What Does It Mean to Say: The Categories of Work Are Torahitic?

Rabbinic law is definite about the hierarchy of categories of Jewish law. The basic, fundamental law is “de-oraita” (= “of the Torah,” or “Torahitic”). The extension or penumbra of the law is “de-rabbanan” (= “of the rabbis,” or “rabbinic”).

For example, the categories of work. There are 39 categories of work prohibited on Shabbat, according to Mishnah Shabbat 7:2. A core violation of any of these categories is counted as violating the “Torahitic” command. But each category of work has extensions, the violation of which counts as violating a “rabbinic” command.

For example, “shearing” to obtain wool from a sheep is a core category of work. Derivatives of these, such as cutting one’s hair or nails with scissors for cosmetic reasons, are still considered within the “Torahitic” zone of the prohibition. But doing the latter by hand is considered within the “rabbinic” addendum to this law.

(See Dayan Isidor Grunfeld, The Sabbath: A Guide to Its Understanding and Observance, for a detailed summary of the “Torahitic” and “rabbinic” parameters of each of the 39 categories. A more concise summary is available on several websites, such as http://www.webshas.org/shabbos/melachos.htm or http://www.ou.org/publications/kaplan/shabbat.)

Now, what is the source of these 39 categories? The Torah is very sketchy as to what is prohibited on Shabbat. Among the guidelines it gives are:

“In plowing-season and reaping-season you shall rest.” (Exodus 34:21)

“[On the previous day] that which you would cook, cook; and that which you would bake, bake…let no man go out from his place on the Sabbath day” (Exodus 16:23-29)

“You shall kindle no fire throughout your habitations on the Sabbath day.” (Exodus 35:3)

“They came upon a man gathering wood on the Sabbath day…” (Numbers 15:32-36)

“If you hold back your foot on the Sabbath, refrain from pursuing your affairs on My holy day—if you call the Sabbath ‘delight,’ the Lord’s holy day ‘honored,’ and if you honor it and go not your ways, nor look to your affairs, nor strike bargains…” (Isaiah 58:13)

“Take care not to carry burdens on the Sabbath day” (Jeremiah 17:21)

The 39 categories listed in Mishnah Shabbat 7:2 go far beyond these in specificity:

Sowing, plowing, reaping, binding sheaves, threshing, winnowing, selecting, grinding, sifting, kneading, baking.

Shearing wool, bleaching, hackling, dyeing, spinning, stretching, looping, weaving, separating, tying, untying, sewing, tearing [in order to sew].

Hunting (capturing) a deer, slaughtering, flaying, salting, curing, scraping, cutting it up, writing [two letters], erasing [in order to write].

Building, tearing down, extinguishing, kindling, striking with a hammer, carrying from one domain to another.

What is the source of these 39 categories? The Talmud gives two answers. The first is that the number of times the word melakhah occurs in the Torah is 39, though there is some discussion as to which passages needed to be included to come up to that number. The second is “corresponding to the labors in the Tabernacle.” What does this mean? The Jerusalem Talmud elaborates and says that the total occurrences of the words melakhah and avodah in the portion prescribing the building of the Tabernacle comes to 39. (JT Shabbat 9b; BT Shabbat 49b) Rashi says: “Those labors enumerated in Mishnah Shabbat were required for the Tabernacle, and the portion of Shabbat was written adjacent to the portion of the Tabernacle to draw this lesson.” But nowhere is there an extended argument of the rabbis, deriving the specific 39 categories of the Mishnah from the activities described in the Torah portion of the Tabernacle (Exodus Chapters 25 thru 40). In fact, some of the categories listed in the Mishnah are not mentioned in that Torah portion. Furthermore, the one rigorous demonstration of correspondence that we possess—in Israel Al-Nakawa’s Menorat Ha-Ma’or (14th century)—follows the simple procedure of counting up the occurrences of the words melakhah and avodah in the Tabernacle portion, which add up to 39, regardless of the contents of the passages in question. (Enelow, Menorat Ha-Maor, Bloch, 1931, Vol. 3, p. 603)

It would seem, then, that the sequence of development of these laws was as follows. First, the rabbis developed the specific list of categories (or, if you wish to believe, received the list by oral transmission from Moses through Joshua, etc.). They then sought Torahitic basis for this enumeration. The justifying arguments that they give are of a “paralogical” character, of the “wild-card” variety. The 39 mentions of melakhah and avodah are treated as so many wild-cards, to be played at the interpreter’s discretion: assign them to the corresponding number of work-categories, whatever they may be. This procedure puts the decision-making power squarely in the rabbis’ hands.

But if the specification of work-categories was developed by the rabbis, and is not found in the Torah, then how can one consistently maintain that transgressing one of them (for instance, cutting one’s hair or shaving, included in the category “shearing”—or even, for that matter, shearing wool off a sheep) is violating a Torahitic command? Would it not be more consistent, more “intellectually honest,” to say that one was violating a rabbinic command?

As paradoxical as it may seem, it is nevertheless entirely plausible to maintain that (1) the judgment that Action X is “work” was made by the rabbis, yet (2) “X is work” has the status of Torahitic law.

Consider: Reuben is trying to enjoy his Shabbat rest. His neighbor Simeon is fixing his house, as he has not found leisure to do so during his very busy work week. The sound of Simeon’s hammer is driving Reuben crazy. Reuben brings Simeon to Rabbi Yosi with a complaint: “Simeon is violating Shabbat.” Rabbi Yosi must now make a decision. The Torah declares: “The seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God. You shall do no work.” What did the Torah mean by “work”? Does Simeon’s action fall under that intention? He performs an act of interpretation: “Work” as intended by the Torah includes striking with a hammer.

Rabbi Yosi has no escape. He must interpret the Torah’s vague term “work” either to include or to exclude “striking with a hammer.” But having made that interpretation, the action “striking with a hammer” is prohibited on Shabbat, not by an edict of Rabbi Yosi (which would make it clearly “derabbanan”) but by the Torah’s edict, as understood by Rabbi Yosi—and as henceforth understood by the community of Israel.

Over time, by hundreds of acts of interpretation by Hillel and Shammai and Rabbi Johanan and Rabbi Joshua and Rabbi Eliezer and Rabbi Akiba and Rabbi Tarfon and by hundreds of unnamed students, scholars, scribes, and authorities (and even by thousands of lay Jews), the vague terms such as “work” specified by the Torah took on specific meaning. The enumeration of 39 major categories of work in Mishnah Shabbat 7:2 was the summation of centuries of life-experience and interpretation of the meaning of Shabbat observance, compressed into one paragraph. It represents the content of the edict of the Torah, as understood by the Jewish people.

Consider the analogy of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution:

“No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”

What is the content of this declaration? What does it permit and forbid?

As students of American constitutional law will attest, it has come to forbid such things as:

• Instituting “separate but equal” educational systems based on racial differences.
• Depriving mentally ill persons, who do not pose a danger to themselves or to others, of their freedom.
• Forbidding the use of contraceptives by married couples in the privacy of their bedrooms.
• Totally and absolutely disallowing a woman to abort her fetus.

The status of these applications is not that they are “federal statute law.” They are not simply the opinion of the Supreme Court of such-and-such a session. They possess, rather, the status of “constitutional law.” It is indeed constitutional law as interpreted by the Supreme Court, but it is constitutional law nonetheless—what the Constitution mandates, as officially interpreted by the Supreme Court. The “right of privacy” is nowhere written in the Constitution as such, but it is regarded as a constitutional right under American law, because of the history of the Supreme Court’s interpretation of the Constitution—notably, the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments.

It is in the same sense that the 39 categories of work articulated in Mishnah Shabbat 7:2 have Torahitic status in Jewish law. The Torah’s term “work” had to mean something. The rabbis were empowered to interpret it. (By whom, let’s not ask here.) It is their interpretation that gives the Torah’s term “work” its traditional normative content.

