Morality and Torah – One System or Two?

Two Responses of Abraham

One of the basic dilemmas in the life of a believer arises when his conscience, or his system of moral values, clashes with the commandments of the Torah.

In our parasha we meet this clash twice, and Abraham’s conduct in the two cases is completely different.

When God tells Abraham of His intention to overturn Sodom, Abraham does not stay silent. He argues. When Abraham is commanded to sacrifice his beloved son, we do not hear a single word of reservation from him.

What was Isaac’s sin? In what way were his rights less than those of the hypothetical righteous people of Sodom, whom Abraham defended so vigorously?

This is a hard question, and it is not simple to give it a clear answer, even though many attempts have been made to find the difference between the two stories. But the interpretive question has a substantive parallel, which concerns not only Abraham but also us, his descendants: what is the relationship between the moral imperative and the divine imperative?

Natural Morality – What It Is and Where It Comes From

Most people sense within themselves a distinction between "good" deeds and "bad" deeds. It is hard to deny that this distinction, or parts of it, depends to a large extent on society and history. But broadly speaking, one can say this: harming another person or being cruel to him, lying, stealing and the like appear to most people, in most places, to be wrong in their very essence.

This imperative of conscience underlies the distinction between good and evil outside the religious framework. And it also has a place within the world of the Torah:

• From the Torah itself. Even before the giving of the Torah, God demands moral conduct from human beings. Cain is punished for murdering Abel, although "You shall not murder" had not yet been said. Abimelech pleads in his defense, "In the innocence of my heart and the cleanness of my hands I have done this" – he knows on his own that taking a married woman is forbidden. And the generation of the Flood and Sodom were punished for violence and the perversion of justice. From this we learn that a person is expected to understand on his own, by the power of his conscience and his reason, what is good and what is evil.

• Rabbenu Nissim Gaon explains in his introduction to the Talmud that even before the giving of the Torah people were punished (like the generation of the Flood) for their evil deeds, because all the mitzvot that depend on reason are binding on everyone from the day God created man upon the earth.

• Rabbi Shimon Shkop writes that the monetary laws of halakha are not derived directly from a prohibition such as "You shall not steal." (If they were, someone whom the court exempts from payment because it is not clear that he owes would still have to pay – in case the money is not his and he is violating the prohibition of theft.) They are derived from what he calls "sevara" – reasoning – something very close, if not identical, to the moral imperative we have described. Moreover, sevara in a certain sense precedes the Torah. In his words, even the obligation to serve God and fulfill His will is itself "an obligation and a necessity according to the judgments of reason and understanding."

• "It is a matter of reasoning." The Gemara often asks: "Why do I need a verse? It is a matter of reasoning!" – why is a verse needed, when reason requires it? An example is the rule "the burden of proof is on the one who seeks to take from his fellow." If all justice came only from verses, there would be no room for reasoning that replaces a verse.

Two Approaches to the Relationship between Morality and Torah

On this charged subject one can propose, in principle, two approaches.

The reductionist approach (reduction = collapsing one thing into another). According to this approach, from the moment God gave the Torah to His people Israel, human morality lost its validity. What the Torah forbids is forbidden; what the Torah permits is permitted. An observant Jew should have no problem with something the Torah permits, even if his moral sense rebels against it. Perhaps he must even fight himself in order to suppress that feeling of revolt.

The parallel approach. According to this approach, the Torah and the moral imperative exist side by side. Even if in certain circumstances the Torah permits you, say, to steal – you are still expected to refrain from it, because of the moral sense that exists in you exactly as it does in a member of a Polynesian tribe who has never heard of Israel or of their Father in Heaven.

This approach runs into difficulty at the moment the divine command and the moral imperative contradict each other, as in the cases in our parasha. Then the question arises: which prevails? But at least where there is no contradiction, only silence – when the Torah simply says nothing – the two kinds of imperative can exist side by side.

On the face of it, most religious people are not followers of the reductionist approach. They believe – or at least act as if they believe – in the parallel existence of a moral imperative and a halakhic imperative. The fact that halakha may in certain cases permit taking a gentile’s money will not necessarily lead them to cheat the Thai worker in their dealings with him.

