LEV243 Here I propose to study a specific halakhic provision which illuminates Jewish law's relation to universal human moral judgment, namely the category hillul hashem insofar as it shapes Jewish duty in terms of gentile opinion. An inner theological dialectic lies behind the legal tension to be explored. God has given the Torah to one particular people, the Jews, and its rules distinguish between those who do and those who do not participate in the system. The same Torah indicates that God stands in a similar relationship, if a legally less demanding one, with all humankind, the children of Noah. Hence they may be said to have a legitimate basis for judging Jewish conduct. (See the admirable study by David Novak, The Image of the Non-Jew in Judaism (New York: Edward Mellen, 1983). The potential tension between what the Torah permits to Jews and a harsh evaluation gentiles might make of it creates the subset of the laws of hillul hashem to be studied. While the term hillul hashem does not occur in the Bible, equivalents are found in several biblical books, with heavy concentrations in Leviticus and Ezekiel. The peshat of these texts may be classified as moving from concrete acts of profanation, to those which directly or indirectly cast aspersions on God, and finally to an abstract sense of hillul hashem. Since the book of Leviticus pays considerable attention to cultic acts which sanctify God --to the extent that various items can be called God's "holy things" -- so, by extension, mishandling them profanes God. (Thus Lev. 21:6, 22:2, 32; Mal. 1:12; and perhaps Ez. 20:39.) Idolatry--specifically, sacrificing one's child to Moloch --is a desecration (this verse), 20:13). Ezekiel accuses certain women prophets of equivalent sacrilege (Ezekiel 13:19). The theme also encompasses non-cultic violations, of which swearing falsely by God's name is a similarly direct profanation (Leviticus 19:12). And it includes unethical acts like a father and son having sexual relations with the same girl (Amos 2:7) and Jerusalemites reneging on their solemn path to free their Jewish slaves (Jeremiah 34:16). Ezekiel envisages this notion abstractly and four times, in consecutive verses, proclaims God's determination to sanctify the Divine name which the people of Israel has profaned through its sinfulness (Ez. 36:20-23). The social dimension of several of these acts of profanation deserves particular attention. The heinousness of the sacrilege derives as much from what the act says about God to others, a public, as from its intrinsic profanity. The biblical authors consider God's social, corporate acknowledgment even more important than the equally indispensable private faith of individuals. The political term, king, so often used to refer to God, testifies to this social understanding of God's reality. Hence acts which imply that there is no God or which as good as do the same by testifying falsely to God's nature or commands, profane God's "name," that is, our understanding of God or, equally, God's reputation. Much of rabbinic teaching in this area derives from the social context.
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