Thank you for your answer.
That’s exactly the question 🙂
Why do you think the tradition is reliable? I’m familiar with your approach that morality and religion are two separate categories; still, in my view the text’s immorality and anachronism are precisely what make it unreliable. Precisely because the text seems to me to represent anachronistic views, it looks human-made and non-eternal. None of us witnessed the giving of the Torah, and all we can do is judge the text according to the best of our understanding.
Is it even possible to criticize faith and a person’s choice to accept a certain text as sacred? By the same token, a Muslim could say that the Quran seems to him like a reliable text. Is there no room to criticize his belief in that text?

By the way, even if the death penalty for male homosexual intercourse is rare, it still causes society to make life very hard for homosexuals, if not to ostracize them and call them derogatory names and even blame them for the troubles of the Jewish people (like Rabbi Pindrus, for example). The hostility toward homosexuals is common to all non-humanistic cultures in our time, and therefore this raises the suspicion that the Torah contains non-humanistic values. Why should those values obligate me?
Thank you,
Keren

I don’t understand your question. You are repeating the same assumption that I rejected above, according to which the commitment and holiness granted to a text are a function of its moral progressiveness. That is simply not true. The basis for this is trust in the Sinaitic tradition, not the content of the text.
It is certainly possible to criticize this. One can discuss the reliability of the tradition, but that discussion is unrelated to the question of whether the text’s content fits some moral values or other.
The reliability of the tradition is discussed a bit in my book The First Existing Being.

As for the fact that some text can lead fools like Pindrus to say one thing or another—so what? Pindrus thinks and says worse things, with or without relying on this or that text. If every interpretation of a text or practical consequence of it were enough to disqualify it, then you would have no valuable texts left.

Homosexuality is indeed a halakhic transgression. That is unrelated to the question of its morality. Therefore, it is no surprise that someone committed to Jewish law opposes it. But punishment is given only to someone who has another choice. In that case, he is indeed an offender (halakhically, not morally). How is this different from the transgression of eating pork or terumah or desecrating the Sabbath? I don’t understand what is special about homosexuality. All of these are halakhic transgressions that are not moral transgressions, and still halakhically it is forbidden to do them.

> You are repeating the same assumption that I rejected above, according to which the commitment and holiness granted to a text are a function of its moral progressiveness. That is simply not true. The basis for this is trust in the Sinaitic tradition, not the content of the text.

She isn’t. You are repeating a misunderstanding of what she said. She tried to identify the fingerprint of a human author. In her view, a text whose normative values are immoral and seem anachronistic was written by people. That is definitely an argument in favor of the idea that the text was written by human beings and is not an eternal divine gift, and therefore that the tradition claiming it is such a gift is unreliable.

You can disagree with the assumptions of her argument. You can, for example, argue that what she identified as a human fingerprint is not such a thing, and that God could also write such things. I don’t know what you would base such a claim on, but that’s your problem.

One option not open to you is to say she is buying into some assumption you don’t share, without explaining why. You certainly can’t claim things like “this discussion is unrelated to whether the text’s content fits some moral values,” when someone has laid out an argument that clearly does connect the two, and whose assumptions you have not refuted and which sound fairly reasonable on the face of it. She explained how and why the content of the text points to its degree of reliability. The argument is right in front of you—address it.

Wow, Keren, first I have to say that what you’re asking is something I also wanted to ask about, more from the direction of Torah from Heaven and how one knows it’s true, but it seems you opened it up more clearly and touched on the points I wanted to get to, so you could say I completely join the question…

As for male homosexual intercourse, in my opinion, from the way I know the Rabbi’s approach, this is more a question you should direct at the society that behaves this way and at what people made out of that verse, rather than “complaining” to the Torah, because the Rabbi explained that religion is not extreme on this issue—but maybe he’ll explain it better than I can. In general, it seems that not everything claimed in the name of the Torah is really correct; there are different interpretations. There are no representatives of religion, or of God for that matter.

Ezer, you are making the same mistake she is. A book containing moral content would look human-written for exactly the same reason. That is exactly what I wrote: the content is irrelevant to the discussion.

But the content is what we have—if not the content, then on what basis are we supposed to judge? And you still haven’t answered what is relevant. What makes the Torah more reliable than the New Testament or the Quran? (Other than the fact that it’s the original, which does add a point in its favor, but still that’s not necessarily what makes something more reliable; there are other religions that are original and not copied from another religion.)

Just for the sake of discussion—anachronism is not relevant here. Anachronism is a dating problem, when you date an event to a time earlier or later than it really was. There is no such thing as anachronistic morality. As for Rabbi Michael’s answer, let’s present Keren’s statement as an argument:
Premise 1: The all-powerful Creator of the world is absolutely good
Premise 2: The Torah contains values that are “not good”
Conclusion: The Torah is not from the Creator of the world.
This is a kind of version of the argument against “the good God” because of the evil that exists in the world, except that here, in my opinion, there is no escape hatch of free choice.
In my opinion, this could be a crushing argument against the Torah, but even if it isn’t crushing, at the very least it is an extremely serious reason to reject it as Torah from Heaven.
Or one could simply stop claiming that the all-powerful Creator of the world is good, and then we’ve closed the discussion.

Adi,
I write, and you ignore what I wrote. I explained that one must examine the chain of transmission—whether it is reliable or not—and not the content. I explained that if you examine the content, then no content can be divine, neither moral nor immoral. Moral content too was probably written by human beings. In the aforementioned book I elaborated more on the arguments.

Ariel,
You are confusing different uses of the word anachronism, but that discussion does not belong here.
I have already answered your question. It contains a logical mistake, and I will not repeat it here. See column 541.

Personally, I didn’t say we should examine the content in terms of whether it’s moral or not; I was touching more on the question of how to examine it at all—although in my opinion that does seem called for when we’re talking about such a significant text that determines a whole set of laws for an entire society, and all the more so if it is considered divine.

You talk about a reliable chain of transmission—I don’t know how one checks something like that or whether it’s even possible, but suppose it was checked—then are the other religions not reliable in that sense? As far as I know, they also have a chain of transmission from father to son, so how are we different?
By the way, I don’t see differences in other senses either, like near-death experiences where people saw Jesus, stories of conversion to Christianity, priests who claim a divine connection, and so on and so on…

Michi,

It isn’t exactly revolutionary to argue that the content of a text can shed light on the circumstances in which it was composed, and in particular on whether its author was a human being belonging to one culture or another. I read The First Existing Being. Based on what I remember from there, I’ll try to explain why you insist that what seems trivial to most human beings is actually a faulty assumption.

In my opinion, you have a double problem. First, you have no idea what a text written by God would look like. You are unable to formulate what God’s “fingerprint” in a text would be, because the concept of divinity you adopt is rather empty of content relevant to this matter.

Your second problem is that Keren and many others do not have a problem similar to the first one. I’ll presume to speak on everyone’s behalf, and they are welcome to correct me if I’ve missed the mark. It is clear what kind of moral content we would expect to find in a text written by human beings in the period when the Torah was written, reflecting the views of those human beings as shaped by the sociological processes familiar to us up to this day. In particular, we would not expect humanistic ideas that humanity developed from the Enlightenment until today, but rather the moral views common in the ancient world. There are good reasons to expect this, given knowledge of the history of these ideas and a basic understanding of how ideas pass from person to person across time and geography. The biblical text matches those expectations, and therefore its content provides a strong argument for our position. If so, that is evidence against the reliability of the tradition, which claims that the Torah originated in some divine revelation to the entire Jewish people before Mount Horeb.

I am not claiming this is some knockout argument that defeats every counterargument. Still, in response to this argument it is not enough to say that it is based on the assumption that the Torah’s content is irrelevant and that this assumption is false. The argument itself ties together very well the Torah’s expected content and Keren and company’s hypothesis, and therefore the match between the actual content and the expected content constitutes evidence in favor of the hypothesis. The attempt to argue otherwise sounds absurd because it is absurd. Here is an analogy perfectly matching your situation: a robber argues in court that we should ignore his fingerprint on the cashier’s counter at the bank because we do not know what goblins’ fingerprints look like.

And for heaven’s sake, Rabbi Michi, enough with the “I write and you ignore what I wrote.” People aren’t ignoring you. They are responding. You simply aren’t answering the arguments addressed to you in a substantive way; you just keep repeating what you said like a parrot.

Adi, one checks it the same way one checks any historical claim. As I said, I elaborated more in my book. That’s it, we’ve exhausted this.

Ezer, I explained and I won’t repeat it again. You keep repeating the same nonsense and expect me not to say that you’re repeating yourself. So I won’t say it. That’s it, I’m done.

