GEN1023 Even if we are convinced that we should adhere to Jewish moral norms, how do we know what they are? Classical Judaism defines the moral in terms of God’s will as articulated in God’s commandments. Some modern theorists, however, have challenged the nexus between God’s will and Jewish law, and some humanist Jews have even denied that we should look to God’s will in any form to define the right and the good.   Even those who believe that Jewish moral norms are to be defined in terms of God’s will and that Jewish law is the proper vehicle for knowing what God wants of us cannot rest with Jewish law alone, for the Talmud itself declares that the law is not fully sufficient to define morality, that there are morals (lifnim m’shurat ha-din). For example, B. Baba Metz’ia 30b…Since, for Reform Judaism, Jewish law is, according to Freehof (1960), 22, “not directive, but advisory” and involves “our guidance, but not our governance,” moral norms, however they are construed, always take precedence over Jewish law, because moral norms are binding but Jewish law is not.   Beginning, then, with Abraham’s challenge to God, “Shall the Judge of all the earth not to justice?” [this verse] one ethical question addressed throughout Jewish history has been relationship between moral norms and God’s word.   Another, more modern question, is this: If we assume that God’s will defines that which is morally right and good, how shall we discern what God wants us to do now? Reform theories, such as that of Eugene Borowitz, Borowitz [1991], 284-299 maintain that individual Jews should make that decision. They should inform themselves as much as possible about the relevant factors in that case and about the Jewish sources that apply, but ultimately individual Jews, rather than rabbis, should determine what God wants of us on the basis of their knowledge and conscience. This Reform methodology raises major questions about how to identify any Jew’s decision as being recognizably Jewish. Indeed, it makes it possible and even likely that there will be multiple, conflicting moral decisions, all claiming to be Jewish, because each and every Jew has the right to articulate a “Jewish” position on a given issue.  This challenges the coherence and intelligibility of the Jewish moral message. Moreover, Borowitz’s methodology depends crucially on the assumption that individual Jews know enough about the Jewish tradition and about how to apply it to carry out this task, an assumption that regrettably does not comply with reality. Positively, though, Reform methodology empowers individual Jews to wrestle with the Jewish tradition themselves, and it encourages—even demands—that Jews learn more about their tradition in order to carry out this task. DORFFLOV 16

SHOW FULL EXCERPT

GEN1024 Just as Plato, in his task of uniting all values by acknowledging their complementarity, recognized that what is fairest and best must be most real, so the Torah discovers that what is most real, what is divine, must be not only absolute but fair and good.  Accordingly, [this verse]. Saadiah Gaon makes the underlying reasoning explicit: God rules because He is just; the combination of rule with caprice would be possible, he argues, only through a power struggle.   But God did not come to power in some pagan theomachy.   He rules eternally.   Goodness is constitutive in the very idea of God.   Thus, when we read that God’s throne is firm and everlasting Psalms 45:7, c. 9:5, 8; 47:9, we understand not only God’s ontic stability but His legitimacy, the stability that only justice brings Psalms 93. God stands at the summit of a series in which goodness and reality go hand in hand.   JHRHV 39-40

SHOW FULL EXCERPT

GEN1029 To do justice, as [this verse] shows, means, in Hebrew, as in English, to do what is right: uphold the innocent and condemn the guilty – in a practical way, to recognize their deserts.  Shiftu here connotes recognition of rights, just as the English “condemn” entails not merely judgment but a finding of guilt.   JHRHV 167 n. 25

SHOW FULL EXCERPT

GEN1028 The fact remains that the existence of national morality is clearly assumed in much that is quite central to our tradition. Discussion of theodicy is predicated upon it. As Benjamin Whichcote, Discourses, the seventeenth century Cambridge Platonist, pointed out, one cannot ask, “Shall, then, the judge of the whole Earth not do justice?” [this verse] unless one assumes the existence of an unlegislated justice to which, as it were, God Himself is bound; and which, one might add, man can at least apprehend sufficiently to ask the question. Or again, any attempt at rationalizing Halakha—an endeavor already found in Hazal, although much more fully elaborated by rishonim—presupposes an axiological frame of reference, independent of Halakha, in the light of which it can be interpreted. It makes no sense to say, with Abaye, that “the whole of the Torah… is for the purpose of promoting peace,” Gittin 59b unless the ethical value of peace can be taken for granted. The same holds true with respect to suggesting reasons for specific mitzvot. (By Aharon Lichtenstein, “Does Jewish Tradition Recognize an Ethic Independent of Halakha?”) KELLNER 103

SHOW FULL EXCERPT

GEN1027 See [[GEN657]] Genesis 9:1 said OXFORD 45

SHOW FULL EXCERPT

GEN1020 Abraham’s question would make no sense, Novak argues, if he did not have access to moral standards independent of God's direct commands.   [David Novak, Jewish Social Ethics, 31].   Similarly, Noah and Job, among many other biblical characters, are referred to as “righteous,” but without benefit of access to God’s revelation.  Such stories, of course, do not provide probative evidence for a doctrine of natural law, but they provide at least circumstantial evidence that biblical authors recognized sources of moral knowledge apart from revelation and this, at least, opens the door to a natural law position. PASTIMP 130