Evidence for the Parallel Approach

There appear to be several proofs that morality and halakha are two separate systems.

"You shall do what is right and good." The verse is phrased as a command, and yet almost none of those who enumerate the mitzvot count it among the 613 commandments. If morality were part of halakha, the verse would be counted as an ordinary positive commandment. It seems that the Torah left it outside on purpose: a domain in which a person acts by the power of his reason and conscience, and not out of obedience to a clause in a law code.

"A scoundrel with the Torah’s permission." Nachmanides explains that "You shall be holy" comes to prevent the situation of a person who keeps every detail of halakha and still behaves vilely. And here is the paradox: if "You shall be holy" were an ordinary mitzvah, such a person would no longer be "a scoundrel with the Torah’s permission" – he would simply be committing a transgression. This means that the Torah deliberately chose not to turn this demand into a halakhic clause.

Morality for all, halakha for Jews. Morality is universal – it applies to every person as a person. Halakha is addressed only to Jews. If halakha were "divine morality," we would expect a gentile, too, to keep Shabbat and not eat pork. But gentiles are exempt from halakha and bound by morality (the seven Noahide laws). This means that halakha is a separate system, intended for particular religious goals.

Conflicts. Some laws simply contradict conscience: a mamzer may not marry, although he did not sin; the wife of a Kohen who was raped becomes forbidden to her husband. The attempt to explain that this is "a higher morality we do not understand" is not convincing. The simple explanation is that we are dealing with two systems. An act can be right in religious terms and problematic in moral terms. The very clash shows that these are two different domains.

The Ran and the Maharal. The Ran (Derashot HaRan, Derush 11) writes that Torah law was not meant to achieve a well-ordered society – for that there is "the law of the king" – but to cause the divine abundance to dwell in the world. He even concedes that the laws of the nations are sometimes better ordered in practical terms. The Maharal (Be’er HaGolah, the second well) illustrates this with the return of lost property: morality requires returning a lost object even after its owner has given up hope of recovering it, whereas halakha exempts. In his words, halakha operates according to "reason and truth," and morality according to "custom" – the proper ordering of the world. The gap between them shows that they are not the same system.

The conclusion. We are bound by two systems, both of which are the will of God: halakha, given at Sinai, and morality, which the Creator planted in our reason and our conscience.

The Euthyphro Dilemma

In one of Plato’s dialogues, Socrates – already dragged into a trial that will end with his execution – converses near the courthouse with a man named Euthyphro. Euthyphro is the figure of the "dos," the zealously pious man: devout, and placing the worship of the gods above everything else. Socrates confronts him with dilemmas he cannot answer, and the central one is formulated as follows:

"Is the holy loved by the gods because it is holy, or is it holy because it is loved?"

In our terms. Take the mitzvah of tzitzit. If God had not commanded it – would wearing tzitzit still have virtues (for the health of the wearer, or for the metaphysical state of the world), only we would not know about them? Then tzitzit are "holy" because they are "loved." Or, without the commandment, would wearing tzitzit be entirely useless, and the only good in it be the fulfillment of the Creator’s command? Then they are "loved" because they are "holy."

The connection to our question. The dilemma is not identical to the question of the independence of the moral imperative, but there is a connection between them:

• One who holds that a mitzvah was given because the Creator knows of a benefit hidden in it will tend to assume that the system of mitzvot leaves nothing good outside it. For if something is truly good, why were we not commanded to do it?

• One who sees the mitzvot as a separate system, given meaning only by God’s command, naturally assumes that the moral order that existed before the command continues to exist after it.

The poison in the dilemma. Both sides of the dilemma cast the relationship between man and the Creator in a strange light:

• If tzitzit have no value without the command – why did God entangle us with these strings?

• And if there is objective value in the mitzvot – this assumption leads to "reasons for the mitzvot" of the shallow kind, "eating pork causes liver disease," or to presenting the Torah’s purposes as a secret world that exists on a level hidden from our eyes. As Ibn Ezra puts it, this path turns us into a sect of "those who invent from their own hearts secrets for everything, and believe that the laws and statutes are riddles" – people who make up secrets for everything and believe that the mitzvot are riddles.