Hello everyone,
First of all, thank you for the interesting discussion that has developed here. I’ll try to sharpen the point and add explanations only where necessary.
1. The relevance of morality: my basic assumption is that basic morality is fairly universal. Murder, theft, and lying are condemned in almost every human society, but they will not necessarily apply equally to everyone. Women were not considered human beings with equal rights in ancient cultures, and therefore harming them was permitted. For example, the Torah says that in wartime it is permissible to take a woman from among the enemy even against her will. True, the Torah obligates the man to grant her rights, but the very act of taking her is permitted in a way that would not be accepted today.
If so, progress is not necessarily a change in basic moral rules but an expansion of the group of people to whom those moral rules apply. The fact that the Torah’s norms regarding which people are entitled to full rights and which are not are relatively similar to the norms prevalent at the time the Torah was written strengthens the hypothesis that the Torah was written by human beings and not by God.
2. Pindrus: Pindrus’s offensive statements were inspired by Jewish law, and it is hardly surprising that some believers would permit themselves to lash out at homosexuals that way. True, in his statements he went beyond what is accepted in our time, but this was not unexpected. In that sense, the Torah’s attitude toward homosexuals is like a heavy weight believers carry on their backs: liberal believers will manage to carry the weight and not “fall” into such statements, but believers with more conservative views are liable not to withstand the heavy burden. In my view, the weight itself indicates that this is a human text, because it actually hinders society’s progress (one cannot expect everyone to be liberal at heart).
3. Sanctions against non-believers: the Torah obligates all Jews to keep the commandments and imposes sanctions on those who do not believe. The Torah gives authority to believers to punish heretics, even though it contains commandments that conflict with morality and even though the reliability of the tradition cannot be proven. True, nowadays this authority is not actually carried out, but the Written Torah still commands it. Why is it reasonable that the believer should be able to punish the non-believer in such a state of affairs?

We are repeating ourselves, and everything has already been answered. I’ll try once more, and if nothing new comes up here then I’m finished.
1. I don’t think you are right. At least on two points: some morality has changed in its content as well. And it has not always expanded. One must remember that the gentiles of the past were not like the gentiles of today (in terms of their human and moral behavior), and therefore Jewish law’s attitude toward gentiles does not necessarily reflect moral inferiority. The women of the past were also not like the women of today (in terms of their education and status), and therefore some of the attitude toward them likewise does not reflect inferiority. Though some of it does, in my opinion.
But I do not accept the claim that normative content points to the identity of the author. If the value of equality for women had appeared there, would that show that the author is divine? After all, even then there were people who advocated equality. So perhaps the author would have been one of them? There were places where women ruled (or there were Amazons). What does that prove? Likewise regarding homosexuality—in many places in history it was very legitimate. So if the Torah had written in favor of homosexuality, would that prove it is of divine origin? Maybe it was written by someone from that culture? In short, content does not prove anything about the author in any way whatsoever.
2. I already answered that. The Torah writes what it writes because that is what is right. If this causes people to draw problematic conclusions, should one expect it not to write what is right in its eyes? This reminds me of the claims after Rabin’s assassination against religious faith, because supposedly it led to the murder. That is nonsense, of course. I am a believer. Does anyone expect me to abandon my faith because Yigal Amir decided to murder? This is simply nonsense.
3. I did not understand this question. If someone does not believe, then he deserves no punishment. He is coerced by his opinions. The one who deserves punishment is someone who believes and despite that violates a prohibition. By the way, in modern law ignorance of the law does not exempt one from punishment. In that sense the Torah is more enlightened than all the legal systems of our time. In parentheses, the fact that the Torah contains commandments that conflict with morality has no bearing on this matter whatsoever.

Maybe one more note. According to your logic, that the existence in the Torah of content not accepted in its environment proves a divine author, then we have abundant proofs that the Torah’s author was God. It contains quite a bit of content that was not accepted in that period (such as monotheism, humane treatment of a slave, and so forth). As I said, in my opinion that proves nothing.

Thank you for the answer. I’ll respond briefly anyway:
1. I am not claiming that immoral commands are the only proof of the Torah’s human origin. However, since the reliability of the tradition relies on the tradition itself (that is, there is no external source attesting to the tradition’s reliability), I think commands that today would be perceived as irrelevant can indicate that the Torah is not from Heaven. How can a command that allows a soldier to take a beautiful woman from among the enemy be eternal? There are of course more examples.
2. Pindrus: the Torah not only forbids homosexual relations, it also decrees death for them. This severe punishment is not merely a sign that the act is forbidden, but also disqualifies the person himself (the Torah could have imposed some other punishment on a person who sins through male homosexual intercourse rather than death). True, the death penalty is also imposed for acts like desecrating the Sabbath, but one should not infer from this that the Torah is not especially harsh toward homosexuals. Just as the Torah excludes the homosexual from society, so too it excludes heretics from the community. Even though there is no proof for the Torah’s period, Sabbath desecrators are judged to death. In my view it is not relevant that in practice people are not executed for Sabbath desecration or for male homosexual intercourse, because I am not discussing the Oral Torah here, only the Written Torah. Even our sages understood that it was not proper to carry out the Torah’s command.
In summary, when the Torah decrees death for homosexuals, we should not be surprised that there are people who permit themselves to lash out at homosexuals that way (after all, their lives are worthless anyway). The Torah’s explicit command in this matter is like a kind of weight that causes the fools and conservatives among us to fall into very low places. Maybe if they did not have such a weight on their backs, they would not speak that way.
3. Sanctions on non-believers: how can it be that the Torah gives punishments for non-belief and non-observance of commandments even though there is no proof that the Torah is valid? As said, there is no external proof for the validity of the tradition outside the tradition itself (correct me if I’m wrong), so how is this different from Muslims persecuting heretics? The Jewish religion is not tolerant toward Jews. The thoughtful person is essentially not permitted to use his reason, and suppose for a moment that the Torah is valid—it does not even permit him to be mistaken!
4. The Torah text is indeed relatively progressive, and that is its beauty, but still, as said, it contains many commands that contradict morality. The Torah could have been phrased in such a way that the commands were stated more ambiguously or less severely, and thus would have allowed a person to develop toward a better place without binding him and causing injustice.
Thank you!
Keren

I’ve already answered all this and my throat is hoarse.
1. Immoral commands prove nothing. There is no connection between Jewish law and morality.
2. It is a severe punishment for the act and the person who does it. Obviously. But not because there is something immoral here. I do not distinguish between the Written Torah and the Oral Torah.
3. The Torah does not give punishments for non-belief.
4. You did not understand what I explained. According to your logic, if the Torah is advanced for its time, that means it was not written by a person of its time.
That’s it. Forgive me, but I am completely done.

Hi Keren, I understand what you’re saying, but it doesn’t seem to me that you’ll get a sharp, clear answer… it also seems the Rabbi has pretty much exhausted the discussion… There’s a point you reach in inquiries like these where you have to choose whether it seems reasonable to you or not; it’s not black and white, not one plus one.
Probably if there were a clear answer to this question (which is very fundamental and essential, I have to say), things would look different…

Still, I’ll try maybe to sharpen certain points—
You’re talking about immorality in the Torah as evidence that the Torah is not divine, and on the other hand the Rabbi says—and if it had moral things written in it, would that prove divinity? At first glance, that’s true. But I think that as a starting point, it ought to be self-evident that a divine text would contain only moral content, and the fact that it doesn’t already starts to look suspicious… meaning, we’ve already started in the negative. Morality in itself does not testify to divinity, and even if the whole Torah were moral that still would not establish that it is divine, but there would be less to argue against it…

Also, I think there’s something more fundamental here—morality is only an example, but there are plenty of other explanations proving that the Torah is natural, like the fact that the sages spoke about animals that existed in their geographic area and did not speak, for example, about animals like kangaroos, which were found in India…
Again, that’s just an example. And when you zoom out over the entire Torah, it is definitely possible to assume that this is a natural human creation, and whoever claims it is divine has to prove that. More than that, I think—and I’ll address this to the Rabbi as a question—shouldn’t we first assume that it is natural and only then divine, rather than the reverse? That is the very essence of the question. What reasons could there be to assume it is divine besides the fact that it is described in a book and was transmitted by tradition? Those same things are common in other religions too…

As for the Rabbi’s comment, I don’t think that’s the logic she is proposing. She says one thing, and you flip it around to see whether it works in the opposite direction and proves it’s a divine text. The fact that there are things that don’t match the period doesn’t prove divinity, especially when they are still within the natural range. The fact that there are things there that correspond to the period just strengthens the idea that it’s natural. You did the same thing with morality—she says there are immoral contents there, and you flip it around: if there were morality there, would that prove divinity? It doesn’t always work in the other direction. As I explained earlier, morality is what should be expected there from the outset, and the fact that it is sometimes absent (since there are moral things in the Torah too) raises suspicions. So it doesn’t work in the opposite direction.

Again, of course I’m not expecting a decisive answer, but these are certain points it was important to me to clarify.