Interpretations are not irreversible. As we saw, in Ketubot (3b-7a) the rabbis reversed themselves on the question whether consummating a marriage was permitted on Shabbat. Similarly, the Supreme Court in the early 20th century understood “due process” to forbid legislation restricting the freedom of contract between employers and employees—for instance, through labor laws forbidding contracts requiring workers to work over 60 hours per week. But in the 1930s the Supreme Court reversed its earlier understanding, declaring that such laws were in the interests of the public welfare and hence constitutional. The very substance of what was constitutional or unconstitutional under the “due process” clause of the 14th Amendment underwent change.

It is conceivable, therefore, that a future interpretation of “work” might modify or replace the interpretation of Mishnah Shabbat 7:2. Such a new interpretation would have a steep uphill road to climb, and a hard task gaining a foothold of acceptance. Practically the whole Jewish world is divided into three factions: (1) those who believe wholeheartedly that the traditional interpretation is God-given, and that to modify it, let alone revoke or replace it, would be blasphemy; (2) those who do believe that defining “work” in any formal, let alone legal or quasi-legal terms, is obsolete and counterproductive; and (3) those who do not observe Shabbat anyway, so for them the whole discussion is moot.

But if modern Jews—or even a small subset of them—are ever going to make Shabbat meaningful in their lives, they will have to take ownership of it and adapt it to their life-needs, which are different from the life-needs of Jews two millennia ago (although there is also a certain commonalty which is also of crucial importance). They will have to define what “work” and “rest” mean in the rhythm, and in the material circumstances, of their lives today.

Ahad Ha-Am, a modern Jewish secularist, said: “More than Israel has kept Shabbat, the Shabbat has kept Israel.” Though he did not believe that the Shabbat was divinely commanded, he believed in the enduring value of Shabbat, both individually for individual Jews, and collectively for the Jewish people.

What a renewed understanding of “work,” “rest,” and Shabbat might be for us today, I leave to some future blog posting.

Reflections on Ketubot (1): Nature of Oral Law

The Talmudic tractate Ketubot has been called “Shas Katan” (the “little Talmud”) by Talmud aficionados, because the range of subject-matter in it is so broad as to cover aspects of most topics of the Talmud itself. An exploration of Tractate Ketubot is therefore a good way for me to structure my own interaction with the Talmud for purpose of a philosophical inquiry on what is distinctive about the Talmud’s logic and discourse.

An excellent study of the topic of marriage in Talmudic law exists in the form of Judith Hauptman’s Rereading the Rabbis: A Woman’s Voice. I will be relying on the insights of this book, while using it as a starting-point for my own.

The tractate begins: “A virgin is married on Wednesday, and a widow on Thursday, for twice a week the courts are in session in the towns, on Monday and Thursday, so that if [the groom] should have a claim regarding her virginity, he would go early [the next morning] to court.”

Colleague Michael Pitkowsky has informed me that Joshua Kulp has recently completed a study on virginity claims in Talmudic times, epitomized in his HUCA article “Go Enjoy Your Acquisition: Virginity Claims in Rabbinic Literature Reexamined.” The upshot for our purposes is that in rabbinic times the whole issue of bringing virginity suits was declining and discouraged, but not totally dead, so that it was still able to influence such things as the customary day of the week to schedule a wedding, as announced in the opening to this tractate.

My chief focus for this comment, though, is in another direction. What was the “Oral Law”? We have here a striking instance of a central Mishnaic law that is of rabbinic (not Mosaic) origin, by universal consensus. The custom of having courts in session on Monday and Thursday is dated by the rabbis to Ezra’s time, and the day of the wedding is contingent on that.

A popular view of the “Oral Law” (fostered by Avot 1:1) is that it is a body of law, complementary to the written Torah, communicated by God to Moses and communicated by oral tradition from Moses to Joshua, to the elders, to the prophets, to the “Men of the Great Assembly” (in Second Temple times), thence to the rabbis, until it was finally codified by Rabbi Judah the Nasi in the 2nd century in the form of the Mishnah. The popular view assumes that it comprises the basic content of Mishnaic law, minus certain embellishments and rabbinic disagreements recorded in the Mishnah. Call this the “traditional view of the Oral Law.”

In contrast to this, we have the modern scholarly view, that the “Oral Law” was (in its entirety, or nearly so) developed by the rabbis, from Second Temple times through the first five centuries of the Common Era, producing the literary products of the Mishnah and the Palestinian and Babylonian Talmuds.

Both views are reflected in Maimonides’ Introduction to his Commentary on the Misnhah. In one passage, he describes vividly how Moses would receive a law directly from God, transmit it to Aaron, then to Aaron and his sons, then to the seventy elders, then to the entire people. But in another passage, Maimonides dismisses the view (reflected in Talmud Yevamot) that the divergence of rabbinic opinion is due to the distortion of memory in transmission (the “telephone” game). Rather, different rabbis had different “sevarot” (rational considerations based on common experience) for judging that the law should be X rather than Y, or the reverse. So at least in those matters recording different opinions of rabbis, the substance of the disagreement was over matters rabbinic in origin.

Still, even for those of us who tend to hold the modern scholarly view, the question may rightly be asked: What did the rabbis have in mind by the “Oral Law” of Mosaic origin, according to the traditional view? What was included in it, by a conservative estimate?

It is clear, from our example here, that even on a conservative estimate, the “Mosaic Oral Law” could not have comprised all topics of the Mishnah. As Judith Hauptman reminds us in her book, the very ketubah itself was a rabbinic innovation, according to the rabbis themselves. Naturally, then, the tractate concerning “Ketubot” must have been on a topic itself rabbinic in origin. No surprise, therefore, that Ketubot begins with another law – the day of the wedding – that also (according to Rashi, who was no flaming modern scholar) was instituted by the rabbis!

There is a rabbinic recognition that the time-honored ancient stratum of law was a variable factor. Mishnah Chagigah 1:8 tells us: “The laws of release from vows hover in the air—they have nothing to support them. The laws about Shabbat, Chagigah, and sacrilege are as mountains hanging by a hair—little text, but many laws. The rules about civil law, the Temple service, purities and impurities, and forbidden liaisons have ample support; they are the essentials of Torah.”

The essentials of Jewish practice today – Shabbat, holidays, prayer, kashrut – contain many regulations, some of them (such as Shabbat and holiday) having much detail based on cursory statements in the Torah, others (such as prayer) absent in the Torah altogether. Clearly, most of Judaism falls into the category of the “Oral Law.”

But could that Oral Law be Mosaic in origin?

The continuation of the discussion in Ketubot links to the topic of Shabbat in an amusing way.

The question is raised: What about consummating the marriage on Friday night? To those familiar with the holy-erotic significance of Friday night in later Judaism, influenced by the kabbalah, this question should have an obvious answer: Of course! And in early-modern Ashkenazic Jewry, weddings on Friday were common. (One of Moses Isserles’s famous responsa stems from such a case, when the bargaining between the families forced postponement of the wedding ceremony until after sundown, causing a minor scandal. Isserles himself performed the wedding, and defended his action in his responsum.)

Why not consummate the marriage on Friday night? Because breaking the bride’s hymen would be inflicting a wound, a possible violation of Shabbat, under the category of “derivatives of shehitah [slaughter].” (A Baraita cited on page 3b indicates that in some localities it was actually the custom to separate the bride and groom in such a case.) But the counter-argument says: A melakhah she-eino mitkavvein – a work-action that is a secondary, unintended byproduct of one’s primary action – is not forbidden on Shabbat.