SHOW FULL EXCERPT

GEN1018 … Moses … bring[s] the Torah to a close with a theme that has been there from the beginning. God, creator of universe, made a world that is fundamentally good, the word that echoes seven times in the first chapter of Genesis. It is humans, granted free will as God’s image and likeness, who introduce evil into the world and then suffer its consequences. Hence Moses’ insistence that when trouble and tragedy appear, we should search for the cause within ourselves and not blame God. God is upright and just. The defect is in us, His children. This is perhaps the most difficult idea in the whole of Judaism. It is open to the simplest of objections, one that has sounded in almost every generation. If God is just, why do bad things happen to good people? This is the question asked not by skeptics and doubters, but by the very heroes of faith.   We hear it in Abraham’s plea [this verse]… it is an argument that has never ceased. It continued through the rabbinic literature. It was heard again in the kinot, the laments, prompted by the persecution of Jews in the Middle Ages. It sounds in the literature produced in the wake of the Spanish expulsion, and echoes still when we recall the Holocaust. The Talmud says that of all the questions Moses asked God, this was the one to which God did not give an answer Berachot 7a. The simplest, deepest interpretation is given in Psalm 92, “The song of the Sabbath day.” Though “the wicked spring up like grass” 92:7, they will eventually be destroyed. The righteous, by contrast, “flourish like a palm tree and grow tall like a cedar in Lebanon” 92:13. Evil wins in the short term but never in the long. The wicked are like grass, the righteous like a tree. Grass grows overnight but it takes years for a tree to reach its full height. In the long run, tyrannies are defeated. Empires decline and fall, goodness and rightness win the final battle. As Martin Luther King said in the spirit of the psalm: “the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” “Out of the Long Night,” The Gospel Messenger, February 8, 1958, 14.… Difficult though Jewish faith is, it has had the effect through history of leading us to say: if bad things have happened, let us blame no one but ourselves, and let us labor to make them better. It was this that led Jews, time and again, to emerge from tragedy, shaken, scarred, limping like Jacob after his encounter with the angel, yet resolved to begin again, to rededicate ourselves to our mission and faith, to ascribe our achievements to God and our defeats to ourselves. Out of such humility, a momentous strength is born. SACKS 331-3

SHOW FULL EXCERPT

GEN1030 We can learn from the narrative, as well as from the legal portions of the Torah how to live and how not to.  We learn from Abraham the importance of being hospitable Genesis 18:2-8, and of not being afraid to argue with anyone, even God, when we think an injustice is being committed [This verse]; from Judah, the need to acknowledge when one is wrong Genesis 38:26; and from the prophet Nathan the obligation to criticize unjust behavior Samuel 2:12.  TELVOL 1:512

SHOW FULL EXCERPT

GEN1025 Moses and Aaron confront God as well with a challenge in the name of justice.   When many Israelites refuse to take sides between Moses and the rebel Korach, God, disgusted by the Israelites’ behavior, says to Moses and Aaron, “Separate yourselves from this community, and I shall annihilate them in an instant.”   The two leaders challenge God, “Shall one man sin, and You be wrathful with the whole community?” Numbers 16:20-22.   God relents and restricts His punishment to Korach and his followers.   TELVOL 2:404

SHOW FULL EXCERPT

GEN1038 There are sources in which people defy even God, the ultimate Authority.   Challenging God has two dimensions.   The first is a calling of God to God’s ultimate justice.   If God has acted unjustly, brit (covenant) provides that humanity can call God to account.   If God has not acted in accordance with God’s own standard of tsedek (justice), the sources show that humankind can call God back to that higher, ultimate standard.  This type of challenge is rooted in a deep love of God and of the covenant God has made with humankind for the just administration of creation.   By the same reasoning, God calls humans to account on justice issues.  The second type of challenge to God is an intercessory calling of God to God’s rahamim (mercy and love) on behalf of individuals, the Jewish people, or all humanity.  If God has not acted mercifully, brit (covenant) provides that humanity can call God to account.  If God has not acted in accordance with God’s own middat hasidut (standard of mercy and love), the sources show that humankind can call God back to that higher, ultimate standard.  This type of challenge is also rooted in a deep love of God and of the covenant God has made with humankind for the merciful and loving administration of creation. By the same reasoning God calls humans to a standard of caring.   All these sources appeal to God’s “higher” or “better” nature. Stories of the first type embody the value-concept of tsedek (justice) while those of the latter type embody the value-concept of hasidut (caring), always within brit (covenant). To be sure, each case is a mixture of both justice and caring. [citations]. Abraham came forward and said [Genesis 18:23-25]. COMMENT: The setting is God’s announced intention to destroy the wicked cities of Sodom and Gemorra.   When Abraham hears that God is about to do this, he did not rejoice in the downfall of the wicked but immediately began to argue with God, speaking these words, the most famous protest lines in all literature. BANAL 174-5

SHOW FULL EXCERPT