Hello Rabbi,
1. I am not trying to be difficult on purpose, but it’s important to me to clarify the point because in my opinion it remains unanswered.
According to you, the text is reliable, and therefore we must accept it as it is even if it contains immoral commands, but I still have not understood what makes it reliable. Is there evidence for the reliability of the text that does not rely on the text itself? If not, I do not understand why I should accept the text as reliable rather than follow my own reasoning, which says that this is a human text.
2. Can women’s lack of education justify abducting them from their homes in wartime? Why is that relevant? This permission is very strong evidence that the Torah is not eternal, because it would never occur to us to permit such a thing today.
3. The condition of women today is better thanks to secular people, not thanks to religious people. For example, Rabbi Kook opposed granting women the right to vote in the 1920s when the Jewish settlement in the Land was established. Those who insisted on it were the liberal Zionists. If it had depended on the religious, women’s status probably would not have improved by much. This is exactly the “weights” I’m talking about—the weight the Torah places on believers and that causes them to justify injustices toward women, for example.
4. Returning to Pindrus’s words: the Torah not only forbids homosexual relations, it also commands the death penalty. This command hints to Pindrus and his friends that not only are homosexual relations forbidden, but the homosexual’s life is worthless (just like the life of the heretic… this in no way lessens the impression that the Torah has a cruel attitude toward homosexuals, because the Torah is also cruel toward heretics). Let us not be surprised that many believers behave disrespectfully toward homosexuals. This comes directly from the Torah’s inspiration and not because Pindrus is just stupid (he is indeed stupid, but he draws the legitimacy from the Torah).

Thank you for the interesting discussion.

Keren

I’m sorry, but I answered all these questions more than once and directly. If you want to continue the discussion, you will need to address what I wrote and ask or comment on something new.

In my opinion, you did not answer the following questions:
1. What evidence is there for the Torah’s reliability that does not rely on the Torah itself?
2. Why should one blame only Pindrus for his hateful remarks and not the Torah, which determines that the life of a person who sinned in homosexuality is worthless to the point that he must be killed?
3. Why do you think the Torah’s immoral commands (for example, the chauvinistic ones) do not hinder society’s progress and the reduction of injustices? I showed that improvement in women’s status occurred thanks to secular people and not thanks to religious ones. Today you say the Torah’s commands are not relevant and need to be adapted to the present, and I again argue that the improvement is thanks to secular people who saw equality between women and men as an important value. The Torah only hinders progress because the people who wrote it bequeathed us ancient values that perpetuate injustices.

Let’s focus on that.

Keren

I answered all this and you are repeating yourself again. I’m done. I won’t write anything more here (without a vow).

Rabbi Michael,
I and all the commenters here do not think the questions were answered. The axioms you laid down here are not necessarily correct, and without them the whole edifice collapses. If there is no evidence for the truth of the tradition that does not rely on the tradition itself, then there is no reason whatsoever to accept it as necessarily true and to make peace with the injustices it perpetuates.

Keren,
It seems to me that the confusion begins with the fact that God wears two hats—giver of the Torah and God of morality. The relationship between the two hats can be arranged in two ways:
– There is identity between Torah and morality
– There is an autonomous relationship between Torah and morality (each serves a different purpose)
Rabbi Kook proposes the first solution. Rabbi Michi proposes the second. The division between them is not absolute. Thus, for example, Rabbi Kook addressed the question of Arab ownership of areas of the Land. He argued that halakhically the Arabs had no ownership of the Land, but morally one should pay them for the land (Collected Writings of the Ra’ayah). I would say that according to his method Torah and morality are identical, but you can see that in practice he too distinguishes between them.
We should further add that the question of what is moral is not absolute. You present your moral values as absolute. If today it is accepted to accept homosexuality, then that is always absolutely right. That is a very problematic position. Moral values have changed over time and are subject to fierce disputes. Is abortion morally permissible or is it a kind of murder? Rabbi Michael Abraham will answer you that it is a kind of murder. You, I assume, will talk about a woman’s right over her own body. Who is right here? Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn disagreed about why Jim the runaway slave should be freed. Huckleberry Finn thought he should be free. Tom Sawyer thought it was because his mistress had freed him. If she had not freed him, Tom Sawyer would have been among the first to insist on keeping him a slave. How do you reconcile between them?
Rabbi Michael Abraham comes along and says that even if homosexuality should be accepted as legitimate, the Torah can still forbid it. The Torah absolutely forbids heterosexual sex between a mamzer and an ordinary Jew. Does anyone dispute that mamzerut is an immoral reality? Even in midrash they relate to the prohibition of mamzerut as an immoral prohibition, and still the Torah forbade it. The Torah can forbid homosexuality. If you believe in God, then live with that. Maybe the Torah teaches us that it is not moral, and maybe the Torah is indifferent to the moral question and forbids it for religious reasons of its own. I don’t know.

On top of all this confusion, you are bringing in the question of accepting the Torah as a divine book or not. That is already asking a lot. Rabbi Michi is telling you that by this route you won’t get very far. Better to be more modest. If, following the tradition, you believe it is a divine book, then that is what you believe. What will you do with the moral question? I don’t know. Let each person do what he understands to be right. You won’t prove anything either way from here regarding faith.
Ask yourself whether you believe or not, and act accordingly. If you do not believe, then there is no meaning to commandments you perform under coercion, and therefore according to Rabbi Michi Abraham, quite simply, it is impossible to coerce you religiously. According to his view, your transgressions also have no meaning, and therefore there is no obligation to prevent you from committing them either. Religious coercion is relevant only to someone who believes. If you do not believe, you can be homosexual and it has no meaning. And still, in a liberal public sphere, religious people can tell you that God forbids it as an abomination and think that way. I think that too about desecrating the Sabbath.

I’m not the issue here (and I’m straight, by the way). The issue is that the Torah is not tolerant either toward heretics or toward homosexuals. True, today this comes down only to criticism by the religious toward the secular, but the text you believe in is actually very much in favor of religious coercion (thankfully the religious do not have the power to impose religion on secular people).
The problem is that Rabbi Michael says one must accept the Torah’s immoral commands because that is what it commanded, but there is no evidence outside the text that it is reliable at all. Since the reliability of the tradition is the only justification for perpetuating the Torah’s injustices, the whole structure collapses. In my opinion, the Rabbi did not answer the difficulties I raised (in my opinion there is no answer to them).
One cannot simply say, “There is a separation between religion and morality.” That does not hold water. If one does say that, then at least one should honestly admit that the Torah perpetuates injustices and hinders humanity’s progress.
The examples you gave are, in my opinion, not relevant to the matter. In the matter of abortion there really is a difficulty in ranking between two values: the value of life and a woman’s bodily autonomy. Precisely there there is a balance and room for dispute. But surely you agree with me that there is no situation in which it is legitimate to take a beautiful woman from among the enemy and make her your wife, as the Torah permits. That permission would not be accepted in any normal society today, and the Torah’s permission greatly strengthens the view that the text was written by human beings.

But Y.D., Keren’s question is why believe in the first place? What is the reason to think this is a divine book? Because what you’re saying is: if you believe, then do it, and if not, then don’t. But someone who claims he believes should explain why, and maybe others will believe for the same reason. Obviously in the end everyone makes their own choice, but she didn’t get (and neither did I, exactly) an answer to why one should believe. On the other hand, Rabbi Michi said he answered this, but all he actually did was point out the mistakes in her assumptions—that one should not examine it because of immorality, and not by the content, and not by the fact that the Torah reflects its era. That’s fine as a preliminary answer, but the next stage is to answer her question: how do we know the book is divine? You say this question is too weighty, and I of course agree, so at the very least one can ask what are the reasons that lead the Rabbi himself to accept the tradition as reliable? And he didn’t really answer that…
I also very much understand why it’s preferable to give a passive answer rather than an active one. An active, positive answer requires a lot more explanation, and that’s why he addresses why one need not disbelieve, but not why one should believe.

I wrote more than once that the discussion should focus on the chain of transmission and the tradition, and that I did this in The First Existing Being (the witness argument). I can’t get into all of that here. I don’t understand why the same thing has to be repeated over and over. Whoever is interested can read there, and if there is a question or comment, you are welcome to raise it. Answering the general question of why I believe is not something for a responsa format like this. That is a question that invites at least a long article.

It is certainly related. Because, as said, the validity of the tradition is based on the tradition itself, and since it has no external validation, other evidence (such as evidence showing that the Torah’s morality is heavily influenced by the morality of the human society of the biblical period) can absolutely undermine the reliability of the tradition. In other words: believers cling to weak evidence, while there is much stronger evidence that undermines the weak evidence to which they cling.
We do not know whether there was such a witness, whether he was alive, or whether his words were not changed in the tradition. Even in court, one first needs to check whether the witness is even admissible, and only then accept his testimony.