So we ask: Is the principle of melakhah she-eino mitkavvein (the secondary, unintended byproduct) of Mosaic origin? The very principle is the subject of dispute between Rabbi Judah (who prohibits it) and Rabbi Simeon (who permits it). Rabbi Judah (not the Nasi) and Rabbi Simeon were of the generation after Rabbi Akiba, in the middle of the second century. By all evidence, this point of law was not even theoretically raised prior to then. And it would fall under Maimonides’ principle, that issues debated by the rabbis on the basis of sevara were themselves of rabbinic origin.

But what of the 39 “principal categories of work” themselves – were they of Mosaic origin, or of rabbinic origin? And is it possible to maintain that even though the articulation of the 39 categories was rabbinic, they can still be regarded as de-oraita (of Torahitic status) for purpose of determining the law? To these issues we will turn in our next posting.

An Exploration in Talmudic Method

I will undertake to illustrate, by discussing some topics from Chapter 2 of Tractate Kiddushin, some pervasive issues that have concerned me in grappling with the Talmud and rabbinic thought for as long as I have studied in this area.

It is commonplace in the Jewish law of marriage and divorce, as well as Jewish commercial law, that many transactions can be effected by an appointed agent, who acts on behalf of the principal party. Betrothal and divorce may be done directly by the man and woman involved, or either may be represented by an agent who acts on their behalf.

In Chapter 2 of Kiddushin, the rabbis seek to find a basis for the principle of “shelihut” (agency) in the written Torah. They adduce three possible sources:

(1) In the law of the Paschal sacrifice, the Torah stipulates that a company shall collaborate, obtaining a single lamb which is slaughtered, roasted and eaten by all members communally. But the act of slaughtering can only be performed by an individual. In such a case, the individual is therefore acting on behalf of all members of the group, and they are performing the “mitzvah” of slaughtering by implicitly designating him as their agent.

(2) In the law of Terumah, every farmer is responsible for designating a certain portion of his produce as a gift to the priests. But a landowner may (according to common practice, codified in rabbinic law) assign one of his servants or workers to separate the “terumah” from the crop. This servant or worker is then operating as an agent on behalf of the landowner. The rabbis deduce this provision from the text of the law: “You—even you (gam attem)—shall raise up from your produce a portion and give it to the priest.” The redundant words gam attem are interpreted to refer to doing it through an agent.

(3) In the law of divorce, the Torah uses the word ve-shillach in designating the act by which the husband “sends forth” his wife to be free, no longer married to him. It also uses the term ve-shillechah (“and he shall send her forth”), where the final “hei” with the aspirative mappik indicates grammatically the direct object of the verb (“her”). But one can also creatively read the word ve-shillecha (without the mappik), whereby the final “hei” would refer to a feminine subject (“and she shall send”). Though this is not the standard reading of the text, the rabbis nevertheless derive from this the principle that the woman, as well as the man, is entitled to act through appointing an agent to act on her behalf. (Indeed, taking the term ve-shillach meaning "he shall send forth [his wife to be free]" in the sense of "he shall send [an agent to perform the handing-over of the get on his behalf]" is another act of creative interpretation that would send a peshat reader of the text into a panic!)

The second and third arguments are representative of a kind of rabbinic argumentation that bothered me greatly when I was young, and stood in the way of my accepting rabbinic Judaism in its standard, received form as authoritative at that point in my development. How is one to know, in the case of a textual redundancy, what “additional” legal stipulation is to be taken as implied by the text? Maybe (in the case mentioned) gam attem is to be understood as referring to some other member of the household? Maybe it is emphatic, and meant to restrict who can perform the action (“you, yes you, nobody else”)? If there is a secret meaning not expressed directly by the words, how on earth can anyone presume to know what that meaning is? Many secret meanings are possible, not all of them in accord with rabbinic law!

And the third case was even more offensive to my critical young mind. Any word can be creatively read in any number of possible ways to suggest other meanings. But this is implicit in language itself. If such creative reading is permitted, nobody can ever speak or write unambiguously to rule out such readings if they are not intended. But then no text is determinate in its meaning. If God wanted to say X and not Y, then given this feature of language, it would be impossible for Him to do so, for some rabbi would take it in his head to read Y into the text anyway, and the divine intention would be frustrated.

The first argument is far more plausible. The law of the Paschal lamb clearly implies that several people will eat together, but only one will perform the crucial act of slaughtering on behalf of the group. Agency is built into the situation. There is indeed an additional step of generalization (called binyan av in rabbinic methodology) in inferring that if agency is allowed here, it is allowed in other situations as well. But this is not nearly so offensive to reason as the procedures in #2 and #3.

I will speak generally of “paralogic” as referring to arguments of Type #2 and Type #3, where the rabbis use procedures of inference that would not be allowed in normal logic.

In Heschel’s book Heavenly Torah, which I helped to translate, he distinguishes between the methods of Rabbi Ishmael and Rabbi Akiva in interpreting the laws of the Torah. #1 is characteristic of Rabbi Ishmael’s method. #2-3 are characteristic of Rabbi Akiva’s.

This whole argument is related to the question of whether the law of agency is to be regarded as de-oraita (legislated by the written Torah, and therefore attributable to God directly) or de-rabbanan (legislated by the rabbis). All three arguments seek to prove that the law of agency is de-oraita, and is therefore a fundamental, unalterable category of Jewish law.

I must mention at this point a book by Jay Harris: How Do We Know This? The central argument of his book is that the rabbis of the Talmudic period used “paralogical” methods as part of the organic style of their thought, without it occurring to them that such interpretation of text was unnatural. The medieval commentators were more logical in their approach. Especially the peshat (plain-sense) commentators of the Torah, such as Abraham Ibn Ezra and Rashbam, would say in a case such as this that the rabbis made their own laws, but used paralogical arguments from the written Torah text as asmakhta (casual support). By doing so, they were performing a symbolic gesture, affirming that though the law evolves through addition, it is to be regarded as a single legal tradition, and the later developments have their roots in the ancient precedents.

If Jay Harris’s book had been available when I was younger, it might have spared me some of my agonizing and ambivalence toward the tradition.

I have another angle, however, to contribute to the issue just presented. There is a point of view from which such basic laws as that of “agency” can be regarded as de-oraita despite the spuriousness of the rabbinic “proofs” offered for them. Talmudic law knows of a category of laws derived from sevara (reason or common sense). The 19th-century Talmudist Zvi Chajes (in The Student's Guide Through the Talmud [Mebo Ha-Talmud, East and West Library, London, 1952], Chapter 4) argued that laws based on sevara were on a par with laws specified in the Written Torah. They are thus similar (though not identical) to those in the category halakha le-Moshe mi-Sinai. But whereas those in the category halakha le-Moshe mi-Sinai are often arbitrary (example: tefillin should be black in square boxes), those based on sevara are so common-sensical that the alternative is less reasonable by comparison. (Example: “the burden of proof falls on the claimant.”)

This is not to say that a sevara rule is so universal that no society is thinkable without it. In the case of the rule of agency, the Encyclopedia Judaica [article: "Agency"] maintains that Talmudic law was in advance of contemporary Roman law. Whether a particular transaction may be done through an agent is a specific, contingent fact of the legal custom of a given society. But any society, at any point in time, must have an accepted practice in such matters, whether X is customarily allowed or not. If effecting commercial transactions through agents was accepted practice by the 2nd century, it did not require a specific rabbinic enactment to bring it about. Once the conveniences of such a practice are established, it is hard to turn the clock back and disallow it. It then becomes, naturally, part of the accepted fabric of social practice and thus naturally gets ratified when statutory law is codified (as it was in the Mishnah).

But from an intellectual standpoint, rabbinic thought strove for unification. The Written Torah was considered to be the primary authoritative legal document. Wherever possible, accepted legal practices ought to be justified by “finding” their sources in the written text. (The Talmudic question “Minayin? From whence?” is the source of the title of Harris’s book How Do We Know This?”)

