Encore Archive

Welcome to Encore, the place where you will find the latest thoughts and reflections by CLAL faculty and associates on topics of the moment. Each week you will find something new and (hopefully) engaging here!

To access the CLAL Encore Archive, click here.

To join the conversation at CLAL Encore Talk, click here.

Over the course of the next month we will be reprinting a series of articles that Sh'ma printed in late 1976 and early 1977 on the nature of contemporary Jewish ethics. Last week we published "The Question of Jewish Ethics" by Steven Schwarzchild. This week and in subsequent weeks we will be reprinting responses to his article.

The Particularism of Jewish Ethics

Michael Wyschogrod (Sh'ma, 7/125)

Above all, Steven Schwarzschild's "The Question of Jewish Ethics Today" calls for an act of disentanglement or "sorting out," to use the current psychoanalytic terminology. The piece raises a number of issues which it then proceeds to run into each other like a tangled head of hairs that is very painful to comb out. But Schwarzschild's tangles must be untangled for our sake and his because, I am afraid, his Jewish soul is at stake (I do worry more about Jewish souls).

First, a list of the issues which are the ingredients of the Schwarzschild souffle.

1. There is the question whether Lifnim Mishurat Hadin and Middat Chassidut are meta-legal correctives to the law or whether they are integral parts of the law.

2. There is the question whether Jewish ethics is coextensive with the law or whether there is a Jewish ethics that is not part of the law but a check on the law.

3. There is the question whether Jewish law treats Jews and Gentiles differently or whether all human beings are equal before Jewish law.

4. There is the question whether I must share with a fellow Jew water that I own when to share will result in both of our deaths, while if I keep it for myself, I will not die.

5. There is the question whether Israel's soldiers "are making their peace with the perpetration of inhuman acts towards the Arab enemy and civilian population."

6. There is the question whether American Jewish (and perhaps Israeli) institutions are teeming with crooked persons.

7. Finally, there is the question whether it is permissible for Jews to act out of Jewish self-interest or whether they must be guided exclusively by "moral" considerations.

On all of these questions, Schwarzschild takes the most possible "moral" position. Jews may not act out of self-interest. Jewish institutions are teeming with crooks. Jewish soldiers (some? many? most? all?) act inhumanely toward Arab civilians. I must share my water at the cost of my life. Jewish law treats gentiles the same as Jews. The law incorporates Lifnim Mishurat Hadin and Middat Chassidut so that the maximum requirements become the minimum and no extra-legal Jewish ethics is needed to correct the law. Therefore, in spite of being an absolute moralist, Schwarzschild can stay within Judaism because there is no conflict between his morality and Judaism, as he interprets it.

How to be so certain in such disparate issues?

It must first be noted that most of these issues are relatively independent of each other. One could, for instance, believe that water should be shared but this applies only to a fellow Jew or one could believe that American and Israeli institutions are teeming with crooks and also believe that the Israeli army is 100% pure or, conversely, 100% inhumane, etc. In other words Schwarzschild's views on these questions have an emotional rather than a logical unity.

But the most stunning aspect of the whole picture is how much Schwarzschild knows. He knows what is a "socio-morally desirable legal system." He knows what is "philosophically and ethically ultimately convincing . . ." In short, Schwarzschild knows what is moral and, luckily Judaism lives up to these requirements, even though in the process, certain passages must be more emphasized than others. He seems never to be perplexed about what is moral. His morality seems to be a kind of Christian pacifism. Let two Jews drink and die - as long as the moral principle is upheld. But perhaps it is immoral to doom both of us to death? What else, one wonders, does Schwarzschild know? Does he know when the embryo becomes human so that to kill it is to commit murder? Does he know whether I may throttle a crying infant in the Warsaw Ghetto, to save a large number of hiding Jews? I don't know the answers to all of these questions out of my own mind. I need the law to tell me and I cannot judge the law because without it I don't know what is right.

Ethics as a counterbalance to mitzvot

So we have here the old ethical rationalism except this time no attempt is made to ground it philosophically, probably because it is an illusion of reason that it can know the good apart from the word of God. And this old-fashioned, disincarnated rationalism also leads to a pervasive hostility to Israel which is not a non-historical, disincarnated essence but, thank God, a historical reality. Schwarzschild does not object to this or that misconduct by this or that Israeli soldier. He hates the very idea of Israeli arms and is therefore very relaxed about the country's security.

In recent years, a small number of Reform rabbis of German origin (e.g., Arnold Wolf and Steven Schwarzschild) have turned toward a life of Torah observance. This is a development of the greatest significance. It is a reason for great joy even if the turn is imperfect. In some ways, the old universalism remains, perhaps even strengthened by a psychological need to compensate for the turn to mitzvot. Arnold Wolf wrote that when he turned toward mitzvot and looked into the mirror, he didn't like what he saw. And therefore one has to compensate to prove that one has not turned into an Eastern European Jew but remained part of the civilized human race. German Jews have always felt that the ethical standards of their Eastern co-religionists left something to be desired. This feeling apparently persists so that the new converts to Orthodoxy (or their version of it) simultaneously flirt with the New Left and its discredited ideology. With God's help, this too shall pass as the return to Torah intensifies.

Schwarzschild's ethics must be Jewish, not Kantian

What Schwarzschild must learn is that Jewish self-interest is not a species of the genus "self-interest." Israel is the people through whom God's presence in the world is manifest. The assault on Israel is therefore never free of a hatred for the God of Israel. And this is true even when that hatred is cloaked in a subjectively sincere sense of being the victim of injustice. Schwarzschild's Jewish mercy responds to the Palestinian sense of hurt. And this in itself is admirable on his part. But not when he joins in the hatred of Israel and Jews. The Land of Israel belongs to the Jewish people. We can debate whether we had the right to lay claim to it now or whether the exile was meant to last longer and we should have waited for the signal that it was over. But whatever may be true in that respect, the Arab interposition to the Jewish right to Israel is in profound violation of the divine mandate that grants the land to the seed of Abraham in perpetuity.

The ethical voice that Schwarzschild hears is therefore not a Jewish ethical command. It is abstract, non-historical, impartial, in short, Kantian. Jewish ethics does not ignore the being of the holy people whose self-interest is the defense of God's real presence in history. Schwarzschild must learn to love and trust this people and not only to love abstract principles. He is not a prophet sent to chastise God's people, especially not with hatred. If Jewish ethics commands that a Jew does not have the same obligations to a gentile as to a Jew, Schwarzschild must not fear what the gentiles will say. Those so inclined will hate Jews whatever they believe or do. Instead, he must submit his highly developed ethical sensibility shaped at least in part by non-Jewish influences - to the word of God which does not separate the ethical from the election and holiness of Israel. He must also separate his perception of the Jewish military from his anti-militaristic, pacifistic orientation. Here again, Jewish arms are not just arms. Instead, they may be the channel of God's power in the affairs of men. Without faith, such statements are outrageous. In faith, they become an extension of the mystery of Israel.

I am therefore bold enough to beg Schwarzschild to re-think his position, to return to his people and not to remove himself from his people. I love him for his Jewish compassion and his love of peace. But this war with almost the whole of the house of Israel must stop. Now.