Keren, there are separate questions here that should be put in order.
A. Regarding the Torah’s tolerance toward heretics, Rabbi Michi keeps writing that in his opinion the Torah is tolerant toward heretics because they are coerced by their opinions. I agree that some dispute him, but you are asking him, so why are you ignoring what he writes?
B. Regarding the clash between Torah and morality, where you bring several contemporary examples. Here one can take it in several directions. One direction is that the Torah does not command what you think it commands (for example, the method of the Re’em, that the beautiful captive woman is only with the woman’s consent and not by force). A second direction is that the Torah is aware of the immoral aspect involved and still decides against it for religious reasons (mamzer). A third direction is that the Torah is aware of the immoral aspect but tries to work against it indirectly (“the Torah spoke against the evil inclination” in the case of the beautiful captive woman). A fourth direction is that perhaps what we think is moral is not really moral (abortion). Homosexuality could fall under any of these possibilities. It could be that this concerns people for whom it is not natural, but for someone for whom it is natural the Torah does not forbid it (Rabbi Michi raised this possibility, though he does not accept it). It could be morally fine and still forbidden for religious reasons. It could be that the Torah prefers sexuality to lead to children and not be barren. And it could be that the Torah disagrees with you and thinks this is an immoral matter. Anything is possible, and therefore focusing on examples does not really get us anywhere, because they can always be treated ad hoc.
C. The very adherence to the Torah hinders humanity’s progress. Again, there are several problems with your assumptions. Is humanity really progressing? And where exactly does the criterion of progress stand? And even if there is progress, there are also regressions. I hope you agree that the Holocaust was not an example of progress. Perhaps homosexuality and abortion are not examples of progress either.

Adi,
Why believe in the first place? The site owner already answered that we have such an intuition. One can investigate it, and one can also live with it innocently.
What is the reason to think the Torah is divine? If you already believe, then linking that to the Torah is easier. If, for example, you think there is divine providence over the Jewish people that raises their chances of survival throughout exile, then it is easier to believe that their Torah is also divine. In the same way, if you think the world has an intelligent Creator, then the historical testimony that He gave a Torah is very reasonable. Is it possible to argue that one can intuitively identify the divinity of the Torah? It is possible. Muslims, for example, argue that the superhuman beauty of the Quran is evidence of its divinity. This is admittedly limited to Arabs—Turks and Indonesians are somewhat less able to verify it—but it is that sort of argument. At one time Doron argued here on the site that from the Torah’s perspective there is ontological precedence of the Torah before God. He and Rabbi Michi crossed quite a few swords over that. In any case, a person can claim that he sees God through the Torah, and therefore the Torah reveals God to him even without all the proofs Rabbi Michi presents. That is also a possibility. The moral discussion is secondary; it only helps us verify that there is no contradiction between God’s different hats.

It does not seem logical to me that this intelligent being would give a Torah only to the Jewish people and then tell the world that this small people is the chosen people. The Jewish people would receive the true Torah and everything else would be false imitations? But that is another topic.
The moral discussion is no less important for two reasons:
1. The Torah perpetuates injustices in the world (thankfully liberal secular people corrected the situation).
2. The Torah does not allow every person to believe what he wants, but rather authorizes the believer to punish the heretic by human hands and not only by Heaven (thankfully religious people are a minority).
3. The Torah’s moral injustices weaken the intuition and the reliability of the tradition, because what kind of God would permit a man to take a beautiful woman from her home in wartime just because he wants to? It is obvious that this permission is influenced by the norms of the time in which the Hebrew Bible was written. The Hebrew Bible is of course more advanced than the culture that existed when it was written, but it perpetuates injustices and gives believers legitimacy to cause injustices.

Y.D.
You’re giving lots of reasons and possibilities that are pretty vague, and from all of them you make one big mix into “therefore you should believe.” But suppose I accept these arguments (and I really have no principled problem accepting them)—
my problem is something else:
the same arguments can be applied to other religions and other “Torahs,” and you would get the same result that they are reliable. So what have we accomplished?

And Keren—in my opinion, I think the explanations people can often give you are that whatever God does, He does for the good, and if it seems bad to us, that’s because we are human beings and don’t understand the calculations of Heaven. And if He decided to command us something that seems bad to us, that’s because we, in our physical eyes, cannot understand the secrets and depths and reasons of that commandment or prohibition, and we must bow our heads and do it even if we do not fully understand it—like a father who gives his son medicine, and it is bad for the son, but he does it for his good so that he will recover….
The Torah is like the manufacturer’s instructions and we are supposed to act according to it even if we do not fully understand it…. and various other pearls like that….
To me that is completely ridiculous. And besides, you could say the same thing, heaven forbid, about Islam—that their god commanded them to kill the Jews, and they do it without thinking twice because for them it is a holy command and a commandment for every Jew they kill…
So that is not a good enough reason to do things, and we can see that even if a person is commanded to kill, and with such inhuman cruelty—if he is sufficiently believing(!), he will do even that.
So sorry, I cannot accept that as a good explanation for immoral commands, even if they are not as harmful as killing.

Keren,
You aren’t reading what I write, so I’ll write a response for the sake of other readers.
1. Secular arrogance is a well-known phenomenon (the latest example of it we saw on Simchat Torah this year).
2. Q.E.D.
3. A baseless claim. The decree not to marry more than one wife is an example of moral sensitivity that Judaism adopted, even though by Torah law it is permitted. The idea that someone who keeps Torah and commandments does not develop moral sensitivity is just slander.

Adi,
The purpose of the arguments I’m writing is not to persuade you, but to enable a person to trust his basic intuition. Each person will answer for himself why he believes and how he believes.

Adi,
1. What arrogance are you talking about? How is that connected to Simchat Torah?
2.?
3. I didn’t say religious people have no moral sensitivity; I really don’t think that. I only said that the Torah is like a weight that in certain cases does not allow moral sensitivity to be realized. Actually, the example of marrying more than one woman fits very well: here, for example, the Torah does not force one to marry several women, so the rabbis were not bound by some problematic command and it was easy for them to rule that one must marry only one woman. By contrast, the Torah sentences homosexuals to death (it is not implemented, but that is the law), and that causes religious society to impose on homosexuals prohibitions that the overwhelming majority cannot possibly uphold (don’t we say one does not impose on the public a decree it cannot endure?). I am sure that if there were no such command in the Torah, homosexuals would receive much better and more respectful treatment (try living alone your whole life—it’s depressing).
Keren

Keren,
1. The argument that the world was fixed thanks to liberal secularism is historical ignorance. Modern secularism is foam on the surface of thousands of years of religious history. A large part of what you define as progress happened in very religious times. But liberal secularists believe the sun rises out of their foreheads, so they are blind to anything that isn’t liberal and secular. We saw this with our liberal secular army in the Simchat Torah pogrom, which did not see or understand what was in front of its eyes.
2. What I wanted to prove is that you aren’t reading what is being written here. Go through the thread again and you’ll understand.
3. I hope you agree that it is permitted to disagree. Let’s leave this as a disagreement. It proves nothing either way regarding the original subject of the discussion, as Rabbi Michi wrote.

1. The events of Simchat Torah are not related to religious belief or secularism. What is the connection? I really didn’t understand.
2. It’s hard to follow; please remind me.
3. Secularism is not a guarantee of values like justice and equality. The evil inclination exists among secular people and religious people alike. What I said is that the sacred texts include explicit commands that perpetuate discrimination and create injustice in certain cases. In recent centuries secular people advanced equality between women and men and tolerance toward homosexuals, and that is a blessed thing. I remind you that Rabbi Kook strongly opposed women’s right to vote as recently as a hundred years ago, and this is hardly surprising: Jewish law contains a great many chauvinistic commands (to this day agunot sit and wait for their husbands to give them a get).
Let me emphasize the point: secular people are not better people than religious people, but they are certainly freer and are not bound by discriminatory commands.

Keren—I’m having a hard time understanding your logic. The gist of your argument is that if the Torah’s values do not fit the values of the Western world in 2024, then they cannot be of divine origin. That is plainly illogical, for two reasons:
1. Who said the values of the West in 2024 are correct? You think so because you are influenced by your surroundings, but billions of people in the past, present, and future think otherwise.
2. If the Torah’s values did fit the values of the West in 2024—then they would not fit the values of 1024 or 3024, and people in that generation would make exactly the same claim.

In Greco-Roman literature one can find a great deal of mockery of the Jews’ laziness in not working on the Sabbath, and of their being atheists in denying tangible gods; and Josephus, in his Antiquities of the Jews, goes to great lengths to justify the Torah. Among his remarks, he also emphasizes the Torah’s morality in that it decrees the death penalty for the sinner and thereby causes the Jews to attach great importance to keeping the laws, unlike the gentiles who disdain laws with light punishments. He also defends himself against Apion’s claim that the Jews are not favored by God because they are weak and do not rule over other peoples, and Josephus argues that the Jews did rule over other peoples during other periods… whereas today the claims against the Torah come from exactly the opposite direction. So to which morality is the Torah supposed to conform—to the Greek-Roman one or the American-European one?

Do you think a text that permits taking a foreign woman in wartime can be eternal? Can the death penalty for homosexuals really be part of an eternal text?

My main claim was first of all that there is a suspicious fit, or suspicious influence, between the values of the period in which the text was written and the values reflected by the Torah. Beyond the morality or immorality of these commands, this is evidence that strengthens the hypothesis of the text’s human origin.
As for the morality of the text: I would expect a text that allows a person to grow into it and does not place upon him a weight that perpetuates social injustices. Morality is influenced by the period, but fundamentally there are things that should not change, such as the equal value of human beings. What possible justification could there be for a death sentence for homosexual men? That cannot be just in 1000 BCE and not in 2500 CE either. Don’t be surprised that people permit themselves to incite against homosexuals; it is the Torah that gives them legitimacy to do so.