If we were to write a “Logic” of the Talmud, based on this argumentative practice, it would have to be along the following lines:

• Whatever is written in the Torah, is law.
• Whatever can be derived from the written Torah by strictly logical methods, is law.
• Whatever can be derived from the written Torah by “paralogical” methods is not necessarily law. (How could it be? This method proves too much!) However, paralogical methods are a permitted move in order to justify a law that has independent authority on other grounds. (“Other grounds” can be: a Mishnaic statement, or sevara, or universal common practice.) Typically, rabbis will disagree on the derivation of a law from the Written Torah, while agreeing on the basic law itself (though the difference of derivation may be connected with differences on detail of understanding the basic law).
  

One more caveat: The rabbis did not tell us everything that was on their minds. We may be rightly suspicious of the presentation of a law, whose only support is a “paralogical” derivation. A good rule of thumb in such cases is: Accept the paralogical derivation as a decorative embellishment, and ask: What could have been the real reason for this law?

The rabbis were no fools. They knew what they were doing. They were well aware that the paralogical methods, pushed to their extremes, could be abused. But those methods gave them freedom, to make their best considered judgment of what was necessary and just, given the social reality of their time, and present that judgment, cloaked in the time-honored garb of interpretation of the Written Torah.

Old News: Netanyahu Speech

This is old news (with the Iranian clerics in secret conclave in Qum to decide the fate of Iran, who's thinking any more about the Netanyahu speech endorsing a demilitarized Palestinian state while demanding that the Palestinians recognize Israel as a Jewish state? But for the sake of keeping the record complete, I'm transcribing here the discussion that we had on Facebook in response to the news earlier this week.


Lenny Levin thinks Netanyahu has found the center. Yasher koach!

David Stolow at 11:38 on 15 June
Netanyahu returns to what was his position when he was last PM and all the usual suspects have all the usual reactions. The difference between Bibi and Obama now is that Bibi figures he won't really have to do anything since the Pals will give him and out while Obama means it. As for the natural growth nonsense, suppose someone wanted to pass a zoning law in Maplewood that gave the legal right, ahead of any other buyer, to the children of Maplewood residents to buy or build in Maplewood?

Lenny Levin at 14:58 on 15 June
Obama's strategy is "behavioral modification" through "rewarding successive approximations." It is strategically correct for us to play ball positively -- let the other side put themselves in the wrong (as Abba Eban said, they never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity). As for the current difference between Obama and Netanyahu on the settlements, it is within the realm of the negotiable. The more important point was to red-line unbridled settlement expansion as unacceptable, and even Netanyahu's remarks concede this position.

David Stolow at 15:09 on 15 June
To agree with you I would have to believe that Bibi is actually prepared to negotiate and stop some settlement activity as a show of good faith. I fear that neither is the case. Olmert and Barak spent the last 4 years talking about how they are going to get out of settlements that even Israel has labeled "illegal." Instead they kept expanding settlements. Why Bib would try to do less is a mystery. In sum, Obama speaks the truth and Bibi, as they said on the campaign posters, lies.

Lori Lippitz at 15:24 on 15 June
It does seem that Bibi is motivated by visceral distrust of Arabs, and his base is driven by a similar mistrust, disgust, hatred or just cynicism. This is a tough guy for Obama to cut a deal with unless he gets the whole Congress to make a paradigm shift and make support of Israel more conditional. Az och un vey.

Lenny Levin at 10:31 on 16 June
In diplomacy, it matters more what words you say than what mental reservations you have about them. The words commit. Yes, and actions commit too. Meanwhile, events in Iran make the Israel-Palestinian impasse look like a tempest in a teapot.

David Stolow at 13:20 on 16 June
Maybe in the polite diplomacy of the French about 150 years ago. But in the Middle East words are merely a cover for what you are really thinking and doing. And what Israel is doing is to continue to expand the settlements while occassionally taking their foot off the oxygen hose of West Bank businesses provided that the owners act like "our kind of Arabs."

What Kind of God Do We Need to Guarantee Ethics?

What Kind of God Do We Need to Guarantee Ethics?

I am a proponent of the proposition: “Our ethics is more firmly grounded if it sees itself as grounded in God’s will.”

I am also a proponent of the proposition: “Our belief in God is more rational if it takes into account our advances of the picture of reality provided by modern science.”

But there is a tension between these two viewpoints. The more our God-picture collapses into affirming the world-as-it-is, described by modern science, the less it stands as separate from that world, drawing us upward to the world-as-it-ought-to-be. Yet some accommodation of these two viewpoints is necessary for a modern rationalist theologian like myself.

I can illustrate these views by extreme examples. A literal adherence to Genesis, unencumbered by modern science, puts God squarely in charge. God created the world and God created us. We are obligated to do as God tells us (or—more elegantly—to see our destiny as congruous with the destiny of the world as God has intended it to be—see our early discussion of the Euthyphro-problem).

Fast-forward to Spinoza’s Ethics (1677). God equals Nature. God’s perfect governance of the world equals Nature’s law. But there is no “purpose” on the scale of the world, beyond its own perfection. To project human motives and purposes on God or on the world is an intellectual and moral error. It is up to us to find our happiness in the realistic acceptance of our nature the way it is, within the world’s nature the way it is, without confusing the two. For Spinoza, God has no “will,” and thus to see the ethics as following “God’s will” has only metaphorical-poetical significance, not philosophic truth.

One may posit a spectrum of God-concepts, with the Genesis-God at one end, and Spinoza’s God at the other. Points along this spectrum might be:

• Biblical theism (taking Genesis literally, with a minimum of commentary)
• Medieval classical theism (taking Genesis as true in its essentials, while accommodating it to Greek philosophical theism à la Plato or Aristotle)
• Early modern Deism (God created the world, but left it to operate according to physical law à la Newton)
• Panentheism (God created the world and is involved in the world, but God’s involvement is within the constraints of physical law)
• Pantheism (God is the world)

The theologian speaks of God’s “transcendence” as the degree to which God is “other” than the world, “separate” from the world, “standing back” from the world.

God’s “immanence” is the degree to which God is involved with the world—an involvement whose maximum-point is being strictly identical with the world (as in Pantheism).

Despite what I have said about Spinoza’s denial of “purpose” in God, I would maintain that a certain kind of Pantheist might be able to argue that God can be the criterion of value for the world even while being identical with the world. Such an argument might maintain, for instance, that value is immanent in every thing, that (for instance) the excellence of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony can be entirely intuited by direct experience of the music itself, and does not require any reference of this piece of music to any outside standard (such as a general theory of music or music appreciation). By the same token, the perfection of the world can be intuited from encounter with the world itself, and what we should do to be in harmony with that perfection would follow directly from that experience.

Having said that, the kind of ethical valuation with which I am more comfortable sees the perception of value in transcendent terms. In that vein, the value of any thing is indeed to be considered in its relation to what is outside itself. My own value is at least to a large extent contingent on my relations with other persons, with the world outside me, with the history of the groups to which I belong (the group of Jews, of Americans, of Western man, of humanity as a whole, of life as a whole, etc.). The world is the limiting-term of these transcendent relations in so far as we can determine them with scientific validity. The religious faith carries this transcendence a step farther and says that the world itself derives its value from its relation to God. But this assertion makes sense only insofar as we conceive God as transcendent—as transcending the world.

My student Paul Steiner raised the intriguing objection: Does not panentheism (a step before pantheism in this progression) constrain the power of God to give value to the world, by affirming that God is immanent and therefore invested in the world-as-it-is? An analogy would be a certain political executive who had a large financial or career investment with a certain private company. The ability of the executive to stand back and act objectively in matters concerning that company might be tainted by that investment. We call this “conflict of interest” on the human-political scale.

