Q&A: Morality
Morality
Question
I heard the Rabbi’s debate on Almah, and in a few other places as well his position on morality became clear to me. I would like to raise the following difficulty:
If the proof for the existence of God is morality, wouldn’t one expect the book that purports to represent Him, and thus also embodies morality, to be moral?
Does the Rabbi consider it moral for a father to sell his daughter as a maidservant? Is the whole body of slave laws found in the Torah moral at all? That is, if we believe in the Torah before anything else, as representing God, and morality in itself has no meaning, and only the Torah is the correct morality, then fine. But if the Torah is dependent on morality, and as the Rabbi notes regarding the wiping out of Amalek that because of the doubt he would not carry it out, then what kind of morality gives presence to slavery, patriarchy, inequality, and chauvinism?
Does God’s position paper—which first and foremost exists and is divine by virtue of morality, according to the Rabbi’s claim—not contradict itself? And I mean itself literally.
Answer
There are both a logical mistake and an interpretive mistake in what you wrote here.
On the logical level, when one proves the existence of a from phenomenon X, that phenomenon does not have to be essential and central to a. It only has to be exclusive—that a is what generates X and that no other being generates X. Suppose you proved from footprints in the sand that the creature that made them was limping, and you inferred that it was a because there is only one limping creature in the world. Now you found a book of his and there is no mention there of limping. Is there a contradiction here? What is required is that there be no other limping creature besides him, but it is not necessary that limping be the main point of his doctrine and appear in his writings. More than that: he could even come out against limping as an ugly and undesirable phenomenon, but at the very least he can say that it is not an important matter.
On the interpretive level, the Torah does indeed command morality and expects us to be moral. Jewish law, which is only part of the Torah, strives for other non-moral values, and sometimes there is a clash between those values and the values of morality, but clashes also exist between different moral values themselves. See more on this at column 541.
Discussion on Answer
I find it hard to discuss things with this kind of stubbornness and lack of listening. It seems you didn’t read my previous answer.
If God’s validity is morality, why did God not command us in His book only clear moral teachings?
Doesn’t this raise a difficulty, even if from a logical standpoint it may not be a major objection? But if God is morality itself, how is that not reflected in the only book that purports to represent Him?
And also a few questions about what the Rabbi did answer:
The comparison the Rabbi made to a limping person—if in the limping person’s book there were decisive proof that such a limping reality could not exist, we would have a problem. The same thing here: when God commands things that are not moral, He is almost contradicting Himself, no? (Once morality is given validity, one failure in morality undermines the entire moral validity. You cannot both believe in morality and also disagree with it. Or as Avi Gabbay once said: I eat kosher and non-kosher. That has no meaning at all.)
And as for the fact that within morality we find branches that contradict one another—that is because they are human and limited products, and therefore contradictions may arise; you cannot expect otherwise. But from where did contradictions suddenly arise for God? Why does He come to contradiction, almost to the point of contradicting Himself?
I explained that there is no contradiction here at all, but you are insisting, not listening, and just repeating questions that were already answered. There is no point in continuing.
To Menachem:
I think most of the examples in your question are incorrect!
The Torah does not give a commandment to sell one’s daughter as a maidservant or to enslave people; it simply addresses an existing reality and applies laws to it.
At most, one can ask why the Torah did not prohibit a moral defect, and the answer to that is simple: a—that the Torah did indeed command in general to do what is upright and good.
b—the Torah was not given in a utopian world; rather, it tries to apply its values gradually, and therefore the Sages themselves prohibited a father from selling his daughter.
In summary: one can say there may perhaps be one or two cases in the Torah that are not moral, such as the wiping out of Amalek, but the Torah’s general direction is definitely a moral demand (even if its goal is a religious value and not necessarily a moral one).
Papagio, I know that answer.
A, what about piercing the ear?
And b, most importantly: we are always proud that the Torah invented the Sabbath, and monotheism, and human rights—things that are incredibly radical, no less than commanding the end of slavery.
Please note that these are laws that only began upon entering the Land, so this was not really such a norm as you present it.
And with all due respect, Rabbi, I would still be glad for the Rabbi to answer me.
I do not mean to be petty or argumentative at all; I am asking entirely in good faith.
Answer what? I haven’t seen a question here.
To Menachem, have a good week!
A—What is immoral about ear-piercing? After all, we are not talking about a painful, hurting act at all, and in any case it is the slave’s choice.
B—I didn’t understand?
C—By the way, regarding Amalek, I think this is a straw man, and that is because: the commandment to kill him exists only on the basis of a prophet (see the Brisker Rav), meaning only through proven divine revelation. And the Torah itself writes that the commandment can be fulfilled only when there are no enemies around, meaning when the world reaches its repair and there is divine presence; and the Yere’im also wrote that this is specifically when there is a true monarchy in Israel.
Besides that, many medieval authorities wrote that Amalek can accept the Noahide commandments and thereby save himself, meaning that he is killed only when he reflects the height of moral corruption.
I am asking something very simple. I’ll try from another angle, and maybe my point will be understood.
If God is perfect, and so too morality—that is, morality is something perfect and correct—how is it that God commands immoral things?
The question can be looked at in two ways. The first way, and perhaps on this the Rabbi disagrees, is: is there not simply a contradiction here? The second way, and perhaps on this the Rabbi can answer, is: where does such a thing come from? A, how can such lack of perfection be possible? And B, what is the point of such a command, which runs against the value-perfection of morality?
Note: we proved the existence of God on the basis of morality. Second, the only thing that—according to the claim—comes directly from Him is something not moral. I am not saying that there is no God, because then there would also be no question, since the thing that comes from Him would not come from Him, because He does not exist. Rather, there is a question here about the validity of the Torah.
For the only source for the claim that the Torah is God’s book is morality, because that is what compels the existence of God, and likewise gives the Torah its validity. And if this book is entirely a contradiction to morality, how can it rely on it?