Your claim about the Torah’s immorality is a circular argument. You assume as a basic premise that the values of the secular West are correct, and from the fact that the Torah does not fit them you conclude that it is not of divine origin. But the Torah explicitly claims that the Western worldview is mistaken, and that your basic premise has no basis. (The irony is that apparently Western values themselves are originally built on Torah values, which explains why they grew specifically in Judeo-Christian society, but that cannot be proven.)

You ask what possible justification there could be for the death penalty for a homosexual, and you determine that it can never be just. Your confidence in this claim stems from a secular worldview holding that the purpose of society is to enable its members to live their lives as they wish, and only someone who harms that purpose deserves punishment. But the religious worldview holds that the purpose of society is to direct its members to realize the purpose for which they were created in the world, namely spiritual elevation through actions that accord with divine truth and refraining from actions contrary to that truth. Someone who harms this purpose deserves punishment no less—and even more—than someone who harms human life or property, which are only means to that purpose. Therefore, according to the religious outlook, it is not the Torah but precisely the secular outlook that perpetuates social injustices by harming the fulfillment of humanity’s purpose.

I assume you strongly disagree with this outlook. You may think otherwise, and no one is forcing you (nor can anyone force you) to agree with the Torah’s values, but there is no point in discussing the morality of the punishment for homosexuals when you do not agree to the basic premise underlying the issue. One can simply say that you do not accept the idea that there is purpose and significance in observing divine laws we do not understand, and that is where the discussion ends.

Regarding the claim of suspicious correspondence—in principle, that is a good claim, except that I do not think it is actually correct. In terms of values, the Torah’s overall direction does not fit at all the values of the period in which the text was written—whether it is the protection of the rights of the weak and concern for their welfare (for example, the laws open by protecting the rights of slaves), judging each person according to his own deeds and not those of his fathers or spouse, emphasizing love of the stranger (the command repeated most often) and compassion for the poor, the orphan, and the widow—not to mention belief in one abstract God, which was utterly opposed to the basic assumptions of the whole world.

What is true is that technically there is indeed correspondence to the reality of the period—agricultural life, slavery, sacrifices, and the like. But that makes perfect sense, because the Torah was given to the people of that period. What is eternal is only the principles and values, not the technique, which may change.

Hello Avi, and thank you for the answer.
I actually love the Hebrew Bible because it is a text advanced for its time. The Hebrew Bible is my heritage, and I would not give it up. I am only arguing that the values in it are not eternal precisely because the Torah was given from Heaven.
In my opinion, what you say actually strengthens my claim. I do not believe you would want to live in a society that executes people because they are homosexual. The only reason you are looking for a justification for that command is because you believe the text is eternal, and that is exactly what proves that the Torah is a kind of weight that makes it harder for believers to progress. What does it mean to progress? Progress means not allowing women to remain chained because their partners imprison them, and not harming homosexuals.
The Nazis also murdered homosexuals, and I’m sure you think that was a crime. Look who persecutes homosexuals in the world today: Iran, Hungary, Muslims around the world, etc. These are not the good guys of the world.
This is not a circular argument, because, as I said, I do not believe you actually think that the death penalty for male homosexual intercourse is something that can be justified. That is something the two of us ought to agree on. That should be an anchor point in the discussion. Do you really want to debate the question “death penalty for homosexuals: pros and cons?” I don’t think so.
What does it mean that people are supposed to realize their purpose? Even Orthodox rabbis have already exempted homosexuals from the commandment to be fruitful and multiply, so in any case they cannot fulfill their purpose (what unfortunate woman would marry them?), so why kill them? And why did God create them that way? I think this discussion can reach absurd districts.
Religious coercion: the Torah actually believes very strongly in religious coercion. There is no tolerance there at all. The reason there is no coercion in practice is that the religious are a minority today and do not have the ability to enforce the religious commandments.

Hello Keren.
First it is important to distinguish between homosexual inclination and the act of having relations. There is no doubt that it is a crime to persecute a person because of his natural inclination, and the whole question is whether it is justified to legislate a law forbidding the act of having relations.

I see in your words two separate claims: one, that in reality societies that persecute homosexuals are cruel societies; and the second, that in principle one cannot justify the death penalty for male homosexual intercourse.
In my opinion, the first claim is correct and the second is not. The first is correct because, generally speaking, a society that engages in persecuting and murdering people is a cruel society. The second claim is incorrect because every society in the world legislates laws whose purpose is the proper maintenance of society, and someone who violates the laws harms society and deserves punishment for that. The dispute between different societies is only about which laws benefit society and how one should punish someone who harms it, but no one disputes the basic premise. Accordingly, if society agrees that relations of a certain kind are a severe harm to society, why is it illogical to punish someone who chooses to live in that society and to harm it?
The Western world itself changes its mind every few years about what counts as harming society. In the past, homosexuality, adultery, abortion, and expressing support for the enemy were perceived as harms to society, whereas polygamy, early marriage, and corporal punishment were considered legitimate; today the former are considered legitimate and the latter criminal and harmful to society. Your difficulty is understanding why the Torah (and most of the world in the past) sees same-sex relations as harmful to society, but, as said, that is because as a secular person you understand the definition of “a properly functioning society” in a completely different way from the religious conception.

Once one recognizes (even without agreeing to) that basic premise, one can understand that imposing legal punishment for same-sex relations is no different from imposing punishment for any other transgression. How the law-enforcement system will actually function is an entirely different question, and indeed the laws of Jewish jurisprudence greatly restrict the ability to impose severe punishments in practice, even more than the Western legal system does. Therefore, a Torah-based legal system would look entirely different from the Iranian one, even if theoretically both agree on the same prohibition and punishment.

Hello,
What you say only further strengthens my claim that belief in the Torah’s validity puts the believer in a trap and leads him into absurdities.
The orderly society you describe is so fragile and brittle that every little thing shatters it. There is no limit to it. What is this ideal society? A society ruled by religion? In such a society not only would there be no place for homosexuals, there would also be no place for me as a secular woman. My lack of faith could really crumble this society. It would be a society so frightened and driven by fear, doing awful and terrible things in order to protect itself from those who are a little different from the norm.
Religion gives no legitimacy whatsoever to behave this way. How is this different from Iran? They also believe very strongly in their religion.
What is it about homosexuality that threatens you so much? Would you behave this way toward your son?
You’ve gone too far, and that’s unfortunate.
Keren

One more thing: there is a contradiction in what you say. On the one hand you justify the very idea of killing homosexuals, and at the same time you immediately say the Torah won’t implement it. Why not implement it?
Because it is obvious to everyone that this is a crazy command. Religious people themselves understand that there are crazy commands in the Torah.
By the way, it doesn’t end there. Maybe they don’t murder, but they definitely can humiliate, ostracize, and insult. That is very common in religious society even today. The weight I am talking about leads some believers to bad and cruel behavior.
Is that how you would want your son to be treated? Look at Uri Sherki. The guy received a very religious education and still cannot escape who he is. It happens everywhere.

It seems to me that you are returning to the same place. You completely reject the very premise that the purpose of society is to conduct itself according to religious values. That is a perfectly understandable claim from a secular worldview, but you should understand that the religious worldview completely disagrees and holds that this indeed is the purpose of the individual human being and of society as a whole. If you draw a parallel between the goal of secular society and the goal of religious society, you will see that the conduct is exactly the same: in both societies, those who help realize the goal are encouraged, and those who harm it are denounced and even punished. The whole dispute is only over what the goal is.

The claim that there is no place in religious society for homosexuals or for secular people is not clear to me at all. Obviously there is no place in a society for someone who conducts himself contrary to it—what society does have room for that? Is there a place in secular society for yeshiva students or Satmar Hasidim? Is there a place in left-wing society for settlers, climate-change deniers, or opponents of homosexuality?

Homosexuality does not threaten me personally, but it harms religious values just as racism and the exclusion of women harm humanistic values. You do not have to agree with religious values, but understand that the criticism here is not of the conduct—which is entirely similar to secular conduct—but of the basic world of values.

Regarding your question about the contradiction in my words, the answer is simple: there is a significant difference between the principle itself and its implementation on the ground. That is because there are additional considerations that change the picture regarding how it should be implemented. For example, although in principle someone who drives contrary to traffic laws or evades tax deserves punishment, in practice it is not proper to implement this in every case, because everyone violates traffic laws and everyone does not always pay taxes, and not every violation of the law is equally problematic. Therefore the implementation of the punishment set by law changes according to circumstances. In the present case, the death penalty for homosexuals is mainly a principled declaration of the severity of the act, but in practice, since the damage that would be caused to society by killing those who engage in homosexual relations (or any other religious offender) is far greater than the benefit, the punishment is not implemented in practice (except in rare cases where judgment requires it), and one suffices instead with social denunciation.

