Q&A: On the Lecture Series “Morality and Jewish Law”
On the Lecture Series “Morality and Jewish Law”
Question
Hello and blessings,
After listening to the Rabbi’s lecture series on “Jewish Law and Morality,” I was left with several questions about what was said.
A number of difficulties arise from the approach the Rabbi supported, both on the practical level and in terms of reconciling the sources.
How should one act if there is a contradiction between moral values and the moral feeling embedded within us [I intentionally stick to the approach the Rabbi supported after the general explanation of what morality is and what binding force it has] and a commandment of the Torah?
It seems that the Rabbi said that each person should adhere to the inner feeling implanted in him by the Holy One, blessed be He. But if we say that there is priority or force [priority or force apparently depends on explaining the dispute between Rabbi Shimon ben Menasya and Shmuel], this is difficult both logically and from the sources.
• From the logical side: why should we prefer the moral feeling over the commandment? After all, both originate from the Holy One, blessed be He. In other words: even if the moral feeling is immanent-inherent, it has not been shown that it should be given precedence over the commandment of the Torah.
• There is another logical difficulty: this approach opens the door to people arguing about what is moral and what is not. I know that during the lectures the Rabbi pointed out that one must distinguish between what may be interpreted as moral and what is actually moral, and he gave the example of the soldier who “completes” his equipment, etc. But here too, how does one determine what is only considered moral and what is actually moral?
• From the sources: the Rabbi himself cited the Talmud in tractate Sabbath, “You impulsive people, who put your mouths before your ears…” from which we see that the uniqueness of the Jewish people is in their absolute acceptance of the commandments, not in accepting an inner feeling, but in obedience to the commandments themselves?
• There is another very basic difficulty from the sources: according to your approach, why were these commandments written? Unlike Rabbi Kook’s interpretation in Akedat Yitzhak, where Abraham withstood the trial and the Holy One, blessed be He, wanted to teach him the importance of the place of moral feeling, with ordinary commandments there is no room to say that the Holy One, blessed be He, wanted to teach us this moral lesson, since we have already learned it, and we assume that no unnecessary verses or gestures were written in the Torah.
I will only conclude by saying that during the lecture series the Rabbi said several times that later there would be discussion of practical examples, among which he mentioned, half-sarcastically, the “wiping out of Amalek,” while noting that this example is “worn out.”
I must say that in the end I did not find a clear solution even to this “worn-out” example. I am taking the trouble to write this because I have read, and am still reading, a great deal of the Rabbi’s writings, and this is the first time I felt there was avoidance of certain points in the topic under discussion.
Answer
I did not understand the question/questions.
I never claimed that morality overrides the commandment. What I argued is that morality too has force, even though it is not written explicitly. Its force can be derived from “and you shall do what is right and good,” or simply from reason, but that is not important at the moment. See column 15 here on the site.
Now, if there is a contradiction between a moral imperative and a commandment of the Torah, we are in a conflict that must be decided. What I argued is not that morality necessarily overrides, but that it is not necessarily inferior. One must find a resolution (and it is not always possible to do so). I suggested several situations in which a decision can be reached (such as lex specialis, bypassing the conflict as Rabbi Shimon ben Menasya does in Sabbath, and saving a life, etc.).
Now, please ask your question clearly if it still remains.
Discussion on Answer
Of course, my question is about a case where there is no possibility of creating a “bypass of the conflict”; this kind of maneuver can’t be done everywhere.
When there are not two parameters that can be translated under one system of considerations.
For example, animal suffering versus offering sacrifices.
Wiping out Amalek, etc. … where there is no translation such as “Desecrate one Sabbath for him so that he may keep many Sabbaths.”
As I recall, I explained it there. This is no different from any other value-conflict, such as a conflict within morality itself. How do you decide that? I explained there the problem of incommensurability. Therefore I suggested lex specialis where possible, and if not, then intuition decides. As in any other conflict. Even in Jewish law there are no mathematical criteria for how to decide, and in the end people use intuition.
This is the “fifth section of the Shulchan Arukh” that the Hazon Ish spoke about.
First, regarding your claim that intuition can decide conflicts of this sort: as I already mentioned, according to you the moral system and the halakhic system are two separate systems (you even mentioned Leibowitz’s words about an atheist system). Logic suggests that intuition can decide when the conflict is within the same system and is evaluated with the same conceptual tools, but not so in a clash between two systems, where intuition is nothing more than an arbitrary decision. Why should I prefer one side over the other?
Logic suggests that one also cannot decide between two different values that belong to morality. That is incommensurability. But as I explained, we nevertheless do have the ability to decide. I have nothing to add.
And that, of course, does not answer the questions above.
Definitely disappointing.
Indeed. Anyone looking for sharp criteria and certainties will, by definition, be disappointed. In every field. But at some stage one has to grow up out of that. Positivism is a childish view. So what I wrote absolutely does answer all the questions.
There is no doubt that positivism is a childish view.
But you still haven’t said how, according to your approach, one can establish fixed moral standards rather than relying on each and every person’s subjective feeling—or is that too a childish expectation?
But you still have not said…
The assumption that whatever has no sharp criterion does not exist—that itself is positivism. Is there a criterion that determines what a high-quality essay is? Is the conclusion then that the quality of an essay is something totally subjective (that there is no such thing as quality)? This is Phaedrus’s question in the cult book Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance; look there carefully.
By the way, I am not talking about subjective feeling in an emotional sense, but about intuition. Intuition, even though it too is not necessarily based on criteria, is not emotion. Nachmanides writes in the introduction to Milhamot that the wisdom of our Torah is not like astronomy and geometry, whose proofs are cut-and-dried… I devoted two books to this (Shtei Agalot and Emet Ve-lo Yatziv). This is also like returning a lost item to a Torah scholar based on visual recognition, but this is not the place to elaborate.
Even if we accept this explanation, then why were these commandments written?
Which commandments?
Wiping out Amalek, for instance, or expelling the wife of a priest who was raped, etc.
So that we would wipe out Amalek and expel the wife of a priest who was raped. What’s the question?
It’s a bit hard for me to understand the lack of understanding—or the feigned innocence!
If you hold that we can follow our moral intuitions and not wipe out Amalek, then why were these commandments written?
Or if you’ll say that we must obey Jewish law and indeed wipe out Amalek, then in what case were you talking about when you said we can follow our moral intuitions?
It’s not feigned innocence. If you listened to my lectures there, I don’t see why I need to repeat things that were explained there very clearly.
When the Holy One, blessed be He, commands something, He took the moral implications into account and nevertheless instructed us to do it. The dilemmas arise only in places where there are different interpretive possibilities (and one wants to decide in favor of one of them based on moral considerations), or when the clash is not essential but incidental (such as saving a life and the Sabbath).
I would recommend listening to 31:35-32:50 in the seventh lecture of the series “Morality and Jewish Law” before claiming that you are repeating your words.
There you say explicitly that only in a specific command (for example, a revelation—like your example there of Abraham and Sodom) is it considered that He “took it into account and nevertheless instructed us,” but not in a general command such as wiping out Amalek.
Which is not what you wrote in the last comments.
I do not say that there, and I did not say that anywhere else. Listen again. If this time you do it with the aim of understanding and not with the aim of finding contradictions, then you’ll understand what I said. And with that, I am done.
If you argued that there is no single guiding principle, then how are we supposed to decide? Practically speaking, when does morality prevail and when does the Torah’s commandment prevail?