Q&A: The Hazon Ish's Conception of Morality
The Hazon Ish's Conception of Morality
Question
Good morning.
If I understood correctly, you said (in Makor Rishon) that according to the Hazon Ish, morality does not interest us; rather, we are people of Jewish law and faith. My question is: in his book Faith and Trust, I understand him to write the opposite. Morality is one body together with Jewish law (that is what he writes at times), and there is value in being moral, except that the mindset of the Torah is the moral one, and a person has almost no chance of standing against his inclinations unless he subjects himself to Torah and Jewish law. From there he will know who is the pursued and who is the pursuer. But the laws of the Torah are moral.
Answer
I wrote brief clarifications on the site. That is not what I said. I used the Hazon Ish as a heading, but he himself apparently did not hold that way. At the beginning of Faith and Trust, his intention requires discussion, but this is not the place. I dealt with this in my lecture series on Jewish law and morality, and I will return to it in the series being given these very weeks.