Q&A: Walking Among Those Who Stand
Walking Among Those Who Stand
Question
Hello Rabbi! With God’s help, I’m going over the third book again, and here are a few questions that came up for me.
1. In the distinction between command and statement, the Rabbi says that this is exactly what the Talmud means when it says that every “take care,” “lest,” and “do not” is nothing but a prohibition; otherwise it would just be a statement. My question is: how can it be that there is no special idiom for a command regarding positive commandments? Could it be that they “missed” something so basic? (Or should we say that this distinction was not all that clear at the time the Torah was written?) I agree that there are verses that certainly indicate a statement, like “Now the man Moses was very humble,” and others that certainly indicate a command, but there are also some where one could hesitate, I assume. So why is there no fixed idiom and they relied on our understanding, whereas for prohibitions there is a fixed idiom?
2. The Rabbi says that Torah study in the object-sense is anything that helps me personally understand the world and the Torah, etc. Can one say that for me, studying physics or Kant is study in the object-sense (or after all is said and done, do we still check whether the author’s mother was Jewish or not)?
3. The Rabbi says that the binding force of the command comes only after our agreement to be commanded by it (and then the commands come and obligate us), and that this is what changed on Purim. If so, then gentiles seemingly never had an event in which they agreed to be commanded, so where does the binding force of the seven Noahide commandments come from? And another question: does a public agreement to be commanded from two thousand years ago really obligate me today as an individual?
4. The Rabbi says that there cannot be a contradiction between two particular value-principles, and that for there to be a contradiction there has to be some sweeping value-principle. But the chocolate example, the student who came to Sartre, and so on — aren’t those particular value-principles? I went over it again and again and couldn’t find what I was missing (maybe it has to do with the difference between an essential contradiction and a circumstantial one?)
Answer
Blessed is He who revives the dead.
1. Wording is not always based on fixed idioms. The text says the thing even without a special idiom. It may be that specifically with prohibitions there is more room for confusion, because of Maimonides in the eighth root principle (the negation of an obligation), and therefore there they needed special idioms.
2. You’ve mixed things up. That is Torah study in the subject-sense, not in the object-sense. And indeed Kant is Torah study in the subject-sense, just like books of Jewish thought. By the way, even in Jewish law we don’t check the author’s mother; it’s just that in practice gentiles don’t engage in this. The author’s mother is irrelevant.
3. The Noahide commandments obligate regardless of command and agreement. Morality obligates by virtue of what it is. All those things are said about ritual commandments, not about morality. As for whether the public’s agreement is binding, search here on the site. It has come up many times.
4. Not at all. I am committed both to pleasure and to health. The double commitment is not a contradiction. Chocolate is both tasty and unhealthy. What contradiction is there here? A contradiction exists when you say that eating chocolate is both healthy and unhealthy (both moral and immoral).