Question

I saw that in many discussions you wrote that the level of effort required in order not to violate a prohibition changes from one society to another, according to what counts in that society as “reasonable human behavior.” Do you think this definition is consistent and applies in all cases? After all, in some societies the required level of effort is clearly lower than what Jewish law sets in an unambiguous way. In modern society, lustful thoughts about a woman who is not one’s wife are not considered something people even try to avoid at all (or at least they make no effort), and someone who tried to avoid it even in a basic way would seem strange and bizarre to the average Westerner. So in a Western society, am I not supposed to make any effort at all? And what about avoiding deriving benefit from idolatry? Surely it is obvious that “normal” Western behavior would have been completely different if they had our prohibitions to begin with (or even a basic understanding of the concept of “commandments”), and that would then have been “reasonable.”
From the very fact that it is agreed there are prohibitions I must avoid even at the cost of behaving unreasonably *in the eyes of modern man*, it seems impossible to say that the level of effort required to avoid a prohibition is just reasonable behavior in the society in which one lives with respect to avoiding that act. One must say that reasonable human behavior is, first of all, something that is human independently of whether or not that prohibition exists in that society.
Does such a thing even exist? It is very hard to define such a thing on the basis of observation, because human societies arose over the years while being based on fairly bizarre laws and still managed quite well. Even if a certain law has never existed in any human culture until now, that does not mean it is inhuman—it just means it has not necessarily been tried. So far, the only a priori definition that “holds water” (trying my luck with the local jargon) for what would not count as reasonable human behavior is based on the fact that a human being is essentially a creature meant by definition to live in a human society, and behavior that cannot be included within what allows a human society to exist (if that behavior were a general rule) is what Jewish law does not require of you.
According to this, Jewish law really does not require me never to speak at all in order to avoid speaking slander; it does not require me to walk with my eyes closed to the point of injuring myself in order not to look at women (the Jerusalem Talmud’s definition of a foolish pietist, unlike the Babylonian Talmud, where the example is based on a conflicting Torah commandment. Although here too one could theoretically say that the conflicting commandment is the prohibition against injuring oneself. This requires further analysis), because if everyone did that we would not be able to get anywhere.
On the other hand, this excludes quite a lot of things, because even completely ignoring a woman, say (in a somewhat unpleasant way), in order not to have casual conversation with her is something that would still leave our society human, and there were societies in which this was even accepted.