Q&A: Morality?
Morality?
Question
[4.10, 17:13] itamarvak8611: Happy holidays, Rabbi.
I wanted to ask: assuming the Torah is divine, why don’t you derive your moral values from there?
For example, if you concluded that the Torah is racist,
why wouldn’t you force yourself to think that that’s how things ought to be? (And that it’s moral?)
Or is there no connection at all between something being divine and its being moral?
[4.10, 17:16] itamarvak8611: And if so (that is, the second possibility),
how is it more reasonable to say that than to say: we’re human beings. We don’t really understand morality.
After all, there is divinity, and according to the ontological proof, it is the most perfect thing possible (also in your view…)
and even not according to it.
Thank you very much
Answer
For the same reason that nobody derives them from there, from the sages of the Talmud onward until today. The Torah itself testifies that morality does not depend on it, since the Holy One, blessed be He, made a claim against Cain even before there was any commandment prohibiting murder. More generally, morality does not enter into Jewish law and is not spelled out in the Torah. The sages of the Talmud already taught us that we would know it even without the Torah (from the ant and the cat). Cleaving to the ways of the Holy One, blessed be He, is a general commandment, but what His ways are is determined by our morality. Morality is universal and obligates all human beings, regardless of commitment to the Torah or familiarity with it.
Indeed, in my opinion there is no connection at all between Jewish law and morality. These are two independent categories. I have explained this at length in several places (mainly at the beginning of the third book in my trilogy, and also in column 541).
The reasons why I think this, and why I do not assume that our morality is distorted and that the Torah presents a different morality that we do not understand, are also discussed there.
Hello Rabbi,
I think differently from you regarding the Holy One, blessed be He’s claim against Cain. True, the Torah does not spell it out (like most of the Torah, and that is why there is an Oral Torah), but I argue that there is no punishment unless there was prior warning. So it is obvious that the Holy One, blessed be He, commanded the prohibition of murder (even though it is not mentioned in the text), and only afterward could He make a claim against Cain. The claim comes only after a command, and then there is a choice made in opposition to the command.