Q&A: Why Do We Need to Observe Jewish Law at All?
Why Do We Need to Observe Jewish Law at All?
Question
Hello Rabbi Michi.
A central question that troubles me, and one that I don’t think I’ve found an answer to, is the question of commitment to Jewish law.
After reading most of your books and several articles you published, I saw that on the Yeshivat Yeruham website there is a file of your lectures on the subject of Jewish law. And in the first lecture—lo and behold—why do we need to observe Jewish law at all? In that lecture you explained that the question itself begs the question, since we are looking for a reason with a higher value from which observance of Jewish law can be derived; and since we are trying to conclude that Jewish law is the highest value, the very search for a reason to observe it is absurd.
Later in the lecture you explained that just as Euclid’s system of axioms is admittedly not the only possible one, but any sensible person sees that it fits our reality, and that it is the only one that does fit, so too we need to recognize that Jewish law fits the world. Recognition instead of finding reasons; intuition. (By the way, I think this is also what the Maharal meant in Netiv HaTorah, “the Torah is the order of the world”—that is, one of the important things to understand about the Torah is, first of all, that it is ordered and fits reality.)
So far so good. That works on the rational plane, in the sense that there cannot be a reason to observe Jewish law, only an inner recognition of it—and yet my question returns: what happens if
naturally I do not recognize that?
From here I’ll move to the second question—why shouldn’t I accept only the philosophical ideas behind the Torah, and not the halakhic acts themselves?
While studying the book The Voice of Prophecy by Rabbi HaNazir, a book you mentioned many times in your books and on which you based the conclusion of Two Wagons and a Hot-Air Balloon, I saw that HaNazir writes in the first part, The Pattern of Jewish Religious Philosophy, that what is unique about Jewish philosophy is that it comes to expression in action. It doesn’t merely come in parables and not in systematic form, but rather because the Torah wants to show that the philosophical ideas it offers have a hold on reality; they are not detached.
Therefore one could understand that the answer to my question is that it is impossible to accept only the ideas, because they are bound up together with the actions.
This explanation too is puzzling to me. It may sound nice in theory, but is that really so in practice? I accept many other philosophical ideas without any practical grounding, based on what seems right to me. Why should the Torah’s ideas be any different?
In summary, I would appreciate it if you would address and try to answer my two questions:
1. What happens if I do not recognize that Jewish law fits the world?
2. Why shouldn’t I accept only what seems right to me from the Torah—ideas I like, even commandments that I feel are good for me or for society? Why am I obligated to observe all the commandments, the lenient and the severe alike, and not suffice with only what seems good to me?
And of course, these are not halakhic questions. These are questions from outside the halakhic world.
Thanks in advance,
Answer
2. Let me begin by saying that if you accept the ideas that seem right to you, that is not called accepting something from the Torah. You are simply doing what you find appropriate. The meaning of faith and Torah-based commitment is to accept things because they are written in the Torah, not because they seem right to you. This is the meaning of the midrash that the Holy One, blessed be He, went around to the nations, and each one rejected His offer to receive the Torah because of some commandment that did not suit it. They examined their commitment item by item, and were willing to accept what seemed right to them. In contrast, Israel, the “rash nation,” accepted the Torah blank, without asking what was written in it.
Now you need to examine yourself. If you have no trust in the Torah and in the Giver of the Torah, then don’t accept it. Then do what seems right to you, whether you were influenced by the Torah or by Chipopo or by the poems of Natan Zach. It really doesn’t matter. If you accept the yoke and halakhic commitment to the Torah, that means you do things because they are written there and not because they seem right to you. In such a situation there is neither logic nor possibility for picking and choosing.
But I don’t really see what I have to answer to the question of why not do what seems right to you. If that’s what seems right to you—do it. My remarks are addressed to someone who does accept the commitment.
1. If you do not recognize that Jewish law fits the world, then in my opinion that really doesn’t matter. It is not supposed to fit the world. Once I made a comparison to the axioms of geometry, but that comparison does not go all the way. The axioms of geometry seem true to us because that is how we see the world. As for religious commitment, what I meant was that you have an intuition that one should accept commitment to God’s command, and not necessarily that it fits the world in some sense.
See what I wrote here.
Also see the article by Yaakov Yehoshua Ross (I think he is mentioned in my remarks in the article), in the collection Religion and Morality edited by Avi Sagi and Danny Statman.
To the questioner, I want to understand you: which positive commandments do you not like? Or in other words, which ones make you feel bad?
+Are you a person who believes in the Creator?
Besides that, did you read what the Rabbi told you? What did you decide in your heart?
A piece of advice for life: “He who rules his spirit is better than one who conquers a city.”
To be a human being you need to keep the commandments, as the wise man said: “The end of the matter, all having been heard: fear God and keep His commandments, for this is the whole of man.”