: if an intramoral conflict can be ranked because there is the concept of the good common to the two conflicting values, and an intrahuman conflict can be ranked because there is a concept of the degree of humanity shared by the two conflicting values, and likewise commandments and transgressions in the religious sphere—what happens when there is a clash between a religious value and a moral value? Ostensibly that is already absolute incommensurability, like the kindness of human beings and the amount of water in the ocean. So that cannot be decided. Not only do I have no way—it has no answer. But that is not true. I think that is not true.

And that is why we struggle so much with questions of Jewish law and morality. We struggle with questions of Jewish law and morality because it is clear to us that there is a conflict here and there ought to be an answer here—whether this answer or that answer is correct, one can debate, but there is some answer. The conflict is real, unlike the question whether there is more water in the ocean or more kindness in human beings. Why? Because the concept of the fitting stands in the background. The concept of the fitting is shared by religious values, moral values, and human values. And now the question is the degree of fittingness. Let’s call it that. And I can now rank moral values against religious values not in the currency of good and bad, not in the currency of commandment and transgression, but in some currency shared by those two categories, and that is the currency of the fitting. In other words, we basically have a hierarchy of currencies. We have three kinds of currencies: the currency of the good, the currency of humanity, the currency of commandment-ness. Above these three currencies there is the general currency of the degree of fittingness. And therefore there is something shared by these three worlds of content or these three evaluative worlds: they all belong to this world of fitting and unfitting. And therefore the conflicts between Jewish law and morality are real conflicts, and in principle they can also have an answer—even though I’m not sure I always have a way to get to it, certainly not in a systematic or algorithmic way. But that is also true within the world of morality. Therefore on the principled level there is no essential difference between a dilemma of Jewish law and morality and an intramoral dilemma. Why dilemmas of Jewish law and morality trouble people more than intramoral dilemmas, I’ve never understood. There’s a dilemma here and there’s a dilemma there; one has to decide somehow, one way or another.

So up to this point I’ve reached some sort of map of the world of values, a map of the world of values that enables me to define the dilemma and claim that this is a real dilemma, not an imagined one, and in principle it needs to be decided and is decided in some way, perhaps not algorithmically. Why nevertheless do some people have the feeling that in a conflict between Jewish law and morality this is not a real conflict? At least some people have such a feeling. Because they think there is actually no way to be subject to these two systems simultaneously. Meaning, if you are subject to the religious system, then morality—as Leibowitz said—is an atheistic category, illegitimate. Okay? Therefore you are not really in a dilemma when there is a clash between morality and a religious value. Not because the dilemma is not defined, but because in order to be in a dilemma you need to be subject to both systems. I think that is people’s feeling. And therefore people feel that if so, then clearly the religious value prevails—not because it prevails, but because there is no second side to the coin. If you are subject to the Holy One, blessed be He, you cannot be subject to anything else. It is idolatry to be subject to something besides the Holy One, blessed be He. I’ll deal with that later; I think it’s not true, but that’s people’s feeling.

But in order to get to that systematically, I want to open the second chapter of our topic, and I want to talk a bit about conflicts—or not conflicts, sorry—about being subject to several normative systems, or several value systems. So in order to explain that situation, whether it is possible and what one does within it and all kinds of such things, I’ll preface this with some introduction.

When I ask myself why I need to fulfill commandments, the explanation obviously cannot be given in terms of commandment. Because “there is a commandment to fulfill commandments” is irrelevant, right? Because that would itself need backing. I’ll ask myself, and that very commandment itself, why should it be fulfilled? You cannot use a commandment to ground the obligation to fulfill commandments. The principle that grounds the obligation to fulfill commandments has to be found outside the normative system under discussion. And that is true of every normative system.

When I ask myself why I should obey the dictates of morality, the answer won’t be because there is a moral value in being a moral person. That’s nonsense. Or to say because there is a value in being a moral person—I don’t know—but it’s not a moral value. Rather, it is fitting to be a moral person, if I speak in the language I used earlier. But not because it is moral to be a moral person. “It is moral to be a moral person” is a tautology. It’s true, but it’s not an argument. I’m asking why be moral. Okay? So the answer cannot be given in the terms of morality; it must be given in the terms of the fitting. What does that mean? It basically means that every normative system, when I ask myself why I should be committed to it, the answer will be given in terms of a principle that is not part of that system. It cannot be part of that system, because if it is part of that system, then the question applies to it as well. It cannot give me the explanation for why to obey the system when I am asking of it itself why to obey it.

