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.