Q&A: On Jewish Law and Moral Values
On Jewish Law and Moral Values
Question
Hello Rabbi,
At the outset I would like to express deep appreciation for the breadth of your knowledge, your clear, sharp, and incisive thinking, your analytical ability, your excellent power of explanation (I am a teacher, and I know how to appreciate that), and your striving for truth.
I read your position paper called “The Third Identity,” and I would be glad to discuss the subject with you in correspondence (and perhaps we may even meet one day). I know that the Rabbi is busy, so I will certainly understand if you do not reply, but since I want to discuss the matter, I am making the effort on my part.
A suggestion for how to conduct the debate-discussion:
I will try to formulate my arguments in numbered points (thus following the example of Euclid, Spinoza, and Newton), so that it will be easier to argue—to point out flaws in a specific argument, or to say things against it. I would be glad if you did the same.
My arguments (the arguments generally lead one to the next):
Introduction: In your position paper, you present the identity of the modern-religious person as an identity built, among other things, from values that touch on current questions and dilemmas: attitude toward gays and lesbians, attitude toward the stranger, attitude toward other Jewish streams, and more. The religious people who advocate, among other things, these values—whom you call modern-religious—require, according to you (in note 2), a hyphen between “religious” and “modern.” You did not elaborate why, due to lack of space, but in my understanding, based on familiarity with your thought, the hyphen expresses an essential connection between the religious and the modern (although the statement by the late Burg, on which, I assume, the hinted paraphrase in your words is based, is interpreted differently in my humble opinion)—that is to say: the views and positions held by the modern-religious person on the questions and topics I raised earlier stem from his religious thought, and from his conception of morality as a value with divine validity. The hyphen, as I understand it, comes to say that a modern-religious person—his modernity is an inseparable part of his religion. He is not religious + modern, but rather a person who embraces modern values as part of his service of God.
Of course, the basic assumption of such a position is that morality has divine validity, and that it is not relative or “invented” by human beings. Morality was implanted in human nature by God, and it is binding by virtue of its being divine.
Up to this point, this is a presentation of your words and views, which underlie your definition of the modern-religious person—the one with the hyphen. Perhaps your words should be stated more precisely, and perhaps this presentation is broad and general, but it seems sufficient for the purpose of the discussion.
The arguments (I will present some of them here, and if the discussion develops, I will naturally respond and expand on these arguments or raise the remaining ones, God willing):
A. Morality has changed, and even been completely reversed, over the years: Thomas Jefferson had slaves, and he did not see slaveholding as an immoral act. Rudyard Kipling, author of “The White Man’s Burden,” saw the superiority of the white man as a foundational principle in his moral doctrine (according to which the white man must redeem the rest of humanity from ignorance and barbarism). Until the middle of the twentieth century, class differences between man and woman were considered a state with nothing morally wrong in it. Attraction to one’s own sex was considered in Oscar Wilde’s day to be immoral. The superiority of the king over the law, and over other people, was not considered immoral. Stoning was considered an acceptable and moral punishment in many cultures, and there are many more such examples. Had morality been implanted in man by God, moral principles ought to have been far more fixed and rigid.
B.1. In the absence of morality implanted by God (perhaps aside from a few basic rules, and even that can be debated), then Jewish law, in its moral aspect, comes to establish moral values and rules, and not to serve religious purposes.
B.2. Your proofs for the claim—which is not sufficiently defined, and even this definition is shrouded in vagueness—that Jewish law comes to serve “religious purposes” rely on sources that, in my humble opinion, you did not understand correctly (the eleventh discourse of Ran, and others), and they ignore explicit verses that surely slipped the notice of your honored Torah scholarship—but we can discuss that if you answer me.
