Q&A: On Morality and Testimony
On Morality and Testimony
Question
Hello and blessings, Rabbi.
In the notebooks on matters of faith, you constructed a twisted logical chain at whose end there is a proof for the truth of Judaism.
As part of the plausibility of God’s revelation and the giving of the Torah, you wrote that it makes sense to assume that there really was a revelation, since God is presumably moral (based on the proof from morality), and it makes sense that He also has moral desires; therefore one can assume that He also conveyed His desires and messages to humanity, which strengthens the specific-witness argument for the giving of the Torah.
Well then, beyond the problematic issue of anthropomorphism, that same Torah contains a great many elements that contradict our intuitive morality, and in addition are also irrational. So either way: if we assume that God is moral, then it is hard to accept this in light of the Torah’s immoral commandments. And if He is not moral (in our terms, of course), then again it is hard to assume that He revealed Himself in order to realize His morality. Which makes the witness argument hard to accept.
Answer
As for morality and Jewish law, see Column 15. It is impossible to say that the Torah is indifferent to the rules of morality. Therefore, the fact that it has instructions that seem contradictory requires resolution, but it does not create a contradiction to the divine nature of the moral principle.
Discussion on Answer
Sorry for the very late response, I just didn’t have accessible internet.
I don’t understand what’s unclear. You’re conflating Jewish law with Torah and God’s will in general. There are commandments in the Torah, some of which fit morality and some of which do not. That is the halakhic part. My claim is that even those that fit morality have a religious rather than a moral purpose. But beyond Jewish law, the Torah also contains very clear statements that obligate moral behavior, except that these are not commandments and therefore did not enter Jewish law. For example, the Torah says, “And you shall do what is right and good,” without specifying what is right and good. So what does it expect us to do? Apparently, what our conscience tells us. That is, what is implanted in us is God’s will.
I saw that column, and I have a response. On the contrary, the opposite seems more reasonable.
After all, according to your view, Jewish law is not bound to morality, and from this it follows that its source is not human. But then the question returns: God is not moral (in human morality), since Jewish law is in principle detached from morality, and the non-moral Jewish law is supposed to represent God’s morality no less than the rest of the more moral commandments in the Torah. So from where do we know that the morality implanted in us originates in divine morality? After all, it differs on many points.