Abstract
Modern orthodoxy often perceives itself and is perceived by others as a movement which grants more importance to moral considerations in its interpretation of halakha and in its general worldview than does the ultra-orthodox movement. Accordingly, modern orthodox rabbis are often referred to as more “moderate” than their ultra-orthodox counterparts, a term which seems to imply that they are more open to moral arguments and more likely to adopt, or to develop, moral interpretations of halakha. A study of some central figures like Walter Wurzburger, Eliezer Berkovits and Joseph B. Soloveitchick, however, indicates that the modern orthodox approach to morality is much more ambivalent. The purpose of this paper is to discuss this ambivalence and to speculate on its source.
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Notes
See Avi Sagi and Daniel Statman, “Divine Command Morality and the Jewish Tradition,” Journal of Religious Ethics 23 (1995): 49–68.
See especially Genesis 18:23–32. The Biblical and Talmudic sources expect God to behave in accordance with (what they perceive as) the dictates of justice, and when, apparently, He doesn't, for instance, when He seems to punish the righteous together with the wicked, they make efforts to explain how this could be morally justified. See Ephraim Urbach, The Sages: Their Concepts and Beliefs (Jerusalem: The Magnes Press, 1987), ch. 15. The question of whether in Judaism God determines morality is close to—maybe identical to—the question of whether Judaism recognizes the notion of natural law. While ultra-orthodox rabbis tend to answer in the negative to this question (see David Bleich, “Judaism and Natural Law,” Jewish Law Annual 7 [1988]: 5–42), modern orthodox thinkers answer in the positive (see David Novak, Natural Law in Judaism, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998). See also my "Natural Law and Judaism" (Unpublished Manuscript).
See Yair Lorberbaum, "Halakhic Religiosity of Mystery and 'Sublimization', Halakhic Religiosity of Obedience and Enslavement, and Other Reservations About the Search for Reasons to the Commandments," Shenaton Ha-Mishpat Ha-Ivri (The Jewish Law Annual) 32 (2018): 69–114 (Heb.). Maimonides saw the religious attraction of the view that the commandments have no basis other than God's will though he regarded it as perverse and rejected it in the strongest terms. See Guide for the Perplexed, 3: 31.
See especially Maimonides in the 3rd part of the Guide and his teleological interpretations of halakha in his Code. See Isadore Twersky, Introduction to the Code of Maimonides (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1982), Ch. Six.
For many references, see Lorberbaum, ibid.
For the ultra-orthodox worldview and way of life, see Samuel Heilman, Defenders of the Faith: Inside Ultra-Orthodox Jewry (New York: Schocken Books, 1992) and Benjamin Brown, The Haredim: A Guide to their Beliefs and Sectors (Holon: Am Oved and the Israeli Democracy Institute, 2017) (Heb.).
See, for instance, Rabbi Eliyalu Dessler, A Letter from Elijah, vol. 3, ed. A. Carmel and A. Halperin (Bnai Brak, Israel, 1974) (Heb.).
Walter Wurzburger, Ethics of Responsibility: Pluralistic Approaches to Covenantal Ethics (Philadelphia: The Jewish Publication Society, 1994).
Rabbi Walter S. Wurzburger (1920–2002) was Adjunct Professor of Philosophy at Yeshiva University and, during his career, headed both the Rabbinical Council of America and the Synagogue Council of America.
Wurzburger, Ethics of Responsibility, 9.
Ibid., italics added.
Ibid., 2.
Yehezkel Kaufman is known to have rejected it, arguing that the novelty of the God of the Bible lies not in His moral perfection but in His omnipotence and unlimited sovereignty.
Eliezer Berkovits, God, Man and History (New York: Jonathan David Publishers, 1959), 86.
Ibid., 89.
Ibid.
Emanuel Rackman (1910–2008) served as a rabbi in New York and—among many other roles—as provost of Yeshiva University, the flagship academic institute of American modern orthodoxy, as well as president and then chancellor of Bar-Ilan university in Israel which is the Israeli counterpart of Yeshiva University.
Emanuel Rackman, Modern Halakhah for Our Time (Hoboken, NJ: Ktav Publishing House, 1995), 64.
Wurzburger, Ethics of Responsibility, 7.
Berkovits, God, Man and History, 90–91; Aharon Lichtenstein, "Does Jewish Tradition Recognize an Ethic Independent of Halakhah?" in Menachem Kellner (ed.), Contemporary Jewish Ethics (New York: Sanhedrin Press, 1979).
For this distinction, see, for instance, Avinoam Rosenak (ed.), Halakhah, Meta-Halakhah and Philosophy: A Multi Disciplinary Perspective (Jerusalem, The Magnes Press and the Van Leer Press, 2011) (Heb.). It more or less corresponds to the legal distinction between rules and principles (or values). For instance, a halakhic norm is the prohibition to light a fire on the Sabbath or the injunction to return a lost goat to its owner. A meta-halakhic norm is the requirement to maintain the character of the Sabbath as a day of rest or as a holy day, or the requirement to pursue justice.