My brief answer to Paul is that precisely the dual transcendent-immanent character of panentheism saves it from this trap. Panentheism sees God as containing the world, being “in” the world but also “beyond” the world at the same time. This is expressed also in my metaphor of the artist, who expresses herself in the work-of-art, then stands back and appraises it, judging it to see if it adequately expressed her creative intention.

Similarly, the immanent God of panentheism is invested in the world, and the world is thus rightly perceived as “godly” or “invested with the divine.” But in the contrary motion, God-as-transcendent steps back and sees the world in comparison with the pure ideal (in the “divine mind,” as it were). In the tension between the two, God (and we) can chart a course whereby the real world strives to become closer to the ideal.

Further Discussion on Israel and the Middle East (from Facebook)

Deborah Auerbach referred me to Edgar Bronfman’s posting on The Huffington Post: “A Real Two-State Solution” – not necessarily because she agreed with it wholly, but because she thought it contributed additional insights to the discussion.

I posted this with appreciation on my website. Deborah then offered her criticism, which led to another round of comments which I post here:

Deborah Auerbach at 19:32 on 10 June
We all want peace but as Mel Brooks said, Hitler also wants piece, a piece of Poland, a piece of Russia.... The settlements which you causually negate with a wave of the hand are what keeps the rockets far away from the fancy office suites of Tel Aviv.

Lenny Levin at 19:43 on 10 June
"If I am not for me, who will be for me? But if I am only for myself, what am I?" The Zionist self-assertion that produced Israel was the necessary Step 1. Now we need to proceed to Step 2: to listen to the other side and engage in constructive dialogue until we achieve a consensus that affirms the legitimate needs and interests of all parties. It's great we have achieved what we have to this point. But the next steps have to be taken in concert, not alone.

Ephraim T. Jerchower at 06:42 on 11 June
The hostility directed at Jews by the other side of the equation will never be abated. It is the essence of being a Jew that inflames the other side. There is no constructive dialogue to be had with those who deny and dismiss one's existence. The dispute was never about borders.

Susan Zwillenberg at 10:12 on 11 June
Unfortunately, in order to have peace one has to talk to one's enemies and establish at least a minimum of trust.

Lenny Levin at 13:12 on 11 June
Ruling those who hate you does not work in the long run--whether they hate you for ruling them, or for who you are (or both). Occupation is a source of security in some respects and of insecurity in others. Disengagement with preservation of security will not be simple, but Rabin thought it was the best course, and I (who know a lot less about these matters than he did) trust his judgment in the matter.

Ephraim T. Jerchower at 00:15 on 12 June
The idea of "ruling those..." that you posit troubles me. I don't see that phenomenon as the case in Israel nor do I accept the notion of Israel as occupiers. Your position pre-supposes the existance of a people, to wit, Palestinians, that, somehow were displaced by the several wars started by their bretheren. In point of fact, there was no "Palestinian people" prior to the '67 war.
I take no issue with Rabin but the hatred of the existence of the Jew and the denial of the Jewish state remains the cornerstone ideology of those folks you believe Israel should disengage from. With the utmost respect, it's not about occupation or borders. It's about what its always been about: anihilation...of Jews.

Lenny Levin at 06:42 on 12 June
(1) As long as "denial of the Jewish state remains [their] cornerstone ideology," they shall have no state. Acceptance of Israel is sine qua non to their getting one (as Obama made clear in his speech). But "they" lumps together Hamas and the other factions-- not quite accurate.
(2) Not occupiers? If all the inhabitants of the West Bank were given the vote and representation in the Knesset, this would regularize their status -- but at the cost of making Israel truly a bi-national state, even more unstable than Czechoslovakia or the USSR, which could not survive the internal dissension of their competing nationalities-- not a good way to go. But as long as Israel maintains right of passage through the territories and other forms of control without enfranchising its inhabitants. this is occupation. You or I wouldn't want to live under the condition of West Bank "Palestinians/Arabs," subject to those controls. We should get out of this business as soon as we can safely do so.

A Friendly Debate over Settlements

[A break from philosophical theology, to respond to current events.]

The Obama speech caught us all like deer in the headlights. Our instinctive reactions to it revealed where we stood on the whole large complex of issues of Israel, the Palestinians and the Middle East.

My own reaction, reflected in my Facebook status, revealed me for who I have been for most of my life—the child of suburban Jewish liberals, with a Socialist-Zionist grandfather, who got my first intellectual imprint in maturity from Maurice Samuel, who in his Zionist books combined romantic attachment to the millennial Jewish dream of Zion with a social-democratic egalitarianism reflecting the ethos of A.D. Gordon and the middle-of-the-road kibbutzim. Maurice Samuel exposed the feudal-fascistic roots of the Arab anti-Zionist crusade as early as the 1920s and 1930s, while holding out hope that Israel would hold true to her social and internationalist ideals and come to a just, peaceable reconciliation with the mainstream of the Arab populace. I am sure he would have expressed sentiments similar to those in the Ha-aretz editorial endorsement of Obama’s speech that I posted approvingly on my Facebook page.

I also have a cousin who was raised in an American Conservadox family and settled in Gush Etzion with the first returnees after the Six Day War in the late 1960s. I know from my discussions with him the perceptions on the other side of this debate—that a two-state solution is an invitation to disaster, that Israeli rule of the Palestinians is as humane as can be expected given their underlying hostility and frequent outbreaks of violence, and that the best we can hope for is to consolidate our grip on all of our ancestral homeland and maintain stability through judicious, humane and consistent exercise of strength.

It is with these credentials that I address the issue, as focused by the Charles Krauthammer article that a Facebook friend posted on her wall.

I will respond to two assertions in the Krauthammer article:

(1) That Obama makes a pretense of “not dictating” to any outside nations—except Israel.

(2) That the United States call to Israel to freeze settlements is unjust, and means “strangling [them] to death.” (Really? Then Manhattan must be strangling to death, and not allowing babies to be born in it, because it is incapable of territorial expansion due to certain facts of geography!)

The first assertion is defensible only if Krauthammer excludes from “dicatating” the remarks that Obama made addressed to the Palestinians: that “it is a sign of neither courage nor power to shoot rockets at sleeping children, or to blow up old women on a bus”; that “Hamas must put an end to violence, recognize past agreements, and recognize Israel’s right to exist. He would also have to exclude Obama’s remarks directed at Ahmadinejab: that “denying [the Holocaust] is baseless, ignorant, and hateful; threatening Israel with destruction—or repeating vile stereotypes about Jews—is deeply wrong…while preventing…peace.”

So a more balanced assessment would be: Obama calls on Palestinians to end rocket-shooting, bus-bombing, and violence generally, and he calls on Israel to freeze settlements. Still, one is entitled to ask: what do these two have in common?

It depends on one’s larger perspective and assumptions. We have to factor in the fact that the growth of the settlements on the West Bank has grown steadily over four decades, from zero in 1967 to 275,000 settlers by recent count, and has doubled since the Oslo accords—in number of settlements, as well as population. We recall that throughout the growth of the Yishuv, land-settlement was correctly considered a crucial part of staking claims to territory; that from 1933 to 1948 the “tower-and-wall” method was used dramatically and effectively to expand the Jewish area of Palestine from the meager strips that one sees in the 1936 Peel Commission partition recommendation to the “green line” that was fixed in the Armistice of 1949. The viability of Israel today is possible because of the effectiveness of that strategy in the past.