The question of what people with a natural homosexual inclination are to do is indeed a good one, but it can be asked about any person whose traits do not fit society’s values. What is a person supposed to do if he has difficulty earning a living in a society that values economic achievement? What is someone with low intellectual ability supposed to do in a society that values academic achievement? How is an unattractive woman to find a partner in a society that prizes beauty?

As for women chained to dead marriages: perhaps you will be surprised, but it is actually secular law, not Jewish law, that chains these women. Jewish law offers a simple solution to the problem: the husband who refuses to grant the divorce is flogged in a religious court until he agrees to give the get. But the secular “humanistic” law forbids physically harming the husband who is chaining the wife, and thus sentences the woman to misery. To forbid a halakhic solution and then come complaining that Jewish law does not solve the problem—that is absurdity at its best.
(There is a small minority of cases in which the above halakhic solution will not help, such as when the husband is unfit to grant a get—insane, comatose, missing. There are also various halakhic solutions for those cases, were it not for the rabbinic conservatism of our day, which Rabbi Michi often criticizes. That is a subject in itself, but it is not related to the Torah itself.)

As for realizing one’s purpose: the intention is not the homosexual’s particular purpose, but the purpose of human existence in the world. If one accepts the premise that the purpose is to conduct oneself according to spiritual principles, including an entire system directed toward sanctifying sexuality, then same-sex relations (or any other form of forbidden sexual union) undermine that purpose.

As for religious coercion: I wrote that it is impossible to coerce agreement with Torah values, because one cannot force belief, only behavior. But even regarding behavior, the Torah does not believe in coercing its values any more than secular people believe in coercing theirs. Most of the public in the state believes that the value of equality ought to be enforced, and therefore it obligates the wealthy to contribute a high percentage of their money to those with fewer means, and even punishes them if they do not do so. How is that different from coercing religious values?
Every society in which most members agree that certain conduct should be enforced means that whoever lives in that society does so on that understanding. Whoever does not like it can try to move to another society, just as someone who does not agree with coercion in the name of economic equality can move to a country with lower taxes.

Avi, I admit I usually don’t answer quickly, but what you’re saying turns my stomach.
No one should be beaten. The very situation in which the man’s consent is needed at all is absurd. Why should I need my husband’s permission to divorce? Why does the husband have any advantage over the wife in this case at all? You’ve internalized chauvinistic values deeply, deeply.
In a normal state a woman should not have to wait until her husband agrees. That’s it, it’s that simple. Internalize this: you have no superiority over me.
Enforcing the value of equality? Without taxes there is no state. That is a social arrangement accepted by society and decided by majority opinion. In the U.S., for example, taxes are lower.
Who are you to impose your faith on others? You want to believe—that’s your right. Look at the absurdities you arrive at.
What do you mean, let them find another society? Exile secular people?
The discussion has gone too far. It saddens me to read what you write. All the countries run the way you suggest are backward countries that are awful to live in. Good thing you are not the majority. Yikes.

I really do not understand what provoked your anger. I am simply pointing out the basic fact that every society conducts itself according to certain rules and values and imposes them on the members of that society. Could you offer a sensible explanation of why religious values are supposed to be different from secular values? Why is it unfair to impose the former but fair to impose the latter?
Just as the manner of tax distribution is a social arrangement based on various values, so too religious conduct is a social arrangement based on religious values. I do not see where you find a difference between the two.

I suggest you ask yourself something. Let us leave the Torah and Judaism aside for a moment. All societies and states everywhere and always, including Western society until not so long ago, upheld the kind of conduct you define as absurd and preposterous. Were they all backward and wicked, and only you and the Western millennial generation are wise and fair? Even if your view is correct, try to understand what they thought and what logic their conduct was based on. It is not reasonable that all of humanity everywhere and always was infantile, and only our generation discovered the truth on its own.
Don’t forget that your grandchild will think of your views exactly what you think of the views of earlier generations. It would be fitting to arm oneself with humility and try to understand—even if not to agree with—the mentality and logic that underlay a conduct different from that of our day.

I suggest reading Jonathan Haidt’s book The Righteous Mind, which explains very well the theory of moral foundations and the difference between secular and religious, liberal and conservative moral conceptions. He shows how secular and liberal people fail to understand the broader religious and conservative moral conception, which includes a wider range of values than their own. He notes that those who uphold the secular-Western conception are a negligible minority relative to the rest of the world, historically and even today (he gives them the acronym WEIRD—Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, Democratic. It should be noted that the author himself belongs to this group and outlook, and nevertheless recognizes the fact that this is a view not shared by most of humanity and one that suffers from a certain narrowing of values).

The reason that in a “normal” state one does not need to wait for both spouses’ consent is that the whole institution of marriage has no significant importance in such states, and it is basically just a financial contract signed with the option of terminating it whenever one wants. That is the reason for the disintegration of the family institution in the Western world, and progressives openly encourage this disintegration. But according to the view that was universally accepted throughout history, marriage is a system with sacred value and critical importance to society’s structure and life’s purpose. In order to preserve such a meaningful institution, one must create a serious commitment from which one cannot easily back out, which pushes people to invest effort in making the marriage succeed (and indeed divorce rates among the religious public, which upholds this view, are far lower).
Think of a serious business contract between two huge companies. Would it be a good idea to let either side walk away from the deal at any stage without any conditions? The business world does not work that way, because it knows that would damage the whole economic system. Someone who invests a lot in a deal wants to ensure that it remains stable and that the other side cannot suddenly leave just because they no longer feel like continuing.

The reason the Torah’s original law makes divorce depend on the husband’s consent and not on the wife’s consent, unlike marriage which depends on both, is, I would guess, because the husband is the one who takes responsibility for providing for the wife’s needs, and therefore he needed more protection than she did (he would not want to invest in taking on that responsibility only to have his wife suddenly run off). Nowadays the husband’s taking responsibility is less significant, and therefore it makes sense to require the consent of both sides, which indeed has been the case since the enactment of Rabbenu Gershom a thousand years ago (though he probably enacted it for other reasons). That is only my conjecture; there may be another explanation for this law.

(In other words, if you ask why the husband has preference over his wife in terms of consent, the husband could ask why he must take on greater responsibility. Rights come with obligations. Nowadays the situation has changed because women can work and provide just as men do, and therefore, as said, there is no reason to give the husband extra rights over his wife.)

I do not understand how you arrived at the absurd idea of “exiling secular people.” Religious society creates a society based on Torah values, and whoever wishes to be secular will live in a secular society based on secular values. Do you advocate coercing secular values upon a society that wants to conduct itself according to religious values?

P.S. From your words it seems you think I support imposing religious values on secular people in the current situation. But that is completely mistaken. I oppose all such coercion; it only harms religion. This includes my opposition to religious legislation in the secular State of Israel, and in my opinion secular people should be allowed to do whatever they like—to use public transportation on the Sabbath, marry whomever or whatever they want, eat pork and leavened food publicly, and in general to separate religion from the state as much as possible.

All the coercion I am talking about, and which I understand to be the kind desired from a Torah perspective, exists only within a society whose members have agreed on the values being enforced, just like any proper state that enforces the agreed-upon values on its citizens. Of course, even such coercion must be carried out thoughtfully and in a controlled way so that we do not become a totalitarian state. That, and only that, is the “state governed by Jewish law” desirable from a Torah perspective, at least in my opinion. Such a policy could be implemented only when the whole people agrees to it.

I didn’t come up with the idea of exiling secular people on my own. I understood from what you said that theoretically a religious society would have legitimacy to run a state according to religious law—that’s written above. Of course a person is born with the right not to live according to religious law. That is a birthright, not something someone needs to grant him, and it is women’s natural right not to have to ask a man’s permission to annul a marriage (why did you go with beating the men? Instead, one could simply determine in advance that there will be no chaining of wives and that’s the end of the story).
In any case, that’s not really the subject here. By the way, I’m not one of those who thinks everything is religious coercion; there are also matters of national character in the public sphere, for example Passover, and in my view that’s not religious coercion.
What I wanted to show is that you do in fact justify the horrifying command to kill homosexuals who dare realize their inclinations. Of course you don’t mean that this should really be done, only that you justify the idea under certain conditions (which you yourself understand are completely imaginary). In short, this again greatly strengthens my claim that the Torah’s commands give legitimacy to completely absurd ideas, and this greatly strengthens the claim that the Torah—or at least part of it—is not from Heaven.)
I suppose we’ll remain divided,
Keren

And one last thing: in a society with a liberal secular majority, a person can usually keep the commandments because of the pluralism built into it. In a society with a religious majority, it’s doubtful a person could really be free (I don’t even want to know how homosexuals would be treated in such a society, for example).
There is no symmetry between religious coercion and “secular coercion.” For some reason there are religious people who expect the entire public sphere to be adjusted to their needs, and when that doesn’t happen they call it secular coercion.