C. The parts of Jewish law that appear immoral are divided into many groups. Most of them require change—but not because of modern moral values that have penetrated Western thought in the present century, but for various other reasons:
C.1. Certain parts (such as the status of women, attitude toward non-Jews, and so on) require refreshing and renewal because of changes that have taken place in reality: women’s education, their involvement in the affairs of this world, the lowering of the threshold of sexual stimulation they create (imagine a pale taro leaf—we have become more accustomed to them than in days when the sight of a woman was a rare vision), the improvement in the morality of non-Jews (in my opinion under the influence of Christianity, which was influenced by Judaism, and much could be said about this, but this is not the place), and so on. That is to say: it is not morality implanted in man by God that drives the change (simply because in my opinion it does not exist), but rather the change in reality.
C.2. Certain parts require change because of the disappearance of social-religious influence, and the vanishing of idolatry from the world. Among them: destroying houses of idol worship in the Land of Israel, the war against the seven nations, and so on. Even if the seven nations existed today, there would be no place for the commandment to annihilate them utterly—and again, not because of modern Western moral values (whose existence I doubt), but because their rationale has vanished.
Of course there are many other categories and many other parts of Torah law that require change. The common denominator among them all is this: the change required in Torah law and Jewish law does not stem from some vague divine moral law that overrides Jewish law, but from the rules of Jewish law itself.
So far, these are some of my arguments. I will expand on them and would be glad to discuss them with you if you respond.
Thank you very much for your wonderful lectures, whose level and manner of delivery are rare in our day.
Answer
I am glad that my words are helpful.
In general, I will say that all of your arguments here have been answered by me on the site and in various books and articles at great length. In concentrated form you can find the material mainly in the lecture series on Jewish law and morality, and in the recent series on tradition, conservatism, and innovation. You can find them on the site (under video lectures). The booklet I published obviously could not touch on all these issues. But since you wrote, I will try to address them here briefly.
A. Jewish law also changes over the years, and there too there are many disputes. Such is the way of the world, and people’s opinions are not the same. But it is not true that morality is subject to deep disputes. The disputes are at the margins, and even there not about foundational values. Even the Nazis who murdered Jews had to justify it by claiming that Jews were not really human beings, or that they were plotting to destroy the world, and the like. They accepted the value of life and the prohibition of murder. The development of morality throughout history says nothing about this issue. Science too developed over the years, so do you assume that today’s science is not correct? Do you not fly on airplanes? Morality develops because our culture develops, and therefore my assumption is that earlier generations were mistaken in their moral conceptions. The very fact that they held different principles stems from error, not from the relativity of morality. Briefly, I will only add that if you think morality is relative, then it has no validity at all and you have no basis to act according to it (except perhaps just because you feel like it), and certainly no basis to judge and criticize others.
The tools of moral cognition are implanted within us, and their use develops morality more and more. Therefore morality is indeed from God. Without that it has no validity whatsoever. See on this topic column 456 on my site, and much more.
B1. In the lecture series mentioned above, and at the beginning of my book Movements Among the Standing, I demonstrated at length why you are mistaken—namely, that there is an essential disconnect between Jewish law and morality.
B2. This claim is based on clear facts and not on anyone’s interpretation. See my lecture series there.
C. The parts of Jewish law that appear immoral do not require any change. The change does not stem from a contradiction between Jewish law and morality. On the contrary: according to my view, that there is a disconnect and independence between the two, Jewish law does not need to be moral, and therefore when there is a contradiction between it and morality there is no problem in that at all (except for the dilemma of how to act in practice). The reason for changes is an internal interpretive reason within Jewish law itself and in its application under changing circumstances. This too is well explained in the above series, and even more so in the recent series on tradition, conservatism, and innovation.
C1. Absolutely correct. Changes in circumstances dictate many changes in Jewish law. See the above series.
C2. Here you are not clear. Are you invoking the rationale of the verse? In Jewish law we rule that one does not do that. To change Jewish law because its rationale has lapsed is a very complicated matter, although I expand on that too in the lectures and in the book.
By the way, I think the focus of the debate is the question whether there is objective and valid morality or not. Everything else seems to me to be derivative.
All the best, and Sabbath peace.
Discussion on Answer
It is hard to go on at length, especially when all the questions are being discussed in parallel.