The settlers of today rightly see a continuity of historical pattern between their actions and those of the Zionists of the 1930s—only the context has changed dramatically. If one extends the pattern of proliferation-by-settlement beyond the three blocs discussed in Camp David and Taba, one strikes at the territorial integrity—such as it is—of a projected Palestinian state, whether unwittingly or by design. Even a minor adjustment—addition of a neighborhood or a street to an existing settlement—revises the extent of current Jewish settlement, and therefore has bearing on where a borderline might be drawn in final-status negotiations, if these were ever to take place.

Picture two adjoining houses—the Bernsteins and the Abduls living side-by-side. The Abdul teenager shoots a rocket onto the Bernsteins’ front lawn. Mr. Bernstein builds an addition to his house, extending over the boundary into the Abduls’ side yard, to accommodate a nursery for the Bernsteins’ newborn child. The one action is violent, the other is not. Yet they have something in common. Each is a boundary-violation, and (given a context analogous to the current Israeli-Palestinian state of relations) may correctly be perceived by the other as an act of aggression.

The majority of Israelis do not build or live in settlements. And the majority of Palestinians do not shoot rockets or blow up buses or commit other acts of violence against Israelis. In the best of times, over 50% of Israelis desire peace with Palestinians and are willing to entertain a 2-state solution, and over 50% of Palestinians reciprocate. When things fall apart, these numbers must be revised downward on both sides. Extremists in each camp know how to push the buttons of those in the opposite camp, to be sure that things fall apart and that peace is never realized. We only have to recall the actions of Baruch Goldstein and Yigal Amir to remind us that the button-pushers are not exclusively to be found on the Palestinian side.

The uncomfortable fact that those of us on the Jewish side often do not wish to realize is that the incessant growth of settlements, encroaching into the heartland of the West Bank, is pushing the buttons of the moderate Palestinians, eroding their belief in our good faith and their will to negotiate a genuine peace.

Mr. Obama is right to call (in my view, even-handedly) for a moratorium on button-pushing on both sides, in the hope of advancing negotiations to the point where agreement is possible. Though rocket-launching and settlement-expansion are not morally equivalent in general, they serve similar functions in this diplomatic context, in impeding the chances of progress toward rapprochement.

Mishnah Bava Metzia begins: “If two persons are holding onto a garment, each one saying ‘it is all mine,’ they must divide it.” Not necessarily equally —but in proportion to the strength and circumstances of each one’s claim, as determined by the court.

The land in the West Bank is similarly on the table for negotiation, for a final settlement of the “partition” that was proposed throughout the history of the Yishuv and finally effected in its first take in the events of 1947–49. The process is not complete. Therefore, if one believes in principle in a 2-state solution based on partition, the land is not (right now) ours to do with what we want. It is, if you will, in escrow, awaiting the outcome of judicial process. It is therefore legitimate to call on us to refrain from taking more of the disputed land, to demonstrate our good faith as a condition of negotiations.

Granted, negotiations cannot proceed unless the other side shows good faith, too, by refraining from acts of violence and provocation. It is not in our power to accomplish that. We can only accomplish what is in our own power.

Of course, all this becomes irrelevant if (like my cousin in Gush Etzion) one does not believe in a 2-state solution to begin with; or if one is positive in advance that the other side will never control their provocateurs enough to demonstrate good faith (or are purposely using their provocateurs to sabotage the process at every step). This is possible. But those who reject the Obama initiative for these reasons should be forthright in stating their principles. Protestation of unfairness or unreasonableness is insufficient ground for rejecting Obama’s request.

In peace to my Jewish brethren (and to all readers—Christians, Moslems, Buddhists, atheists, etc.),

Lenny Levin

Agenda Going Forward

I haven’t a lot of time to post now (not enough to do a complex idea justice) but will anyway outline the course of thinking that I plan to pursue in greater detail in the coming blog-posts:

(1) Correlation of divine will and human will

We have already quoted a classic dictum from Ethics of the Fathers: “Do God’s will as if it were your will.” I believe this to be the central meta-ethical idea characteristic of the majority of the mainstream of the Jewish tradition. (The difference between meta-ethics and ethics can be summarized: “Ethics” deals with “what is good (concretely)?” Meta-ethics deals with “what makes the ‘good’ good? -- What determines the good?” The Euthyphro problem (God <—?—>good) is a meta-ethical problem. We need to explore: What are the deeper implications of this idea?

(2) The nature of “will” and “purposive action”

By speaking of “God’s will” (as in the creation of the universe) or “human will” (as in our performing an ordinary action freely), we are speaking of a particular modality of action. What is the nature of this modality?

(3) “Purposive action” compared with “physical causality” and “random event”

I maintain that there are three kinds of action affirmed in our current basic scientific model of the universe and/or in everyday life. The scientific model recognizes absolute causality (as when one billiard ball bounces off another as described in Newtonian mechanics) and random events (as when a particular radium atom emits an alpha-particle at a particular time). It does not recognize “purposive action” as I understand it. Is “purposive action” then reducible to a combination of absolute causality and random events? Or does a third modality of action really exist?

(4) The correlation of two problems: divine creation of the world, and human free will

I will further maintain that it makes sense to affirm “purposive action” in the universe only if we affirm it on two levels: that the universe is purposive (i.e., God created/creates the world) and that the self is purposive (i.e., we act by free will).

(5) Back to ethics

This leads back to a reaffirmation of my resolution of the Euthyphro dilemma, based on a contemporary cosmological perspective: The “good” can be identified with “God’s will” as expressed through the creation of the universe, if and only if we maintain the existence of “purposive action” on the cosmic and individual level. If we view the cosmos as purposive, then we ought to see our own lives as framed by that cosmic purpose, and act for the advancement of all existence and all life, as the expression of God’s cosmic creative will.

Further Discussion

Lee Price at 09:11 on 27 May
The situations of Cain and Abraham are different in many respects, but I see one major similarity. Abraham is attached to his son in a way which is by definition "selfish." That is to say, he loves his son particularly and specifically; it is a strong feeling emanating from Abraham's individuality, from his "self." (Contrast this with the respect he showed the inhabitants of Sodom and Gomorrah because they were human.) Cain hates his brother, also a strong feeling emanating from the individual on a particular and specific basis. I am suggesting that the move away from these strong "self"-ish feelings is the same in both cases: would light up the same neurons in the same parts of the brain. Then one is freer to see either God's will and/or the good more clearly.

Lenny Levin at 09:30 on 27 May
Now we are getting to the bottom of the issue! The conflict you are describing is the conflict between one's selfish interest and what one perceives as one's moral obligation. Conscience commands Abraham to overcome his love for his son; conscience similarly commands Cain to overcome his hatred for his brother.

But the distinction "autonomous/heteronomous" cuts differently: Is the basis of the moral command itself in the human being's own moral sense (whether reason or empathy), or in a divine command that contradicts the human-based moral sense? In this respect, the divine command that Abraham must contend with is heteronomous, whereas the call of conscience (that he is his brother's keeper, despite his disclaimer) -- the basis for which God holds him responsible -- is the universal innate moral sense that is autonomous.

Lenny Levin at 09:35 on 27 May
I will also dissociate WTC 9/11 from the other cases (qualifying my previous comment). Ayman Al-Zawahiri and Mohammed Atta were false prophets, because they mistakenly projected their hatred for the United States onto God, thus generating a false commandment to kill the infidels. We must go deeper into religious-ethical psychology whether to classify the command "kill the infidel" as autonomous (because it reflects the human hatred for the enemy) or heteronomous (because it contradicts the universal rational ethical dictate not to murder). My previous comment assumes the latter position, but I will leave the matter on the table for now.

Comments on the Last Post (from Facebook)

I am sharing here a discussion of my last post that occurred on Facebook:

Susan Elkodsi at 20:18 on 24 May
I like your approach. But WWMS? What would Maimonides say?