Oceans of ink have been spilled on this dilemma. In the discussion, midrashim like this one are often quoted: "What does the Holy One, blessed be He, care whether one slaughters from the front of the neck or from the back of the neck? The mitzvot were given only to refine people." In other words: it makes no difference to God whether an animal is slaughtered from the throat or from the nape; the mitzvot are meant to refine human beings.

Two Talmudic Passages: Mitzvot with Intrinsic Value and Mitzvot of Obedience

Two passages in the Gemara seem to draw a line between mitzvot that have real "intrinsic value" and mitzvot whose only value lies in reflecting the Creator’s command.

1. The Ashes of the Red Heifer, the Dust of the Sotah – and the Dust that Covers the Blood

The Gemara says (Chullin 89a; Sotah 17a):

"Rava expounded: As a reward for Abraham our father saying ’I am but dust and ashes,’ his children merited two mitzvot – the ashes of the red heifer and the dust of the sotah. – But there is also the dust used to cover the blood? – There, there is a preparation for a mitzvah, but no benefit."

These three mitzvot are connected to dust or ashes. The ashes of the red heifer purify someone who has become impure through contact with the dead. A "sotah" – a woman whose husband suspects her of infidelity – drinks water mixed with dust, and in this way it becomes clear whether she is innocent. And "covering the blood" is the mitzvah of covering with dust the blood of a bird or wild animal that has been slaughtered. According to Rava, the first two have intrinsic value, and so they are a kind of "gift" we received in Abraham’s merit: the sotah brings peace between husband and wife and prevents mamzerim (children born of a forbidden union), and the heifer’s ashes purify Israel of the sin of the golden calf – a real benefit, even though it operates on a hidden level. Covering the blood, by contrast, is only a "preparation for a mitzvah": an act that makes it possible to eat the meat, and nothing more. And the distinction stands out precisely for this reason: with the same effort one could have "invented" a hidden benefit for covering the blood as well – and yet the Gemara did not do so. Covering the blood is understood as pure obedience to God’s command, with no benefit beyond that.

2. "A Mere Stringency" – The Order of the Yom Kippur Service

The Gemara in Sanhedrin (49b) establishes a rule: when the Sages list several things, the order in which they are listed does not matter. The rule has a few exceptions. For example, the four court-imposed death penalties are listed in the Mishnah from the most severe to the least, and one who is liable to two death penalties is judged by the more severe of them. Likewise, the seven substances (cleaning agents) that are applied to a stain to check whether it is menstrual blood – they are applied precisely in the order in which they are listed. Rav Pappa wishes to add to the list the order of the Yom Kippur service (the offerings and acts of the High Priest in the Temple), since one who performs one service before another there has done nothing. And the Gemara rejects this: that is only a mere stringency – simply a strictness.

At first glance, the rejection is puzzling. It is clear that the order on Yom Kippur is indispensable by Torah law, and whoever changes it invalidates his service. What else is missing for it to count as an exception?

The answer is that there are two kinds of order. With the four death penalties and the seven substances, the order comes from the things themselves: one death penalty is more severe than another, one substance is stronger than another, and so it comes first. On Yom Kippur, no service is more important than another. The Torah simply was strict and established that the order is indispensable. The Creator said to do it this way, and there is no "real" reason to put the bull’s blood before the goat’s blood (two of the day’s offerings). That is the meaning of "a mere stringency": a decree of Scripture (a command with no apparent reason), and not an expression of an order inherent in the nature of things.

This idea recalls the words of Maimonides in the Guide for the Perplexed (III:26), who distinguishes between seeking the reason for a mitzvah itself and attempting to explain its details. The benefit of slaughtering animals for food is clear. But one who troubles himself to give a reason why it must be done specifically by cutting the throat and not by stabbing (in the chest) – "is in my eyes afflicted with a prolonged madness."

The conclusion. In at least some cases, the Sages of the Gemara saw in certain mitzvot an inner value, which God’s command only reveals; and in other cases they saw them as an arbitrary command.