{"id":629,"date":"2017-06-22T00:56:14","date_gmt":"2017-06-22T00:56:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/utj.org\/viewpoints\/?p=629"},"modified":"2017-08-02T18:55:58","modified_gmt":"2017-08-02T18:55:58","slug":"what-is-the-morality-underlying-halakhah","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/utj.org\/viewpoints\/2017\/06\/what-is-the-morality-underlying-halakhah\/","title":{"rendered":"What is the Morality Underlying Halakhah?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Jewish Law, like any legal system, consists of a Basic Norm, a rule that says\/commands that the individual obey the Commander. Jewry is commanded to obey God\u2019s covenantal laws that are [a] recorded in the Written Torah [b] as they are filtered by the Oral Torah. There are Torah and Rabbinic norms that command positive action, forbid outlawed deeds, and when silent, permit, authorize, and empower personal and communal autonomy. Torah law\u2019s are measured by the severity of penalty to be exacted for non-compliance. Rabbinic laws include\u00a0taqannot<\/em>, \u201cto do\u201d acts that generate commandment blessings,\u00a0gezeirot<\/em>, \u201cdo not do\u201d acts, and\u00a0hanagot<\/em>, positive practices that do not generate commandment blessings because they are\u00a0not<\/em>\u00a0commandments. Only commandments generate holiness,\u00a0hanagot\/<\/em>customs do not, at least according to the Orthodox Judaism encoded within the Oral Torah.<\/p>\n

Sometimes, real everyday life challenges our community\u2019s ethical instincts. How\u00a0are\u00a0<\/em>we to treat the outsider, the non-Jew, the she or he who is\u00a0nisht fun unzer?\u00a0<\/em>How Jewry treats the outsider is the window of what is inside the individual Jewish heart.<\/p>\n

The Jewish Tradition, responding to different realities, often speaks with multiple voices. The same Judaism that forbids doing favors for non-Jews [Deut. 7:2] commands, in the Oral Torah, that Jewry provide material support for non-Jews in order to foster \u201cthe ways of peace\u201d [bGittin 61a]. I suspect that when relations are good between Jew and Gentile, or policy requires in times of tension, Jews are commanded to feed their non-Jewish neighbors. But when hostility characterizes inter-communal relations, group solidarity might preclude what is taken at that moment to be misplaced charity. We know that Cyrus was a pagan from the Cyrus cylinder, but Ezra 1 portrays him to as someone who revered the Lord because he was good to, and for, the Jews.<\/p>\n

For those who do not have access to Torah revelation and Law, how are they judged by God? Cain\u2019s killing of his brother, the generation of the flood, the citizen\u2019s of\u00a0Sodom, and all other biblical characters are all subject to Divine judgment without being informed by what benchmarks they are to be judged. After informing the reader that Abraham embodies \u201cthe way of the Lord\u201d [Genesis 18:19], committed as he was to do the right thing, he actually challenges God. Abraham \u201cknows\u201d that God does justice, kindness, and denies to Godself sovereign immunity, indicating that nobody and no body is above the law, not even God. Hence, Abraham is not only allowed, he is as a moral agent obliged to challenge God, asking as he did, \u201cwill the Judge of the whole world not dispense judgment\u201d [Genesis 18:25]? This \u201cway of the Lord\u201d ethic is memorialized at mSota 1:7, \u201cthe way [=measure, criteria] that a person judges others is the way that person will be judged.\u201d The flaws one finds in oneself should not be criticized when they appear in or projected upon an \u201cother\u201d [See bBaba Metsi\u2019a 59b]. This value concept found in these\u00a0Rabbinic<\/em>\u00a0sources is also attested in Christian Scripture [Matthew 6:12 and 7:1-3]. It is the ethic that believing Jews and Christians share. God hates double standards [Leviticus 19:36]; God allows people to chart their ethical course, but they will held to account by the benchmark of their own accounting. If humankind behaves kindly, humankind will be judged with kindness; if humanity behaves like low lives, in an unkindly way, i.e. with violence [Genesis 6:11], God treats an inhumane Humankind by bringing it low, in destruction [Genesis 6:13]. God \u201cdesires\u201d humankind to choose to be kind to humanity. When God commands that one should love the \u201cother\u201d as one love\u2019s oneself [Leviticus 19:18], God actually guides us to discover the image [tselem<\/em>] or shadow [tsel<\/em>] that is implanted within us.<\/p>\n

Noah was a decent fellow, and was, by dint of his decency, worthy of being saved, as was the morally mediocre lout called\u00a0Lot. The letter of the Law legal positivism provides for Judaism\u2019s enforceable moral minimum. But following the models of Abraham, Joseph, and Moses, we should strive to be ethically all that we can be; by choosing to \u201cdo that which is straight [=right] and the good\u201d [Deut. 6:18]. How good might we be? We were initially made to be \u201ca little lower than the angels\u201d [Psalms 8:6]. But we are also commanded to choose to be moral agents when we were commanded to \u201cchoose life\u201d [Deut. 30:19]. If we choose to obey\u00a0this\u00a0<\/em>higher ethical\u00a0command, the sky is literally the limit.<\/p>\n\n

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Jewish Law, like any legal system, consists of a Basic Norm, a rule that says\/commands that the individual obey the Commander. Jewry is commanded to obey God\u2019s covenantal laws that are [a] recorded in the Written Torah [b] as they are filtered by the Oral Torah. There are Torah and Rabbinic norms that command positive Continue Reading »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":17,"featured_media":637,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[75,82,95,78,83],"tags":[],"coauthors":[86],"class_list":["post-629","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-articles","category-halakhah","category-halakhah-modern-judaism","category-modern-judaism","category-philosophy"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/utj.org\/viewpoints\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/629","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/utj.org\/viewpoints\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/utj.org\/viewpoints\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/utj.org\/viewpoints\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/17"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/utj.org\/viewpoints\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=629"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/utj.org\/viewpoints\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/629\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":636,"href":"https:\/\/utj.org\/viewpoints\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/629\/revisions\/636"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/utj.org\/viewpoints\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/637"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/utj.org\/viewpoints\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=629"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/utj.org\/viewpoints\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=629"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/utj.org\/viewpoints\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=629"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/utj.org\/viewpoints\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=629"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}