Torah and universal morality

The chapter of Judaism Reclaimed which relates to parashat Shelach explores complex questions of religion and morality from the perspective of Jewish tradition. Perhaps the most striking aspect of the episode of the spies is that, while the nation was apparently lacking faith in God, it had witnessed a spectacular array of miracles from the plagues in Egypt and splitting of the sea to the revelation at Sinai and military victory over Amalek. It is incomprehensible that members of a generation that had seen the results of God’s intervention with their own eyes could have doubted His ability to vanquish the Canaanites; rather, they must have doubted His willingness to do so.

Such doubt might well have been generated by the sharp contrast between God’s prior miracles – the rescue of downtrodden Jewish slaves from the savagery of Egypt and Amalek – and the command to invade and eliminate the Canaanite population which would for the first time place the Jews in the apparent position of unprovoked aggressors. Would the God whom they had only experienced as a champion of the oppressed truly intervene miraculously to allow the Jews to put Canaan to the sword?

In an era of international law and human rights, we too may struggle to reconcile the apparently genocidal military campaigns against the Canaanite nations and Amalek with our perception of Judaism as the religion which introduced monotheism and the notion of a moral code to much of the world. How are we to resolve this contradiction and, if we accept that it was right to put Canaan to the sword, are we truly able to claim that Judaism embraces an objective and universal morality that eschews murder?

Judaism Reclaimed approaches this question first from the point of view of Rambam, maintaining that the Maimonidean perspective rejects the very notion of God being subject to or working within human conceptions of morality. This principle of Maimonidean thought is predicated upon Rambam’s profound explanations of the interplay between objective divine-based truth (emet) and human conceptions of good and bad (tov vera) which sullied humanity’s mind as a consequence of Adam and Eve’s sin in Eden. (The constraints of a brief Facebook summary prevent me from doing justice to this idea here.)

We move on from there to the Akeidah, where Rambam describes how Avraham, whose hallmark was kindness, was prepared to sacrifice personal feelings, aspirations, and moral judgments which he had developed and preached over an entire lifetime in order to comply with the “true” will of God. Avraham’s absolute obedience to God, despite his moral qualms, earned him generous accolades and promises of Divine bounty. But we also note that there are occasions on which Rambam does appear to require one to use moral reasoning.

In chapter 6 of Shemonah Perakim, Rambam distinguishes between chukkim and mishpatim, invoking a Talmudic teaching that some mitzvot, “even had they not been written, it would have been proper to write them.” This clearly implies that prohibitions such as those against murder, theft, and unprovoked violence could legitimately be regarded as inherently wrong or “immoral” even without an explicit scriptural prescription. We attempt to reconcile these sources by using Rambam’s teaching that, while is proper for a person to contemplate the mitzvot in order to understand God’s purpose in commanding them, this must be accompanied by an acute awareness of the wisdom differential between man and God.

Rambam’s apparent endorsement of a moral imperative in Shemonah Perakim stems not from human judgment, but rather from a broader assessment of God’s revealed teachings. By analysing God’s will as it appears throughout the Torah, we can develop an idea of what is generally consistent with His will and thereby conclude that such mitzvot would have been “proper to write” even if the Torah omitted them. When faced with an explicit command of God, however, we must recognize that we cannot plumb the depths of His wisdom and must therefore set aside our limited assessment of what God’s will should be in favour of the revealed truth of His word. We trace this through the events of Avraham’s life, noting how his protesting God’s planned annihilation of Sodom was based upon his own understanding of God’s justice and mercy. At the Akeidah, however, Avraham was faced with a clear command from God and recognized that his own preconceived notions of the correct course of action could not challenge God’s truth as expressed in His explicit words.

We highlight the fact that, throughout the biblical texts, any command for the Jews to act in a particularly violent manner was communicated explicitly and unambiguously through a unanimously accepted prophet. In the absence of such a clear and exceptional command, we are required to develop an understanding of God’s will and act on the basis of God’s mitzvot and their “moral” lessons. The chapter concludes by addressing the question of Judaism and universal morality from the very different perspective of Rabbi S. R. Hirsch.

First posted to Facebook 18 June 2020, here.

National survival or excusing genocide?

One of the essays which ultimately did not make the final cut of Judaism Reclaimed related to a troubling biblical instruction that first appears in the portion we read yesterday. Upon entering the land, the Jewish people were under no circumstances to “form a covenant with the inhabitant[s] of the land into which you are coming, lest it become a snare in your midst” (34:12-15). 