Think about what the Avnei Nezer asks. The Mishneh LaMelekh asks this regarding a certain case: what is the basis of the obligation to keep oaths before the giving of the Torah? After all, the Torah had not yet been given; this law obligating me to keep oaths had not yet been said. More than that, asks the Mishneh LaMelekh: we are bound by oath from Sinai, right? The Sages tell us that our obligation to fulfill commandments is because we swore at Mount Sinai. But the obligation to keep an oath is itself one of the commandments. So before we accepted the commandments, what validity did the oath to fulfill commandments have? After all, the obligation to keep an oath is itself one of the commandments—that is what the Mishneh LaMelekh asks. Okay?

The answer has to be not in terms of commandments. That means there is value in obeying an oath beyond the command of the Torah. There must be. Because if there weren’t such a value, there would have been no point in adjuring the people of Israel at Sinai to fulfill commandments. There must be such a value. And the proof is that the patriarchs swore long before the giving of the Torah—Abraham and Abimelech, Eliezer—there were oaths all the time. How? The Torah had not yet been given. There was no “he shall not break his word.” There must have been some human command, moral command, however you want to call it, to keep my oaths. And that thing does not emerge from the Torah; it precedes the Torah, because otherwise it could not serve as the basis grounding my obligation to keep the Torah if it itself were one of the Torah’s commandments.

The same applies to rabbinic commandments. You say: why obey rabbinic commandments? The answer is: because the rabbis said so. So they said so—so what? I’m asking why obey what they said. You can’t answer me: because they said so. When I ask why obey what they said, you have to bring me a Torah-level law such as “do not deviate,” which lies outside the rabbinic system and can ground why to obey the rabbinic system. Okay?

Therefore every normative system—for example Rabbi Akiva Eiger asks this, and so does Kovetz Shiurim; one of them asks regarding a minor, one of them asks regarding a deaf person. A minor is rabbinically obligated to fulfill commandments. There is a dispute between Rashi and Tosafot about the law of education, but there is a view that the law of education imposes on the minor himself a rabbinic obligation to fulfill commandments, and not only on the father to educate him—the minor himself is rabbinically obligated. So everyone asks: but why should he obey the rabbis? Because of “do not deviate”? But he isn’t obligated in “do not deviate” either; he isn’t obligated in commandments. Because the rabbis told him to obey “do not deviate”? But I’m asking why he should obey the rabbis.

The same with a deaf person. A deaf person is exempt from commandments. So now the question is: but there are those who say that he is nevertheless rabbinically obligated. Again the same question: why should he obey the rabbis? Because of “do not deviate”? But he is exempt from commandments. Because the rabbis said “do not deviate”? Fine, but my question is why obey the rabbis.

And indeed what all these things point to is that when you come to ground commitment to a certain normative system, you must ground it on a value that is not part of it, that is external to it. It must be so. It cannot be that what grounds that system is something from within the system itself. Okay?

The principle that grounds the system I will call, for the sake of the upcoming discussion, a value principle. This is the principle that gives value to the system and says there is value in maintaining the system. Okay? I’ll call it a value principle, and later I

[Speaker B] will talk about different value principles and how this takes us back to conflicts, and to Torah and morality, and so on. Okay, I’ll stop here. If anyone wants to comment or ask, you’re welcome. The distinction the Rabbi made between morality as good and bad—what is good and what is bad—and a human value, where something is degraded or beastly and so on, doesn’t that begin from some sort of postmodernist basis, as though there is no truth, no binding human standard, and therefore only if I harm someone can it count as a moral problem, but on the personal human level—?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I completely disagree. I disagree on both counts. First, I disagree because I did not say that human values are manners and etiquette. Manners and etiquette are conventions. We could have agreed that the knife goes on the left and the fork on the right, and there would have been no problem with that; it wouldn’t be any less good than the current convention. Okay? My claim is that human values are binding values, they are real, they are not conventions, they are not social agreements—they are simply values of a different kind. That’s one side of the coin. On the other side of the coin, I’d say that if you think these are only conventions, then moral values too are only conventions. So what if it harms someone? The fact that it harms someone is a fact, but a fact cannot ground a norm—that’s the naturalistic fallacy. So on both sides of the equation I disagree. Anyone else? Okay, so we’ll stop here. Have a peaceful Sabbath.

[Speaker B] Thank you very much. A peaceful Sabbath.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Goodbye.