Wurzburger, Ethics of Responsibility, 3.
See also Norman Lamm, Faith and Doubt (New York: Ktav, 1971), 253–258.
B. Talmud, tract. Bava Metsia 59b. In this famous Talmudic story, a bitter debate occurs between R. Eliezer and other sages regarding some halakhic question. After failing to convince them of his view and after failing to move them to his side by performing miracles, R. Eliezer asks Heaven to intervene, which indeed happens. A voice came out from Heaven announcing that R. Eliezer was right, to which the main protagonist responded by standing up and stating “The Torah is not in heaven” (citing the verse from Deut. 30:12), implying that even God Himself cannot intervene in halakhic rulings which are the prerogative of the rabbis. Once the Torah was handed over to the Israelites, it is they who are in charge of interpreting it according to their best reading of the Torah and their best understanding of God's will. For the centrality of this text in the modern-orthodox worldview, see my "Autonomy and Authority from Achnai's Oven," Bar-Ilan University L.R. 24 (2008): 639–662 (Heb.).
See previous note and also Eliezer Berkovits, Not in Heaven: The Nature and Function of Halakha (New York: Ktav Publishing House, 1983).
See Mishnah tractate Sotah 3:4; Jerusalem Talmud tractate Sotah 3:4; and Code of Maimonides, Laws of Torah Study 1:13.
Code of Maimonides, Laws of Kings 1:5.
Rackman, Modern Halakhah for Our Time, 63.
Wurzburger, Ethics of Responsibility, 10.
Ibid., 11–12.
Ibid., 24.
Ibid.
Berkovitz, God, Man and History., 101.
Sagi & Statman, Religion and Morality, Introduction.
Wurzberger, ibid.
Berkovits, God, Man and History, 104.
Wurzburger, Ethics of Responsibility, 22.
Ibid., 7.
See note 25 above.
Wurzburger, Ethics of Responsibility, 5. See also Kellner, Contemporary Jewish Ethics, 18.
Wurzberger, 30.
Berkovits, 103.
See the classic essay by Leon Roth, “Moralization and Demoralization in Jewish Ethics,” 11 (1962), 291 and Moshe Halbertal, Values in Interpretation: The Status of the Individual Within the Family in Rabbinic Interpretation of the Bible (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1997) (Heb.).
See Eliezer Berkovits, "The Nature and Function of Jewish Law," in Essential Essays in Judaism (Jerusalem, The Shalem Center, 2002).
See for instance Tamar El-Or, Next Year I Will Know More: Identity and Literacy Among Young Orthodox Women in Israel (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2002) and Chaim Waxman, Social Change and Halakhic Evolution in American Orthodoxy (London: Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 2017).
See Moshe Sokol, “Ger Ve-Toshav Anokhi: Modernity and Traditionalism in the Life and Thought of Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik,” Tradition 29 (1994), 32, who argues that “R. Soloveitchik was a paradigmatically modern figure for the Jews of his era and that his enduring contribution to human history derives precisely from that modernity.” As Sokol mentions, not everybody shares this view regarding the relation between Soloveichik and modernity.
Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik, Halakhic Man, trans. Lawrence Kaplan (Philadelphia: The Jewish Publication Society of America, 1983), 101.
Soloveitchik, Halakhic Man, 141.
Joseph B. Soloveitchik, "Catharsis," Tradition 17 (1978), 52.
Joseph B. Soloveitchik, The Lonely Man of Faith (New Jersey: Jason Aronson, 1965), 96.
Soloveitchik, Halakhic Man, 150, n. 51.
Joseph B. Soloveitchik, "Majesty and Humility," Tradition 17 (1978), 37.
On Leibowitz, see Daniel Rynhold, "Yeshayahu Leibowitz", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2019 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = <https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2019/entries/leibowitz-yeshayahu/>.
On Leibowitz's impact, see Asa Kasher, "Leibowitz's Influence," http://www.leibowitz.co.il/about.asp?id=5 (Heb.).
For the idea that Leibowitz expresses the zeitgeist of modern orthodoxy, see my “Negative Theology and the Meaning of the Commandments in Modern Orthodoxy,” Tradition 39 (2005): 55–68.
In October 1953, Israeli troops attacked the village of Kibiye in the West Bank in response to a Palestinian terror attack in which an Israeli woman and her two children were murdered in their home.
Leibowitz, Judaism, Human Values, and the Jewish State, 189.
Ibid., 18.
Ibid., 14. For a similar argument, see James Rachels, "God and Human Attitudes," in Paul Helm (ed.), Divine Commands and Morality (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1981), 34–48.
Ibid., 207.
See Yehuda Meltzer, "On the Curse," in The Yeshayahu Leibowitz Book (Tel Aviv: Tel Aviv University Student Union, 1977), (Heb.) p. 137: "Leibowitz tells us that he is not, God forbid, a humanist. And we reply by saying to him: If you are not a humanist, who is?".
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Statman, D. Modern orthodoxy and morality: an uneasy partnership. Int J Philos Relig 88, 167–180 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11153-020-09744-0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11153-020-09744-0