Q&A: Torah, Morality, and Science
Torah, Morality, and Science
Question
As far as I’ve read of the Rabbi’s approach (and I’ve only read a little), the contradictory relationship between science and religion is mostly a mistake, since these are two parallel domains that for the most part do not contradict one another. Science deals with facts, whereas religion deals with religious norms.
Thus, for example, the Torah does not command returning a lost object, and nevertheless the moral norm commands us to return a lost object, and there is no contradiction here. At most there is a practical conflict about how one should actually behave, but there is no contradiction.
From what I understood, this means that the Torah’s command does not contain some moral statement or moral theory. For example, the fact that the Torah permits a beautiful captive woman is a religious permission, whereas according to morality it is still forbidden, and therefore in such a situation it would be forbidden to do it.
I remember that Chaim Navon wrote the opposite in Gesher Bnot Yaakov: that from all the laws of the Torah some kind of moral thought and theory emerges that clashes with Western theory, and therefore we should listen only to what is written in the Torah.
As I understood it, the Rabbi does not agree with him, correct? Can one say that the point of disagreement is the identification of Torah with morality according to Chaim Navon’s approach (following Rabbi Kook?), as opposed to the non-identification according to the Rabbi’s approach (following Leibowitz?)
One more small point: according to the Rabbi, are all the commandments like this, or are there some that are indeed identified with some moral or ideological idea that conflicts with our theories, and if so, then what do we do?
Answer
The Torah does not command returning a lost object? There is a chapter about this in tractate Bava Metzia, verses in the Torah, and all the halakhic decisors discuss it.
I don’t remember what Chaim Navon wrote, but according to your description that is indeed the difference.
I didn’t understand the question. Can you give an example?
Discussion on Answer
Except that the Torah sometimes forbids returning it to a non-Jew and doesn’t just refrain from commanding it. Then there really is a contradiction, and hairsplitting won’t help.
There is no contradiction, and no hairsplitting is needed.
First, the prohibition exists only according to certain views. According to most views there is no prohibition, only no obligation. In Shulchan Arukh, Choshen Mishpat 266:1, it says that the issue is strengthening the hands of transgressors. Meaning, there is no prohibition on the act of returning it itself (see below).
Second, even if the Torah forbids it, it may be for non-moral reasons (religious values), and that does not contradict the claim that morally it is proper to return it. See Column 15.
And third, as I explained in the article about Meiri (“Is There an ‘Enlightened’ Idolatry?”), this prohibition, even if it exists, was said regarding non-Jews who do not keep the seven Noahide commandments, meaning they behave in an immoral and inhuman way. So there is no moral problem in not returning their lost object. But to enlightened non-Jews one should return their lost object.
According to most views there is no prohibition? In Sanhedrin 76b: “One who returns a lost object to a Cuthean, concerning him Scripture says: ‘The Lord will not be willing to forgive him.’” And Maimonides wrote: “One who returns it transgresses, because he strengthens the hands of the wicked of the world.” It would seem that the Meiri’s words can work according to Maimonides. But according to the view that “he shows by himself that returning a lost object is not important to him, for he does so even for a Cuthean, regarding whom he was not commanded” — Rashi on Sanhedrin there, and similarly the Ramah; and Nachmanides and Rashba in Kiddushin 17b, and Ran there on page 7 in the Rif. Seemingly it does not fit here to say that they are enlightened. All the more so according to Tosafot on Yoma 85a and Ketubot 15b (s.v. ‘to return’), who repeat several times that “it is a grave prohibition,” and one can infer from their words in Ketubot that even for the sake of peaceful relations one may not return it, since the Talmud there discusses an abandoned infant found in a city whose majority is Jewish, and Rav Pappa said: “For what legal purpose? To return his lost object.” And Tosafot writes that keeping him alive is not such a novelty, since we support the poor of the non-Jews for the sake of peaceful relations. One can infer that a lost object may not be returned even for the sake of peaceful relations.
A.H., that is exactly what I wrote.
According to Maimonides and the Shulchan Arukh, there is no prohibition from the standpoint of returning a lost object itself, but only because it strengthens the hands of the wicked of the world. Others hold that there is a real prohibition here within the laws of returning a lost object themselves (which in my humble opinion is very puzzling. Why, then, should we not forbid women to perform time-bound positive commandments, since by doing so they show that the command is not important in their eyes, seeing as they also do what they were not commanded? And why should we not forbid returning a lost object after the owner has despaired of recovering it, for the same reason? And so on. But this is not the place to elaborate).
But even according to the view that this is a prohibition not because of strengthening the wicked, one can still say as Meiri does, in two ways:
A. If the non-Jew conducts himself according to the civilized norms of the nations, there is an obligation to return it to him, and therefore the fact that I return it proves nothing.
B. And even if there is still no obligation to return it, there is still room for the reasoning that this value overrides the reasoning that he shows that returning lost objects is not important to him. Only where there is no value in returning a lost object to a non-Jew is that (puzzling) reasoning — that it shows returning lost objects is not important to him — strong enough to prohibit it. And that is necessarily what must be said regarding returning a lost object after despair of recovery. Why do those medieval authorities not say there that it shows the commandment of returning lost objects is not important to him? Clearly, when there is value in it, that reasoning is pushed aside. And the same applies here.
If so, then it’s not clear to me why there is any doubt at all about whether to return it to an abandoned infant found in a city whose majority is Jewish. If he is Jewish — excellent, and if he is a non-Jew — presumably he is bound by religious norms. So was the doubt about someone who is not enlightened but maybe is Jewish?
Just the opposite. In their times, the presumption regarding a non-Jew was that he was not so bound. Obviously they did not examine each person individually, but established the Jewish law according to the average/common non-Jew.
I meant returning a lost object to a non-Jew.