As for morality, which is probably the root of the dispute, one must understand that if morality is a convention dependent on place and time, then there is no valid morality. There is no obligation to obey conventions, and they bind no person or group. Therefore the meaning of your claim that morality is conventional is that there is no valid morality at all.
My claim in response is that all of us have the intuition that morality has validity, and the fact that people (like you) arrive at the conclusion that it does not is only because they see disputes and changes across places and times. To that I say: these are not counter-evidence. But someone who from the outset does not perceive validity in moral principles—if there is such a person at all, and I have great doubts about that—there is no proof in the world that will convince him. It is a kind of blindness, and you cannot prove to a blind person that there are sights in the world. The claim that intuition can mislead is true in every field, and nevertheless there is no field that is not based on intuition—including science (and Bernoulli’s law) of course. The fact that a law holds up in several experiments, and therefore you assume it is general and will continue to work (the principle of induction)—that too is intuition. Therefore here as well I do not see an argument against the validity of morality.
By the way, commitment to Jewish law and faith are also based on intuition, so if you do not trust intuition, you should give up those too and not only morality. And by the way, halakhic decisors have also sometimes ruled according to morality against Jewish law, and I brought examples of that.
C2. Rabbinic derivations cannot be changed because circumstances change. It is no different from laws written explicitly in the Torah. In my lectures and books I argue that it is possible to change under certain circumstances. The difference between verses and derivations relates only to invoking the rationale of the verse, but not every change is an invocation of the rationale of the verse. Especially since several medieval authorities and halakhic decisors wrote that when the rationale is clear, one may invoke the rationale of the verse.
If you want to continue, I suggest that you raise one question at a time on the site and we will discuss it.
All the best,
Hello Rabbi,
Thank you very much for the response. I appreciate it greatly. I do not agree with your words. Next time I will try to write on the site, and if it matters to you, I will copy this correspondence of ours to the site (only after your approval, of course). This time, I would prefer to reply one last time by email.
I have listened to your lecture series several times (as I said, I greatly appreciated the intellect and the analysis in your words. In our generation there are few rabbis who think and analyze systematically—you could count them on the fingers of one hand, at least from my acquaintance—and therefore I was delighted with your series as one who finds great treasure), and I have also read some of your books and some of your articles on the site. I did not receive an answer to my arguments from your lectures and articles, and that is exactly the reason I am turning to you.
A.1. The argument from Jewish law and from science does not seem like an argument to me. Science is a field in which mistakes are expected from the outset to be discovered. The scientific learning process includes (as Karl Popper and Thomas Kuhn described it, and I am surely not telling you anything new): generalizing phenomena into a theory or principle, testing the theory through experiments, refuting it through an accumulation (Kuhn) of contrary findings, and finding a new comprehensive explanation. In such a process, it is to be expected that mistakes will be found, and that fact is acceptable and reasonable. Why do I board an airplane? Because Bernoulli’s law has been tested many times, and the results show that this law is firm, clear, and valid. So too in Jewish law—the changes Jewish law has undergone, and its development, stem from changes in reality, as I wrote. The fundamental principles of Jewish law have not changed (and perhaps they will—but most of the fundamental principles are also firm, clear, and valid). Not so with morality: one who claims that morality is a human intuition, implanted in us by God, according to which He judges us (before the giving of the Torah) and we judge our fellow man (even after the giving of the Torah), cannot say “we were mistaken.” An intuition prone to error cannot serve as a legal system by which moral judgment is rendered. For the “sinner” who violates the laws of morality will always be able to say, “I was mistaken, just as almost everyone in my time was mistaken. How could I have known that this was the truth and not that?” If so, whereas in science and Jewish law the changes are expected, and had they not existed I would suspect the integrity of the halakhic/scientific learning process, in the moral sphere, according to your view, there ought to be a strong and clear intuition that leaves room for mistakes only at the margins. I would note that in places where intuition misleads (as in certain physical cases—take for example gravitational acceleration, and the fact that bodies of different masses fall to the ground at the same speed), we do not rely on intuition at all! Whereas you propose relying on intuition even against Jewish law, despite the mistakes you admit throughout many years of history.