Lenny Levin at 10:06 on 25 May
Maimonides never resolved the tension between a perfect God (I:50-60, III:16) and an imperfect world (III, 8-12). Modern process theology, affirming the fact-map of modern physics and the spirit of the Bible, avoids the perfection of "Being" in favor of the messiness of "becoming." But the attempt to integrate the fact-assertions of science with the value-assertions of the Bible is very Maimonidean.

Mel Scult at 10:11 on 25 May
Len is a scholar, translator, writer thinker and a very good person. Because his deeds match his wisdom , his wisdom will endure. [ Mel Scult, speaking for the universe]

Lenny Levin at 10:26 on 25 May
Aw, shucks! Enough flattery. But does the argument hold water?

Lee Price at 14:57 on 25 May
From your blog:“'Autonomous' refers to the view that human beings can perceive the good through their own reason, precisely because the good is an independent quality."
I would want to pause right there to question whether reason is the best instrument for perceiving the good.

Lenny Levin at 15:57 on 25 May
Right-brain, left-brain, empathy -- as long as it is determined from the human side, these all count as "autonomous." Philosophers stress reason, but we can include these other factors as well. As opposed to: "Abraham conquered his fatherly love in order to serve You (at the Akeda)" which would be the extreme of heteronomy.

Susan Elkodsi at 08:29 on 25 May
So can I quote that in my (late) paper? It seems to me that Halevi did a better job of synthesizing faith and reason. Good may be perceived through reason, but it is also often a leap of faith that we behave the way we do. (IMHO)

Lee Price at 20:27 on 25 May
How does one conquer a fatherly love, especially "in order to serve" God? Seems to me before the hand reaches the knife in any way Jewish tradition would accept, the heteronomous must become equivalent to the autonomous. The very same movement of the soul, if you will, would apply to Cain were he actually to overcome sin. He too would have to conquer a strong emotion. Wherever the energy to make the change is perceived to emanate from (God outside, the better person within) I'm not sure there's an essntial difference.

Lenny Levin at 09:45 on 26 May
"The heteronomous must become equivalent to the autonomous." Hmm. You realize this is all based on the notion expressed in Pirkei Avot 2:4 "Make His will your will...Annul your will in favor of His will..."—ultimately, adopt God's will as your will. So God's will does become your will. But it becomes your will because you have accepted God's will, not because your innate criterion of the good led you to adopt that specific course of action or principle on its own merits. The example of the Akeda—as Kierkegaard correctly picked up—is supposed to shock us into the realization of how contradictory the heteronomous and autonomous viewpoints can actually be in practice. The analogue today is the WTC attack on 9/11. The case of Cain is fundamentally different, because even as his selfish will moves him to kill Abel, his own conscience (expressing true autonomous peception of the good) knows that to kill Abel would be wrong.

What Does the Bible Say?

God <—?—> good

Does God dictate the good? Or does God instruct us in the good because it is good? Which is the mainstream view of the Bible on this question we have been pursuing?

In all frankness, both views are present in the Bible. Precisely because the writers and editors of the Bible were not philosophers, and did not leave anything out of their compendium, they did not see as clearly as a philosopher would to the core of this question or present a clearly unified view on it. But they did have strong intuitions on it, which they expressed through the literary means at their disposal—narrative, poetry, and exhortation. These intuitions cut in both directions, as we have seen. Had they been philosophically aware, they might have declared the problem to be an “antinomy”—a dilemma between two opposing views, in which equally cogent arguments can be brought for each side.

The terms “autonomous” and “heteronomous” were introduced into this discussion by the German idealist philosopher Immanuel Kant, and also pervade the discussion of Isaac Heinemann in The Reasons for the Commandments to which I have already referred. “Autonomous” refers to the view that human beings can perceive the good through their own reason, precisely because the good is an independent quality. “Heteronomous” refers to the view that we need to rely on an external authority—such as God, a parent, or a political ruler—to tell us what is good.

Some people have a negative stereotype of the Bible that it is thoroughly heteronomous in its presentation of the good and why we should obey it. Following Heinemann, we shall here portray Jewish thought on the subject—from the Bible through the rabbis and the medieval and modern thinkers—as a dialectic of the autonomous and heteronomous. We shall go further and ask, what different forms did this dialectic take through the ages, and what options does this history offer us for our own understanding of the problem?

We review the examples we have already cited. Abraham challenging God before Sodom “Shall not the judge of all the earth do justice?” was clearly expressing the autonomous perspective. God, warning Cain “Sin crouches at the door, its urge is toward you but you may master it,” was encouraging Cain to act on his autonomous moral insight, without having to be told specifically “Do not murder.” But God commanding Adam and Eve “Do not eat of it,” and demanding that Abraham present Isaac as a sacrifice, was taking the heteronomous stance, laying down commands without justifying them by reasons.

The early 20th century Jewish philosopher Hermann Cohen detected a difference in tone in the two presentations of the Ten Commandments — in Exodus Chapters 19–20 and 24, and in Deuteronomy Chapters 4–5. In Exodus, God stuns the people with the impressive spectacle of a desert thunderstorm; they are overwhelmed by God’s show of power and accept without reservation anything God will say to them. But in Deuteronomy, Moses stresses the rational aspect of the commandments: “What nation has such righteous laws and judgments as all this Torah that I give you today?” The nations, on hearing it, will say, “Surely this is a wise and understanding nation!”

Indeed, at least one modern Orthodox Jewish thinker has asserted that from a traditional Jewish point of view, even the ethical dictates of the Torah should be accepted in a spirit of passive obedience, as if they were hukkim (divine dictates without reasons). This is heteronomy with a vengeance. If this were Judaism, it would not be a teaching that I could accept. I also maintain (with Heinemann) that this betrays the spirit of the tradition itself, which is far more complex and nuanced in its approach.

The World As God’s Creative Project

The editor of the Biblical narrative in Genesis and Exodus presents us with a view that is neither precisely autonomous nor heteronomous in its implications. The term “theonomous” which David Novak has proposed is useful in indicating this dialectical synthesis, but we must go further. An “ethic of creation” (a term Lawrence Troster proposes) is here combined with the familiar “ethic of revelation.”

The historical narrative is framed by the creation narrative of the opening chapters. God creates. God declares in various stages of creation, “Let there be…” and it was so. And at each stage God examines the result, “and it was good.”

What means “and God saw that it was good”? Does it mean God declared it to be good, and thus legislated it to be good? Or did God, knowing what “good” was, judge that this product conformed to the outside criterion of good? If we adopt either of these views, we are back at our original problem. But I do not think either is satisfactory, and wish to propose a third view.

God (as portrayed in Genesis—admittedly anthropomorphically) is an artist. God has a creative intention, but cannot express it except through the act of creation itself. When an artist creates, s/he does not know in advance what will eventuate, but feels intuitively an impulse to arrive at a certain X. The artist produces something, then stands back and appraises it. Does the product (still half-formed) measure up to the inarticulate creative intention? Sometimes yes, sometimes not at all, and most often yes in part, but still needs improvement.

“God saw that it was good” expresses: God judged, yes, this fulfills my creative intention, at least up to this point. “God saw that it was very good” expresses: Now I have it! Now it is a complete and adequate expression of what I intended, or nearly so—needs just a crowning touch (maybe a Sabbath, to put the icing on the cake).

What does this imply in terms of human knowledge of the good? We do not need God to tell us in words “Do this, don’t do that”—or do we? It depends how good we are at intuiting God’s intention from experiencing God’s work. God apparently wanted humanity to read His mind, so He left them alone without explicit instructions for ten generations. The result was a disaster. People were clueless. They didn’t know which way to turn, and so they turned on each other. God gave in to despair for the first and last time, and wiped the slate clean, to start over. After the Flood, He gave Noah’s family a basic operating guide to living decently in the world. When that wasn’t enough, He gave the Israelites, fourteen generations later, more detailed instructions at Sinai.

