Q&A: Jewish Law and Morality: בעקבות the Discussion with Yaron Yadan
Jewish Law and Morality: Following the Discussion with Yaron Yadan
Question
Hello Rabbi Michael.
Following the discussion, I thought to ask you about the categorical distinction you make between Jewish law and morality. For this purpose, I think the discussion needs to be divided into two components:
1. The theory itself regarding the categorical distinction—that is, the very claim that God may command religious values independently of the moral values learned from conscience, and that these are two separate normative categories.
2. The question whether the Torah is in fact a case of a separate normative category that is not morality.
In other words, one can בהחלט agree with 1 (that it is possible and coherent) and still maintain that this is not the case with the Torah (that is, not agree with 2). My sense is that most of the objections directed at you concern the first level of the discussion. Questions like: why didn’t He also command morality? What do you do when there is a contradiction? And so on. In my opinion, you answer these sufficiently, and show convincingly how this conceptual structure is indeed coherent and logical.
However, in my opinion the central question is not only whether it is possible for a Torah to be given that does not convey moral values, but whether that is the case with the Torah before us. And in my humble opinion, it is very hard to read the Torah and understand it that way. I think a straightforward reading of the Torah shows that these are commandments intended to bring about moral correction (or moral advancement) of society.
I have two reasons for this:
1. Style—the language of the Torah often describes the commandments in a vivid, emotional, and moral way. There are many expressions that justify the commandments in this way: “Is the tree of the field a man, that it should enter the siege before you?”, “For it is his only covering, it is his garment for his skin; in what shall he sleep? And it shall be, when he cries to Me, that I will hear, for I am compassionate,” “And you shall not oppress a stranger, for you know the soul of the stranger, because you were strangers in the land of Egypt,” “Her former husband who sent her away may not take her again to be his wife after she has been defiled, for that is an abomination before the Lord, and you shall not bring sin upon the land…,” “But to the young woman you shall do nothing; the young woman has committed no sin worthy of death, for just as a man rises against his fellow and murders him, so is this matter,” and many more. It seems that a straightforward reading of the Torah shows that it is a moral manifesto. If these were detached and abstract laws standing on their own, I would expect a completely different style.
2. Engagement with the practices of the present—the detachment of the Torah from morality (and really from any realistic and human context) creates the expectation that Jewish law would consist of timeless laws detached from the cultural norms of a particular time. For example, if there is some religious value in my wearing a red garment every Monday, that value should not depend on one contemporary fashion or another. In other words, I would expect it to have been true even before the world was created. But if it so happens that this value was given in a period when that was the accepted color (or alternatively, when it was customary among heretics to wear red’s “enemy”—blue), that makes this conception very difficult.
And indeed, the Torah often comes as a response to the practices of its own time. That is, there is a practice X, and the Torah commands doing X in a corrected way, or alternatively Y, which is exactly the opposite of X, as a response to it. The archaeological knowledge we have today powerfully reveals this and shows clearly that there is a counterpoint here to the existing culture (Professor Joshua Berman’s book I Believe illustrates this point among others).
Another point is that in some commandments the Torah actually relies on the existing practice. For example, in the verses describing divorce it says: “When a man takes a wife and marries her, and it happens that she finds no favor in his eyes because he has found in her some indecency, and he writes her a bill of divorce and puts it in her hand and sends her from his house,” where the Torah mentions in passing the institution of marriage as something self-evident. How do those marriages take place? Clearly there was a customary practice in that generation, and the Torah takes it for granted. It only introduces a law regarding divorce from such a union (and in fact not even about divorce itself, but only the limitation on returning to the first husband after marriage to a second). In such cases the Torah is only an extension of the existing practice; it does not command on a tabula rasa basis.
In light of these facts, it is clear that the Torah comes against the backdrop of a particular culture—which it is trying to shape and change. But if the Torah were presenting detached halakhic principles, we would not expect to find such cases.
Here, for example, is one illustration: suppose there exists an abstract religious principle in the existence of a Tabernacle, with all its details, and it predates creation itself. Is it plausible that that Tabernacle—even before the creation of the world—would have proportions identical to the military camp of Ramesses II? Clearly not. But in fact, that is what happens. This means that all the verses detailing the Tabernacle are not abstract halakhic principles that preceded the world, but a full engagement with the reality of ancient Egypt.
In my opinion, these two reasons lead to the simple understanding that the Torah arrived against a particular cultural background that it seeks to improve / change, etc. It does not seem to come to lay down a set of abstract, new, and independent principles. It is not plausible that those same principles would just happen to be such a precise reflection of cultural practices that existed at that time.
To conclude, I’ll add thanks for the enlightening and instructive debate (is there perhaps any possibility of putting into writing the arguments that came up in the last 10 minutes?).
I’d be glad to hear your opinion about all this.
Thank you, and have a good day.
