Q&A: Morality and Skepticism
Morality and Skepticism
Question
Hi Rabbi, I’d be glad for your help. Moral principles themselves are a function of cultural development, so it’s hard for me to understand how I can be obligated to morality. If morality changes, and from what I’ve heard from you morality is planted within us by God and therefore has divine authority—and likewise the Torah, which is divine—how can I be sure that what I’m doing is considered moral? When I have a dilemma between morality and Jewish law—
*it seems right to me always to choose Jewish law, because Jewish law is clear and is certainly true, while morality is true but I’m not sure my morality is correct, since it changes and it could turn out in the future that this wasn’t moral.*
Answer
First, are there no changes and disputes in Jewish law? Second, why are you sure that it is from the Holy One, blessed be He? Jewish law, for the overwhelming most part, is a human creation.
Second, the fact that there are changes in morality does not mean there is no objective morality. There is objective morality, and we progress through the generations just as science progresses. Beyond that, of course at the margins there are disputes, but the core is usually agreed upon.
You can’t be certain about anything, neither about Jewish law nor about morality. But a judge has only what his eyes can see.