Hello Keren.
I think one should distinguish between the Torah’s commandments—where in my opinion you are right: even if Rabbi Michi is right that the purpose of Jewish law is not ethics but other halakhic values, still they cannot completely contradict morality—and between permissions, like the example you gave (taking a beautiful captive woman in war).
The Torah did not say this is a commandment, and it is even written in midrash that this is a moral wrong (the sages expound that this is why King David had a stubborn and rebellious son, because he took a beautiful captive woman and did not interpret the juxtaposition of passages, since the passage of the stubborn and rebellious son appears after that of the beautiful captive woman, from which the sages learned that “whoever takes a woman… will end up having…” ), rather the Torah dealt with reality as it was then.
The reason for this is that the Torah, unlike perhaps especially metaphysical conceptions in the East, comes to repair reality as it is and not to speak about some utopian world somewhere (unlike Christianity, for example, which sees physicality as sin and compels one to flee from it). The Torah’s goal is specifically to bring this world itself to utopia (for example, notice that only today are people talking about vegetarianism, while thousands of years ago the Torah saw this as a moral wrong).
The Torah gradually makes its ethics present through the narratives in the Written Torah, from which one can derive the “spirit of the Torah,” as the sages did many times (unlike the Oral Torah, which deals only with laws and not ethics).

That’s true that the Torah doesn’t command it, but the permission itself is living testimony to the Torah’s non-eternity. Its spirit may be progressive, but it is not eternal.
The examples you gave about the words of our sages are not relevant to the topic under discussion. I was only arguing that the Written Torah is not eternal; the way the sages related to the matter does not solve the issue.

Keren, notice that you are confirming my claim that this is a circular argument. You come from a secular Western worldview that sees the prohibition and punishment of homosexuality as a completely absurd idea, and from that you prove that the Torah is not from God. How do you know with such confidence that God agrees with the secular worldview?
On the contrary, most people throughout history who wanted to act according to God’s will or to be spiritual thought differently (and this includes a substantial portion of adherents of Eastern religions such as Hindus, Buddhists, Sikhs, Jains, Zoroastrians, and others), while those who think like you are mostly people who are not interested at all in God’s laws and will, if they even believe He exists.

You confirm this even more in the sentence “of course a person is born with the right not to live according to religious law.” How do you know a person is born with such a right—is that a scientific finding? This is plainly a secular worldview, and the religious worldview completely disagrees. It holds that a person is born with the ability not to live according to God’s will, but not with a right to do so.

In short, there is no point in discussing the Torah on the basis of secular premises. These are two completely different lines of thinking. It reminds me of the naive Western understanding of the Middle East, based on a Western outlook, without grasping that Arabs have a completely different worldview.

Hello Avi,
1. You have no proof that the Torah is from Heaven (that is, you have no evidence outside the text). Since you have no such proof, you have no right to impose your belief even if you are the majority. Not only do people who were born secular not see the Torah as a binding text, but tens of percent of religious people leave religion. Before you deny my right to choose my way of life, prove to me that you are right. If you have no such proof, then let each person live according to his own path. This is not only a matter of a secular worldview; it is also a better recipe for shared life among human beings with different outlooks. As you yourself said, there is no point in forcing others to observe commandments, so why are we even discussing this?
2. Exactly what I said! All those religions you mentioned aren’t considered true in your eyes anyway (some of them are outright idolatry), and as you said, they all impose their view denying a person the right to be gay. What does that tell you? Ask yourself why all those religions are so afraid of homosexuals.

1. I remind you that the discussion here was not whether there is proof that the Torah is from Heaven, but whether there is proof that it is not from Heaven from the fact that it expresses views contrary to present-day Western values. To that I argued that this is illogical, because there is no reason to assume that specifically the values of the West in 2024 express divine truth rather than the values of other societies and other periods in history. Your proof that the Torah’s values are wrong is like a Buddhist proving that Christian values are wrong because they do not fit Buddhist values.

You wrote, “Since you have no such proof, you have no right to impose your belief even if you are the majority”—if it were proven, would I then have the right? But if I need to impose the belief, apparently the proof is not accepted by the person upon whom it is imposed…
The discussion of coercing beliefs and values is not related to proofs of their truth, but to social arrangements, just as you yourself wrote that the goal is a good recipe for shared life. For that reason, I think religious coercion belongs only in a society in which there is uniform agreement on religious values, and the coercion is intended to prevent individuals from harming those values. But in a society where no such agreement exists, there is no justification for coercion.

2. No religion is “afraid” of homosexuals, just as no state is “afraid” of tax evaders or draft dodgers. Religions simply think this is negative behavior. I do not know why you have such difficulty understanding that there are people who simply think this is a negative act, exactly as you think many acts are negative according to your beliefs and values.

P.S. I do not understand this language of “right.” Do you have the ability to choose what seems right to you? Certainly, and to the best of my understanding, it is God’s will that you do so. Is your choice correct? On that we disagree.

True, executing homosexuals is disgusting and stupid, and you too would oppose it. A religion that commands the execution of homosexuals is too similar to old norms from a time when human life had no value. We are not talking about someone who hurt someone else, stole from him, or insulted him. That is the claim: a suspicious match between the Torah’s values and the values of ancient cultures.
That does not prove the Torah is false, but this match greatly strengthens the idea that the Torah is not from Heaven.
You are of course entitled to believe.
In my view, one does something because it is convincing, not because it cannot be disproven.

If you want to clarify the truth, you must be willing to step outside your basic conceptual world and examine other conceptions. That is very difficult, but possible for someone who wants to. I did it myself and still do all the time.

This insight has nothing to do with the Torah or religion at all, but with clarifying truth in general. I suggest that instead of examining the matter in relation to the Torah of Israel, you focus on the question: what did people “back then” think? Were 99.99% of the world’s population throughout its existence all stupid and immoral, and only I and my friends discovered the truth? Does it seem reasonable to you that everyone, always, completely missed the truth and it suddenly landed in the society in which you live?
Thinking this way may unsettle your basic assumptions, but it is crucial in order to get closer to the truth.

Are you still justifying the murder of homosexuals? Enough, I’m tired.

?
Anachronism is actually the opposite
https://he.wikisource.org/wiki/%D7%A7%D7%98%D7%92%D7%95%D7%A8%D7%99%D7%94:%D7%95%D7%99%D7%A7%D7%A8%D7%90_%D7%99%D7%97_%D7%9B%D7%96
Is there any historical society that survived after permitting this?
“Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There was never a democracy that did not commit suicide.” ~ John Adams, in a letter to John Taylor
https://he.wikiquote.org/wiki/%D7%93%D7%9E%D7%95%D7%A7%D7%A8%D7%98%D7%99%D7%94
It is precisely the Torah that is the conclusion of historical empiricization [And God saw the earth, and behold, it was corrupt… for all flesh had corrupted its way upon the earth]
https://he.wikisource.org/wiki/%D7%A7%D7%98%D7%92%D7%95%D7%A8%D7%99%D7%94:%D7%91%D7%A8%D7%90%D7%A9%D7%99%D7%AA_%D7%95_%D7%99%D7%91
On what conclusions of sustainable, long-term historical empiricization does the opposite approach rely?
For even if it is not moral, dyscalculia is still not a valid mathematical method… factually, and dyslexia is not a standard interpretation.

What is this???

I justify the death penalty for homosexuals to exactly the same extent as for any act that society, by full consensus of all, has decided is considered a severe harm to society. Even if it were eating frogs or drinking Coke on Wednesday evening. (Of course, on condition that the punishment is carried out in a very deliberate and cautious manner, with a strict legal procedure, and only in specific cases that truly preserve a proper society.)

Great, whatever society decided? Homosexuality is such a severe harm? What is wrong with you? Your place is in Iran, in Nazi Germany (there too they decided that homosexuality harmed society). In a society where people agree that anything society agrees to is kosher, the most horrible things happen.
You have no moral conscience. Shame on you. I’m not answering you anymore. You’re simply boring. Don’t bother writing.
Imagine they did this to your son, your neighbor…

Killing homosexuals is for their own good, in order to save their eternal soul in the World to Come. The goal is to atone for the terrible act they committed, and therefore they also confess their sin before they are killed. This is not a matter of social punishment.

Another lunatic. Enough, what is this site? What kind of messed-up God do you believe in? I wish you a gay son so your minds will open up.
You’re only confirming my thesis.

“Great, whatever society decided? Homosexuality is not such a severe harm? What is wrong with you? Your place is before the Flood or in Egypt (there too they decided that homosexuality does not harm society). In a society where people agree that anything society agrees to is kosher, the most horrible things happen.
You have no moral conscience. Shame on you. I’m not answering you anymore. You’re simply boring. Don’t bother writing.
Imagine they did this to your home, your room…”

Keren, who do you think is supposed to decide what counts as harm to society?

Y.D., many transgressions are punished by death at the hands of Heaven or karet, so why wasn’t the religious court told to take care of the sinner’s atonement? In my opinion it is clear that even though death may bring atonement, that is not the purpose of the punishment but social deterrence.
But the truth is that the social deterrence lies in the fact that the punishment is written in the Torah, not in its practical implementation, since in practice carrying out a death sentence was exceedingly rare.
See the letter Rabbi Moshe Feinstein wrote to the governor of New York (printed in Choshen Mishpat, part 2, sec. 68), where he explains that out of hatred of evil and guarding society, the sages said, “Let the owner of the vineyard come and weed out his thorns,” and it is not the role of the religious court to kill sinners; rather, the purpose is that people should know the severity of the prohibition and not transgress it.

