An Introduction to Jewish Ethics

Louis Newman

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781317347231
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

For courses in Religion, Judaism and Ethics. This text offers an overview of the Jewish ethical tradition as it has evolved from biblical times to the present. Provides an overview of the central beliefs of classical Judaism and the ways in which these frame traditional Jewish approaches to issues in ethics, both theoretical and practical.

Chapter One

Religion, Ethics, and Religious Ethics

Summary

People in all times and places have confronted certain basic questions about the meaning of human existence and the proper way to live. Religion and ethics represent two distinct but related spheres of reflection on these basic questions. This chapter explores the characteristics of human life that make these questions urgent and the ways in which religion and ethics address them. It pays particular attention to the ways in which questions of ethics arise in the context of religious traditions. Finally, descriptive and normative approaches to these questions are differentiated, laying the groundwork for an academic study of religious ethics.

[The] demonstration of a meaningful relation between the values a people holds and the general order of existence within which it finds itself is an essential element in all religions, however these values or that order be conceived.¹

All of us as human beings live in a world we did not create and, in certain basic respects, we cannot change. The natural cycles of day and night and of seasons that rotate in a regular pattern, as well as the astounding variety of plants and animals, the movements of heavenly bodies, and the array of elements that make up the physical world—are all part of a universe that exists independent of human beings. Humans are born into a vast and complex world for which we can take no credit. Since the beginning of recorded history, we have pondered the nature of this universe and our place within it. In the last few centuries, of course, our understanding of the world has advanced dramatically. As we learn more about the complexity of the world at all levels—from the behavior of subatomic particles to that of distant galaxies—we have more reason than ever to pause and marvel at how the world came to be and what role, if any, we play in this extraordinary universe.

Yet the world around us is not the only source of wonder and speculation. Human life itself is structured in ways that give rise to still more questions. Human life is limited in numerous respects. Most obviously, our physical existence ends in death, and we live (at least as adults) with the knowledge that time will not be ours forever. Moreover, during the course of our lives, we inevitably face the facts of our own vulnerability—to disease and other forms of suffering, to “the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,”² to our own inability to do all that we can, or believe we should, do. Of course, we all have the ability to think abstractly and creatively, yet our powers of cognition are not adequate to answer all the questions we are capable of formulating. Human life is full of wonder and surprise, as well. We are capable of forming deep emotional bonds with one another, of performing acts of great generosity and self-sacrifice, of bravery, but also of foolishness.

These features of human life, along with the features of the natural world that surround us, define the human condition, which is constant across the millenia of recorded time and in all human cultures. Technological advances have enabled us to alter the circumstances of human life somewhat, but not fundamentally. We have learned how to eliminate certain diseases, but we cannot relieve all suffering, nor can we conquer death. We have learned how to calculate the size of distant galaxies, but we do not know for certain how the universe began or what its fate will be billions of years hence. In addition, of course, we cannot escape the quirks of fate that can change the course of our lives radically, for better or worse, from one day to the next. In all these ways, we remain the same limited and vulnerable creatures that we have been throughout human history.

These very aspects of the human condition give rise to a series of questions about the purpose or meaning of life as we experience it. Some of these questions relate to what philosophers call ontology, the nature of reality: Given that so much of the world appears to be changing and in flux, what is ultimately real? Is there a reality that transcends the ebb and flow of ordinary life and, if so, what is it? In the final analysis, is the universe one (though it appears in many guises), or is it many? Is the world constructed in a way that promotes or inhibits human strivings, or is it indifferent to them? Other questions concern soteriology, the nature and possibility of salvation: Is there a way to escape from the conditions that create human misery and, if so, how? On the other hand, how can we explain human goodness and the many blessings we have? Is there a life beyond death and, if so, what must we do to attain it? Still other questions concern eschatology, the end of time: Is there a purpose or direction to human history? Will human history—marked as it is by strife, pain, and failure—someday give way to another kind of existence? How can we know when the culmination of history will come and what, if anything, can we do to hasten it?