Answer
- Every such argument has to be examined on its own merits. People have already noted, and I have also noted, that there is a fairly good fit between morality and Jewish law, even though they are independent categories. The Holy One, blessed be He, created His world in such a way that the directives of Jewish law would align with moral goals. But that cannot always be done. Still, these are two different categories. Now, people can be motivated to act out of moral motivations even if the goal of the act is religious. It is like telling a child that if he does something he will get candy, though the purpose of the command is obviously not the candy. Expressions like “abomination” or “you shall not bring sin upon the land” are not necessarily moral. I have discussed this several times in the context of homosexuality (the term “abomination” is discussed in Nedarim 50, and receives a non-moral explanation). Likewise, exemption in a case of coercion is not necessarily based on a moral consideration. When a person is coerced, he is not the one who acted, and therefore he does not deserve punishment. That is true in Jewish law just as in morality. And sometimes the Torah is speaking about something that is not halakhic, and there of course moral considerations and arguments will appear. And so on.
- The application of Jewish law is a function of the circumstances. Therefore, the applications of eternal directives can differ. Search here for the swimsuit parable; I discussed this at length in the series of columns on Modern Orthodoxy. Therefore, even if the Torah speaks in the language of its own time, that can be interpreted and applied differently today. Beyond that, I have pointed out more than once that when there are several interpretive possibilities, the choice among them can be made on moral grounds. I also explained that this is not necessarily because the moral direction is the correct one, but also because if everything is evenly balanced, why not choose the moral solution even if it is not necessarily the correct one.
Therefore I do not agree with your conclusion. The Torah can come against the background of a particular culture, but that does not mean its principles belong to that culture. On the contrary, according to your view it should come out that it is not at all relevant to our time, when the culture is completely different. Why is that a claim against me? Precisely I, who detach it from ordinary human goals, make it eternal, while the applications change with the circumstances.
As far as I remember, no arguments came up in the last few minutes because his battery died. This recording is an edited version of the original recording, which was not edited by the moderator and podcast owner because of audio problems. He was thinking of throwing it out. I asked him to send me the recording in order to salvage and present what could be presented.
Discussion on Answer
My sense is that I answered everything. I’m not really sure what there is to add here.
Thank you very much for your reply.
1. Note that there is a difference between a reason for action מצד reward or the result of the act (“candy”) and a reason grounded in its own value. The Torah can provide motivations of reward and punishment, but that indeed says nothing about the type of value involved (it only serves as motivation to perform it). But in cases of the kind I brought, the reason is simply the explanation of the value itself—from a moral standpoint (that is, why it is proper or improper to behave in this or that way).
Regarding this, you explain that there may be overlap between the two kinds of values, and that in such a case the Torah uses a moral motivation in order to bring about the act. And that raises a difficulty about what the point is of moral motivation at all.
After all, if the moral attitude toward the act is clear and known, then why is this motivation needed? (One can ask even more sharply: why mention a halakhic commandment at all if it overlaps with a moral imperative? I already know that on my own from the moral side. Though here one could still answer that it adds the knowledge that this is also Jewish law, and also that perhaps Jewish law differs from morality in certain respects. But as for motivation, it is unclear what the novelty is.) On the other hand: if it was not clear to the people of that generation, for example, that there was a moral problem in a certain act, then what is the motivation here? They do not recognize this value at all.
Rather, it seems that the reasonable explanation is that the Torah came to teach them that there is a moral issue here, and therefore it uses that kind of language. And we indeed know, based on our knowledge of the ancient world, that the commandments really did constitute a huge moral leap relative to what was accepted at the time. In other words, it is clear that there was a novelty of values here for the Jewish people (and for the whole world), and therefore one cannot say that these values came only to provide motivation—after all, they were not known or recognized.
2. Note that I am not speaking about application or language, but about the very substance of Jewish law. I’ll mention again the example I gave from the Tabernacle. It is clear that its measurements are a direct counterpoint to Ramesses II. In other words, all the verses dealing with the Tabernacle’s dimensions are only in that context (and presumably in another context they would have been different, if there would have been a Tabernacle at all). Therefore one cannot say that all the laws of the Tabernacle instantiate abstract religious values that are independent of the world. They came to fight an existing cultural phenomenon, and to the people of that generation, who had before their eyes the culture of ancient Egypt, this was obvious. Here it is very hard to say that it “just happened” that the proportions are identical.
You are right that these insights raise questions about the eternity of the Torah, and you are right that detachment strengthens its eternity. But that does not touch the discussion itself. I am arguing that both from the language and from the archaeological knowledge, one sees that the Torah is relative to its period / constitutes moral improvement, etc. That is a factual claim. Maybe that means it is not eternal and maybe not, but one cannot ignore the data because they pose one difficulty or another. In other words, I am not asking what is more elegant and coherent, but what is more plausible.