“Who do you think is supposed to decide what counts?”
https://shironet.mako.co.il/artist?type=lyrics&lang=1&prfid=686&wrkid=559
That’s who

Friends, as is well known I am very opposed to censorship, but in certain cases I definitely delete. The “discussion” (?) here is approaching that point. In my opinion there has long been no point in it, but if you find some point in it, good health to you. But in the latest messages you have already approached the deletion threshold.

You most certainly are the authority to decide what counts as harm on the site and is fit for deletion… 😉

I think the discussion here proves that the Torah definitely gives legitimacy to severe homophobia and to disregard for human life.
I didn’t believe I would be arguing with people over the question “death penalty for homosexuals: pros and cons.” I was sure people would say this is absurd and that they don’t understand the command.
Q.E.D.

Hello Keren, regarding your question, it should be noted that many times when the Torah writes the death penalty, its purpose is more to establish a value norm than actually to execute people. As the Rabbi wrote to you, a situation in which people would actually be executed was extremely rare (there is an opinion that it happened once in seventy years), so why does the Torah nevertheless write the death penalty for many things (Sabbath desecration, forbidden sexual relations, etc.)? Because it wants to present to those who study it how grave the matter is in its eyes—so grave that one would deserve death for it. In that way, people will think twice about whether to do such a thing or not. One could compare this to a modern law that states that for treason in wartime one may be executed. In practice there may have been one or two cases in the short history of the State of Israel in which this law was used, but beyond its actual use, the law itself, with its severe penalty, gives the citizen a clearer understanding of how grave treason is in the eyes of the legislator.

You can look into broader answers here:
https://www.knowingfaith.co.il/%D7%9E%D7%95%D7%A1%D7%A8/%D7%A2%D7%95%D7%A0%D7%A9%D7%99-%D7%9E%D7%95%D7%95%D7%AA-%D7%91%D7%99%D7%94%D7%93%D7%95%D7%AA

And here:
https://www.knowingfaith.co.il/%D7%9E%D7%95%D7%A1%D7%A8/%D7%90%D7%A9%D7%AA-%D7%99%D7%A4%D7%AA-%D7%AA%D7%95%D7%90%D7%A8

Yosef—the problem Keren has is with the very establishment of the value norm. In her view, such a value norm is invalid and immoral, and therefore I am challenging the basic premise that determines that.

Keren—does Western society, which imposes prison sentences on lawbreakers, thereby give legitimacy to disregard for freedom? Not at all. Rather, the value of preserving law for the public outweighs the value of individual freedom. Exactly the same logic applies to the death penalty for those who violate any law. This is not cheapening the value of life, but expressing the greatness of the value of preserving the law. (It is rather absurd that the secular position, which permits euthanasia and abortions, accuses the Torah of cheapening human life…)

The claim about “giving legitimacy to homophobia” is utterly ridiculous. That is exactly what the Torah is saying—that engaging in such relations is a negative thing! It is like accusing liberalism of being “racism-phobic”…

Avi, I don’t know, but what difference does it make? What the Torah thought required only karet or death at the hands of Heaven for the soul’s atonement, it assigned those punishments; and what it thought required death at human hands for the soul’s atonement, it assigned death at human hands. Maybe that was also meant to deter or awaken people to the severity of the sins while in practice religious courts avoided punishing, but there is nothing illogical here. It doesn’t seem to me that this was intended for civic order, and the Ran also writes that for civic order there is the state, whereas the Torah is intended for the good of the religious order.

Keren,
There is nothing homophobic in my position. I studied with homosexuals and worked with homosexuals, and I did not treat them any differently from any other secular person who merely desecrates the Sabbath (an offense punishable by stoning) or eats non-kosher food. I also have not the slightest interest in religious coercion over non-believers, and even believers who are lax (traditionalists), I believe should be left alone for various reasons. I even oppose punishing sins for religious reasons. That doesn’t mean I’m now going to censor the Torah just because its views differ from yours.

Ravitzky: Prof. Leibowitz, you are accustomed to claim that a humanist, if he is truly a humanist who thinks through to the end what his position means, is thereby and necessarily a cosmopolitan, an anarchist[!], a pacifist, and an atheist[!]. I apologize for all five of those foreign words, but in any case you hold that four positions are almost logically entailed here. In today’s conversation I would like to try to challenge each of those four claims, or at least I’ll presume to challenge them, and for that perhaps I’ll first ask you to present these conceptions one by one.
Leibowitz: First of all I want to prevent a misunderstanding that is very common in all these discussions. People confuse the great and difficult concept—humanism—with the concepts of humanity or humanitarianism. Humanity is a certain mode of behavior of a person toward another person; humanism is a certain conception of man: seeing the human being—and here the intention is not the human species but the individual human being—as the supreme value. Therefore the highest expression of humanism was given by Immanuel Kant. And if I see the human being as the supreme value—then certain things are not merely entailed by this, as you phrased it, but rather several things are included in it.
Ravitzky: Logically entailed.
Leibowitz: They are included in this thing. And of course this is not the entire content of humanism, but I am speaking here about how the face of humanism is revealed in public problems[!], not in the personal relation between one person and another.
Ravitzky: Good, perhaps let us move to anarchist.
Leibowitz: Yes, anarchist. What is the opposite of anarchism? The opposite of anarchism is that a person recognizes the existence of government. That he sees himself as subject not to expressions of his own personality—obviously every person is subject to his own personality, that is clear—but in addition to that he sees himself as subject to obligations or prohibitions that do not arise from his personality. He recognizes the authority of something called government, which obligates him—not in the sense that the government has means by which it can put him in prison or kill him—but that he recognizes that such an obligation exists, that is, he recognizes something above the individual, and an anarchist does not recognize something that stands above the individual and therefore rejects government.
Ravitzky: I think we disagree, but let’s move on. Pacifist.
Leibowitz: Well, pacifist—that is self-evident. If the individual human being is the supreme value, then there is nothing, nothing at all, for whose sake it is permitted to sacrifice human life or to deny and take human life. That is fundamental pacifism.
Ravitzky: So he is a pacifist?
Leibowitz: This does not challenge pacifism at all. Pacifism means that one does not wage war for anything beyond preserving the life of the individual.
Ravitzky: We’ve agreed on our disagreement. What about the atheist?
Leibowitz: Here the matter almost need not be said: one recognizes as supreme value something that does not derive from the individual but from his standing before God
http://www.leibowitz.co.il/ebook.asp?id=20
Ravitzky: Perhaps I’ll illustrate. “Love truth and peace”—I begin from the assumption that truth is a value for me and peace is a value for me, and in 99% of cases I can uphold both as values. There is a rare case of direct collision and contradiction between them, and then I will need to decide. Suppose I decide that one may lie for the sake of peace. If so, have I thereby expressed that truth is not a value in my eyes at all?
Leibowitz: That is, at that moment it has become clear that I see the value in this and not in that. But I am not dealing here with the metaphysical concept of value; I am dealing with a person who recognizes something as a value, and here, in this situation, it becomes clear what he sees as the value: truth or peace.
On this matter of ‘truth’ and ‘peace’ our sages already taught that the two things in fact do not go together. If you want peace, then you have to give up truth; if you insist on truth—let the law pierce the mountain—then there cannot be peace. You see, here are two values which can sometimes coexist, but I can imagine a situation where you have to decide what the value is, truth or peace.
Ravitzky: I’ll summarize: the dispute is whether the value is exclusive, total, the supreme value, almost like holiness, or whether values can live together side by side, with one of them, at a point of collision, taking precedence over others. Now perhaps I’ll ask the next question in this context. Somewhere, or perhaps in more than one place, you expressed yourself as saying that there are two systems of values that are intelligible to you, or legitimate—one is the service of God and one is humanism.
Leibowitz: May I correct you? I said that I present as examples two value systems that are among the most important. By that I did not say these are certainly the legitimate ones; rather, I presented as examples two standards of values that are very important in human consciousness. That does not mean they are the only values.
Ravitzky: If so, you spoke there of two legitimate systems of values as opposed to one illegitimate system.
Leibowitz: No! Humanism is not legitimate for me; I do not accept the human being as the supreme value.
Ravitzky: You understand my question. My question is not why Yeshayahu Leibowitz, who chooses the service of God as the supreme value, is not entitled according to his own internal scale of values to judge someone else. I am asking how you judge between two systems when you want neither of them—you say: “I hate this one more than the other, therefore I hang it”?
Leibowitz: Look, the world teems with people I hate and I would never dream that I am obliged to hang them, but there are people so hateful to me that I say, from the deepest consciousness, those people must be eliminated. From my own standpoint. Understand: I have no value standpoint above values.
http://www.leibowitz.co.il/ebook.asp?id=21