Question

In that debate you presented that innovative and brilliant definition against Yaron Yadan, and he wasn’t able to unravel it other than mumbling under his breath that it wasn’t the common approach he was familiar with. Namely: when conflicting values collide with one another—for example, a moral value versus a halakhic value—which should be preferred? Sometimes this one prevails and sometimes that one prevails, just like in any value system where two values clash. And the example you gave there was of a French soldier who had a dilemma between the value of honoring his mother and the value of continuing to fight, and he had to decide between them. Therefore Yaron can’t just wave around some particular commandment that conflicts with human morality and the like.

I first have to give credit: I really enjoyed it very much. (See how long I’ve remembered it; I didn’t watch the debate today, and it’s possible that even you, as the one who coined the idea, have already forgotten some details, while I’m serving here as someone refreshing your memory.) And if we enter the world of metaphors, then like with soccer teams, I wanted you—as it were, the player representing me—to win, and even by knockout. And there’s room to analyze this philosophically and psychologically. In any case, now that the guns have fallen silent, it’s time to sharpen the point a bit. (There are similar stories in the Talmud where one of the tannaim argued with a Sadducee and answered him as he did, and afterward his students said to him: fine, that’s good enough for the Sadducee—a kind of brush-off with a straw answer—but what is the real answer for us? I know that in your case this isn’t a straw answer but a genuine claim, yet I need clarification in order to understand it properly.)

So my question is: do you have an example of a moral value that clashes with a halakhic value, in which your moral value would prevail? What lies behind my question, among the public so to speak, is that there really is no such thing. Because once there is a halakhic value, that means that this is how the Creator commands you to act in practice, and there is no way to evade it by claiming that it is immoral—even if He commands you, “Take your son, your only one, whom you love,” etc., which is a strong head-on collision between the halakhic and the moral.

And the example that came up there between you (again, I’m writing from memory, and I generally don’t have much of a memory; that gives you an indication of how something enjoyable is preserved in memory, and it was good that you went to the debate) was regarding the commandment of the beautiful captive woman. That is not a good example of the above dilemma of a clash between Jewish law and morality, because there is no practical Torah commandment to rape enemy women in war. On the contrary, the Sages said: “The Torah spoke only against the evil inclination,” and the Torah itself prefers that you not act that way if you can overcome your inclination. So you can’t bring proof from this to a case where the moral value overrides the halakhic value, because the halakhic side here too is only a permission (even if post factum, due to mental difficulty), not a halakhic directive as a command. I am looking for an example of a halakhic directive as a command of the Creator versus a practical moral value, where you would say: here the moral value prevails. All we know is the opposite, that the halakhic value prevails. For example, in my view every circumcision is a halakhic directive as a command that clashes with the moral value of abusing a helpless defenseless person, and yet everyone still fulfills that commandment.