A.2. It is not true that moral principles—even the most basic ones—are the possession of almost all people. The Nazis did not justify their actions only on the basis of Jews’ supposedly being corrupting and defiling in their eyes. Many of them, certainly among the elite classes, relied on Nietzsche’s moral theory (again, I am surely not telling you anything new), according to which the correct morality is the morality of masters, which encourages the crushing of the weak by the strong, just as savage nature operates. This morality Nietzsche found in many pagan sources. That is to say: ancient, basic, and perhaps natural morality was a morality of survival of the strong (as exists in nature outside human civilization even today), and of trampling, even eliminating, the weak. Many Nazis based their moral doctrine on Nietzsche’s words (even though they took him out of context), and in their view they acted with complete morality. Again—a proof that morality is not uniform. And if you would say one cannot bring proof from a minority like the Nazis, as I said, Nietzsche found many sources for this in ancient pagan beliefs, which were the possession of most of the ancient world. Human morality was never uniform and never possessed agreed-upon basic principles. More than that—the examples I gave (Jefferson, Kipling) and others I could give show that even without Nietzsche, moral principles are not the possession of the majority of humanity, aside from the prohibition of murder, and perhaps theft as well. The Spartans and the Romans in certain periods would abandon the elderly to die without assistance (the moral principle of honoring parents, and “you shall honor the presence of the elderly”) on the grounds that they were not economically or socially useful. The English and French until the eighteenth century, and the Indians and others as well, supported dividing society into classes, and giving extra rights to the upper classes and sub-rights to the lower classes (the moral principle of equality, which by the way I do not agree with), granting human rights to a slave, the prohibition of adultery with another man’s wife, the principled prohibition of violence and rape, and more and more—all these are moral laws that did not exist at all, or almost at all, in the ancient world, and in the world before Jewish-halakhic morality. And we are speaking here about basic moral principles. By contrast, in Jewish law so many foundational principles were never in principled dispute. The intuition that was supposed to determine the rules of morality in people’s hearts did not work. Therefore, I claim, it does not exist. Or at the very least, one cannot rely on it and base judgment or a binding and valid legal system on it.
B. Precisely because I listened seriously and with pleasure to your lectures (the two series you mention), and did not find proofs that cannot be refuted, or proofs sufficiently persuasive, I am discussing this with you. I would be glad if we discussed the proofs—at least the ones that seem strongest to you. I would be glad to discuss all of them. Perhaps you could put four of them before me, and we can discuss those, and then more, and so on.
C.1. My claim is that when there is a contradiction between Jewish law and morality, one should act according to Jewish law, with the understanding that morality is an intuition that cannot be relied upon, and that changes according to the ruling culture (most of the moral values you advocate are Western-modern, and are not accepted by me and many like me: equality, attitude toward the stranger in some cases, and so on). Of course, in cases where there is real distress arising from the values of Jewish law (“love your fellow as yourself,” the calls in Jewish law to consider the weak—the stranger, the orphan, and the widow) or from changes in reality (women being educated and assertive, non-Jews being more moral), it is possible and necessary to make changes in Jewish law.
C.2. There is no invocation of the rationale of the verse here at all. In the case of women, the Torah contains no command exempting them from commandments (aside from “all your males”), and all their exemption comes from rabbinic derivations, which can be changed under certain conditions. In the case of non-Jews, again—the prohibition against clearing rubble off someone, and the like, is based on rabbinic derivations from the Torah and can be changed, as Meiri did regarding the laws concerning non-Jews on the basis of the Talmudic passage in Bava Kamma 38, “He saw and released the nations,” and as Rabbi Judah Nesi’ah did regarding the oil of non-Jews, and many more examples. Therefore my claim is that a change in reality or a dilemma arising from a halakhic source (clashing with “love your fellow,” or other such calls) may be a source of change, and there is no other source besides these.
Thank you very much for the serious and thorough response.