As the Torah will make clear, God requires the Jewish people to annihilate the indigenous peoples of Canaan; instructions which the book of Joshua describes in detail as having been carried out in many Canaanite cities and population centres. In his book Joshua – The Challenge of the Promised Land, Michael Hattin presents a sweeping defence against the allegation that the Jewish military campaign against Canaan constituted an immoral act of genocide. 

The first stage of Hattin’s attempt to rebut these allegations cites a series of biblical verses which paint a vivid picture of the dangers posed by allowing the Canaanite nations to remain in the land on their own terms. In each instance, the command to destroy the Canaanite population is accompanied by a strong warning that any attempt to make a pact or covenant with them and their gods would lead inexorably to intermarriage and the adoption by the Jews of Canaanite pagan practices.

As I quoted in a recent post, the prevalent pagan culture of the Canaanites was far more powerful than mere religious ritual. Historian William F. Albright describes how: 

"Polytheism had a popular appeal in many ways like that of the dominant secularism of our own age. The wealth, science and aesthetic culture were lined up on the side of Canaanite religion. All the sinister fascination of the elaborate proto-sciences of magic and divination was marshaled in defense of polytheism...".

Having established the Torah’s motivation for its commands to destroy the Canaanite population, Hattin thus presents the battle and need to uproot the indigenous culture as a matter of self-preservation rather than a xenophobic genocide. The moral and religious revolution of the Torah as well as the precious opportunity it offered to mankind are discussed at length in Judaism Reclaimed (as well as Joshua Berman’s Created Equal) where we consider how the Torah’s value system differed radically from anything which preceded it. If this code, which was to liberate humanity from the moral decadence of Canaanite paganism characterised by child sacrifice and immoral rituals, was to take hold and spread to enlighten humanity, it must first be allowed to develop securely in the Land of Israel free from pagan influence. For this to succeed, Canaanite culture needed to be uncompromisingly uprooted from the Land.

No-one can deny the tragedy of war and its cruelty but, argues Hattin, this must not blind us to the truth that some wars are nevertheless justified and even obligatory. God’s instruction to the bearers of His Torah to destroy the Canaanite culture of immorality and child sacrifice in order to establish and spread His teaching can be said to represent a clear moral advancement for the future of humanity.

Two further and arguably stronger points are presented by Hattin in order to argue that the battle with Canaan and the associated commands to destroy the seven nations revolved primarily around a moral and ideological gulf between the two nations, rather than racial or xenophobic distinctions. The Gemara – as understood by Rambam and Ramban – views the command to kill the Canaanite nations as conditional upon their willingness to persevere with their evil ways. If the Canaanites had been prepared to abandon their idolatry and associated moral deficiencies and accept the Noachide laws they could continue to dwell in the land unharmed. Since these Noachide laws represent the basic tenets of civilised behaviour, concludes Hattin: 

“the war against the Canaanites was not a war against a race or a people, but rather a war against a noxious moral system that refused to embrace even the most elementary expressions of humane conduct and civilised behaviour.” 

This latter point is reinforced by the fact that the Torah levels similar threats towards the Jewish people in the event that they themselves do not maintain and live up to their moral calling. In a passage that lists the prohibitions against the most severe forms of sexual immorality as well as child sacrifice, the Torah concludes:

“Do not defile yourselves by all of these practices, for all of the nations that I drive out from before you became defiled through them … and the land spewed forth its inhabitants … Let not the land spew you forth for defiling it just as it spewed forth the nation before you …” (Vayikra 18:24-30)

The clear message is that the Jewish people will be held to a parallel standard and suffer a similar fate should they adopt the morally decadent practices of their predecessors. The practical application of this threat to the Jewish people can be found in the laws of the ir hanidachat, the wayward Israelite city which becomes corrupted by idolatry. The Torah’s uncompromising instruction to smite the city by “the edge of the sword”, to destroy it, and burn it with fire contains remarkably similar language to that used in the commands to wipe out the idolatrous Canaanite nations.

Moreover, as the books of prophets teach, the Jewish people eventually did succumb to the temptations of the Canaanite culture which they failed to eradicate as commanded. As predicted by the verses quoted above, God’s holy land did not tolerate this defilement and spewed them forth into exile. Although Israel as a whole had abrogated its mandate and was therefore exiled from the land, the ideas that the nation had come to represent were by that time irreversibly established. Like the people of Israel, they will endure, eventually to be accepted by all of humanity.

Hattin’s book represented the best defence I had seen for the morality of the Jews’ campaign to conquer Canaan. Ultimately, however, I still felt somewhat uneasy and was concerned that it would be a distraction from the main arguments in my chapter on Torah and universal morality.

First posted on Facebook 20 February 2022, here.