But the instructions were not constitutive of the good. The good is constituted by God’s creative act. It is implicit in the world God made. The explicit instructions are a commentary on creation, to help those of us who cannot “get it” otherwise.

God gave us reason, to figure out the meaning of creation by contemplating it. God also (to anticipate Saadia Gaon’s view) gave us revelation, to inform us of the answers in case we could not figure them out for ourselves. Ultimately, the truths arrived at by reason and those offered by revelation should be in agreement. That would be the mature Jewish view, expressed by the leading Jewish thinkers such as Maimonides.

What, then, is good? Good is a dynamic function of the world created by God. Good can be intuited from contemplating the world itself. But the most profound understanding of the good comes from viewing the world as the ongoing expression of God’s will. Embracing the good is thus guided by reason, but it aims at compliance with God’s will as apprehended by reason (and hopefully confirmed by the purported account of God’s revelation of God’s will).

From this point of view, the dilemma of the Euthyphro (is good perceived by reason? Or is it compliance with God’s will?) is overcome in mature Jewish thought.

Euthyphro in Genesis? (2)

Merrymarymarry’s comments are to the point – thank you!

We can discern the two approaches to our basic question already in the first few chapters of Genesis. God’s first command to Adam and Eve appears arbitrary – do it because I say so! (God determines the good.) But Cain’s sin was not against statutory law, but against moral common sense: he was expected to know murder was wrong without being explicitly told. (The good is independently defined.) This distinction would later be elaborated by the rabbis into the difference between hukkim (arbitrary laws) and mishpatim (laws expressing the dictates of reason). The history of these two approaches in later Jewish thought is elaborated by Isaac Heinemann in The Reasons for the Commandments.

Merrymarymarry touches on another possibility—to transcend this dichotomy and merge God (or God’s dictates) and the good into one. I agree that this is the highest wisdom that we hopefully get to in the end. But I think it’s important to go through all the intermediate steps of thought that tilt toward one or the other side, to appreciate all the nuances of truth that each has to offer.

Take today’s debates on public policy — whether on abortion, global politics, or the place of religion in public life. The evangelicals hold by Euthyphro’s position, that the Word of God ought to determine what we do. The secular liberals hold that invoking God has no place in these debates, that we should decide what is good on the basis of reason alone.

Each of these contemporary positions has its roots in recent history, especially the history of the 18th-century Enlightenment and its aftermath. The Enlightenment had its roots in the religious wars from the Reformation through the Thirty Years’ War (ending in 1648). In those wars, oceans of blood were shed over who had the right version or interpretation of God’s word. Progressive anti-clerical thinkers such as Spinoza, Bayle, Voltaire and Diderot drew the moral that it is all too easy to invent spurious claims of God’s word to support one’s own interested position. Only objective reason could be trusted as a guide in human affairs.

But using reason as a guide was far more complicated in practice than in theory. The French Revolution started in a promising fashion but culminated in the Terror of 1793. The Russian Revolution similarly promised to implement reason in human affairs, but it ended up in the Gulag of Stalinism. Each of these produced a religious reaction, among those who drew the moral that religion was a better guide to right living than human reason on its own.

I just want to add one more wrinkle at this point: Does “determining the good by reason” mean the same thing if one considers the moral problem in purely human terms, or in a world governed by God? How do we justify our moral logic if we assume that we are legislating morals just for humanity, in a godless universe? Is the equation appreciably changed if we assume, instead of a godless universe, a universe guided by divine purpose?

In my next post, I will address how the question “God —? — good” was addressed in Biblical, rabbinic, and medieval Jewish thought.

Euthyphro in Genesis — Sodom or the Akedah?

God <–?–> good

Is there philosophy in the Bible? A parallel between a Platonic dialogue and two Biblical stories will shed light on this question.

Plato’s dialogue Euthyphro is named for a brash young man who thinks he has all the answers, and that the gods agree with him. He has decided to prosecute his father for murder. His father had shackled a laborer who in a drunken rage had slit a domestic’s throat; while he went to inquire what to do with him, the laborer died in the shackles. The son, ignoring the extenuating circumstances—as well as the honor he owes his father—is bringing murder charges against his father. His kin tell him that to prosecute his father in this case (maybe in any case) is unholy. How little do they know about what is holy, Euthyphro protests!

Socrates asks him: What, then, is holy? Euthyphro answers: The holy is what the gods desire. Socrates and Euthyphro go on to debate the merits of two opposing positions: (1) X is holy because the gods desire it, or (2) The gods desire X because it is holy in and of itself. Socrates’ view prevails: the good or holy is an independent variable, independent of the desire of the gods, and the gods love it because it is good or holy.

Two stories of Genesis seem to present the two sides of the argument of the Euthyphro. In the story of Abraham arguing before God about the fate of Sodom and Gommorah, Abraham proposes that God should spare the cities if there are fifty—or forty-five, forty, thirty…even ten righteous in the city. “Shall the judge of the earth not do justice?” Yet a few chapters later, God commands Abraham: “Take your son, your only son, whom you love, Isaac, and go to Mount Moriah and offer him as a sacrifice on one of the hills that I shall show you.”

In the first case, Abraham points out the good to God and says, “See, that is the good! You, God, are bound by it!” In the second case, God says to Abraham: “I’ll show you what’s good—it’s whatever I ask of you!”

In comparing Plato and Genesis, we notice similarities and differences. Each is concerned about God, the good, and the relation between them. What is God? What is the good? Which drives which?

But there is a difference in the method of treatment. The conceptual tool-kit of Plato’s Euthyphro is predominantly left-brain: definitions, abstractions, deductions, long trains of arguments striving for consistency. The conceptual tool-kit of the Genesis stories (and of the Bible generally) is predominantly right-brain: narrative (in which the universal ideas are implicit), poetry, illuminations of insight in which the logical preparation (if any) remains hidden from view.

There is also a difference in the final stated (or implied) position. In Euthyphro (and in philosophy generally), reason is the arbiter: we know the good from reason, and even a purported “word of God” that tells us differently is regarded with suspicion. In the Bible, obedience to the “word of God” predominates. Yet there are important passages (such as Abraham’s colloquy with God before Sodom) where the human ability to perceive the good independently of God’s word is given significant weight.

Are the Bible and philosophy in conflict, or complementary? As a great deal of Western thought springs from the extended conversation between these two, a lot hinges on how we perceive the answer to this question.

(To be continued)

Inaugurating "Reblen: The Blog"

As I embark on the next chapter of my life devoted to pursuit and sharing of wisdom, I invite my teachers, friends, and students ("from all my teachers I have gained insight!") to join me in this forum for that purpose.

I will be presenting ideas that I have developed in my teaching for the past decade, and some for much longer than that, along with relatively new ideas that have just come to me. In all these cases, I welcome friendly, constructive criticism. If I have overlooked important learning or other insights (ranging from complementary to challenging), by all means let me know — I want to learn from you too!

There will be references along the way to books that I have published or translated, to books that I am currently working on, and to books that may grow out of the postings and discussions on these blogs. If you wish to serve as a test-reader of my books-in-progress, let me know by e-mail and I will communicate with you to facilitate that.

I hope to recreate in this blog the ambience that I have strived to create in my classroom over the years: brave searching for broad vision, grappling with the big ideas, based on serious learning and critical thinking. All viewpoints are welcome. Mutual respect is a basic given. My viewpoint is my own; I welcome yours!

Ben Bag-bag said: "Turn it and turn it over, for everything is in it. Study it; grow old and grey in it, for you will find no better resource than it!" I have universalized the "it" in his statement to refer to the whole Western tradition of learning — religious and philosophical (and let's include the literary and artistic tradition as well).

In that spirit, let us begin once more to learn!