Q&A: On Morality and Jewish Hypocrisy
On Morality and Jewish Hypocrisy
Question
With God's help,
To the Rabbi,
It is well known that there are topics in which Jewish law’s attitude toward a non-Jew arouses, in quite a few Torah-and-commandment-observant Jews, a certain degree of discomfort (to put it mildly) and moral unease. Does this stem from the fact that the Jew appears to be acting hypocritically and unfairly, at least so long as he enjoys life in a Western society that does not distinguish between Jew and non-Jew? To sharpen the question, I’ll put it this way: if the Jew were to declare publicly that the non-Jew is entitled to treat him exactly as he would treat the non-Jew—if he saw him dying and could evade helping him without social consequences, he should not save him; if he found his lost object, he should not return it; if he had a way to outsmart him in some manner during negotiations that is not quite outright theft, he should do so—and from his perspective he would have no claims against him whatsoever and would not take him to civil courts even when permitted to do so by the law of the land, would that solve the moral problem?
Thank you very much for your time, and all the best.
Answer
No. Moral obligation is not a matter of agreements. I am forbidden to kill someone even if I allow him to kill me. If he does so, then he is a wrongdoer just as I am a wrongdoer.
As for Jewish law and morality, I discussed this at length at the beginning of my book Movements Among the Standing, and also in my lectures on Jewish law and morality. It is hard to lay it out here in such a broad topic. See also Column 15 and much more.
Briefly, I would say that Jewish law does not strive for moral goals and therefore is not obligated to morality. But morality also stands in its own place alongside it. Therefore, a halakhic command can conflict with a moral command, and in such a situation there is a conflict between opposing values. But there is no fundamental problem in the fact that Jewish law is not moral. It has its own justified aims, and the price of fulfilling them is paid in moral coin. In such a conflict, sometimes Jewish law prevails and sometimes morality does (see the above sources for criteria).
Discussion on Answer
I didn’t say there is no waiver with respect to moral obligation, though that too may perhaps be true. I said that your giving me permission to do the same thing to you does not permit you to do something immoral to me. A person can allow the whole world not to return his lost objects, and that still does not exempt him from returning lost objects to others.
With God's help, eve of the new month of Elul 5782
The Torah commandment of returning a lost object, which forbids ignoring a lost item and instead requires one to take it and search for the owner by public announcement, while in the meantime assuming responsibility to guard the item even if years pass before the owner is found, is not included in the seven Noahide commandments. This is a commandment that the Torah imposed only on the people of Israel, out of the obligation of solidarity toward “your brother.”
In the reality of the Talmudic Sages’ day, it was clear that a non-Jew would not trouble himself to return a lost object either to a Jew or even to members of his own people, and therefore even an item found in a city whose majority was non-Jewish was presumed to be one the owner had despaired of recovering, and it was therefore ownerless. There were places where the kingdom established that “every lost item belongs to the king,” meaning that the lost item, as an abandoned object, became royal property.
But the idea that the finder would go and search for the owner in order to return his lost object to him was, from their perspective, a bizarre Jewish idea, suited to a crazy nation willing to spend more than one-seventh of its life in idleness. Only such idlers have time to look for the owner in order to return his lost object to him 🙂
The personal example of the Jews and their lofty moral conduct—which led them, among other things, to return lost objects even to their non-Jewish neighbors beyond the letter of the law—brought about a partial acceptance of the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh) and some of its faith-based and moral values among the nations of the world as well, and as part of this trend the value of returning lost objects was also partially absorbed.
An obligation on the finder to stop the course of his life, pick up the lost item, and search for the owner is, of course, still beyond their imagination even today *). The general human expectation today is that if you want to take the lost item, bring it to the nearest police station; there the item will wait for you for a few months, and if the owner does not come, the finder acquires it.
Presumably, this obligation applies nowadays even to the lost object of a non-Jew, both because of the law of the land and because nowadays the non-Jewish owner does not despair of recovering it, since there is a chance that the finder will bring the item to the police. In the case of a non-Jew’s lost object, it would seem that after the three-month waiting period the finder acquires the item by force of the law of the land. By contrast, in the case of a Jew’s lost object, it would seem on the face of it that the obligation of public announcement and safeguarding the lost item does not lapse after three months, and he continues to be a guardian of a lost object until he finds his fellow Jew who lost it.
With blessings, Menashe Barkai Buch-Troger
*) In some modern legal systems, a person is not obligated to interrupt the course of his life even to save the life of his fellow! Such is, for example, English law, which the State of Israel inherited from the Mandate. That was until Rabbi Hanan Porat arose and, while serving as a member of Knesset, initiated a change in the law requiring a person to save another’s life.
Why is moral obligation not a matter of agreements? Doesn’t morality also have an aspect of obligations toward Heaven? So that once he permits you to harm him, the moral prohibition disappears?