Of course, many different answers have been proposed to these questions over the centuries and it is not the purpose here to attempt to review all, or even most, of the alternatives. Rather, the point is to note that these questions are as old and persistent as the human condition itself. In addition, although the questions themselves are not inherently religious, many answers to them have been. It is time to turn to the nature of religions and to the distinctive perspectives they bring to these fundamental human questions.

RELIGION, RELIGIONS, AND RELIGIOUS STUDIES

To some extent, everyone is acquainted with religions. Whether through direct personal experience or simply through observation of others, everyone recognizes certain rituals and forms of worship, certain beliefs and institutions, as religious. When scholars try to define precisely the characteristics that mark these as religious, however, two related issues arise. First, because the world’s religions exhibit enormous diversity, it is not at all apparent what common feature (or features) unite these disparate phenomena into a single set. The times and places that are considered sacred, the nature of religious authority, the structure of the religious community—all of these differ widely as we survey the world’s faiths. What do all religions have in common?

Second, there are rituals and practices that are not commonly thought of as “religious” but that exhibit some of the same traits we commonly associate with religion. For instance, everyone knows that a political rally is not quite the same thing as a religious revival meeting, yet both have distinctive rituals and symbols that move people to identify with a cause greater than themselves. Both of these events often create powerful emotional responses and shape the participants’ attitudes and values in profound ways. What distinguishes specifically religious modes of belief and behavior from others that have many of the same effects?

Although there is no single definition of religion on which adherents and scholars of all persuasions can agree, it is apparent that some of the most popular, or commonly proposed, definitions are inadequate. Many people have assumed that religion is defined in terms of belief in a supernatural deity and/or the worship of a power greater than themselves. This appears to be too narrow for, although it accords with the dominant traditions of the West, it cannot account for many religions of the East, such as Taoism and Buddhism, which do not affirm the existence of a supreme being. Others have suggested that religions are defined by “reliance on a pivotal value” around which all of life is oriented. The famous twentieth century Protestant theologian Paul Tillich claimed that religion was whatever people held to be their “ultimate concern.”³ This appears to be too broad, however, for it provides no way to distinguish religions, such as Judaism or Christianity, from ideologies, such as Marxism or even Nazism. Even if some followers of these ideologies adopted them in lieu of a religion or adhered to them with religiouslike fervor, people typically think of religion as involving something more than commitment to a particular ideal.

In this text I will follow those who have defined religion in terms of the experience that underlies it rather than in terms of its psychological or social effects or its institutional forms. The eminent historian of religion, Mircea Eliade, who championed this approach throughout his career, spoke of religion as based on “an experience of the sacred” that was qualitatively different from other sorts of experiences. This experience could not be reduced to or translated into any other category of human experience.⁴ In this sense, Eliade’s approach to religion is often referred to as phenomenological, for he was interested in explaining the phenomenon of religion, the experience of religion, in its own terms. For Eliade, religion arises in “a primary religious experience that precedes all reflection on the world.”⁵ The sacred manifests itself as something apart from, and more real than, ordinary experience. A religious person encounters this sacred reality as evidence of another realm of existence, more enduring, more powerful, and more awesome than anything occurring in day-to-day, mundane life. Indeed, one of the most powerful effects of this religious experience is the immediate desire to maintain a sharp distinction between this realm of sacred reality and the profane or ordinary reality in which people live most of the time.⁶

Eliade believed that at the core of every religion lies some such experience of the sacred. It is that experience that the religious individual then takes to be the primary point of orientation for his or her life. It provides a way of delineating time and space, for the times and places in which sacred reality is experienced become themselves sanctified, set apart as utterly different from mundane time and ordinary places. Experience of the sacred also provides an orientation toward the natural world and a foundation for one’s values. Fundamentally, the religious person strives to orient all of life in relation to this sacred reality. Religious traditions, then, develop as a way of preserving and fostering a connection to this sacred reality. They offer adherents a means by which they can reconnect with or even re-experience this sacred reality, even if the primary experience occurred centuries earlier. Through religious ritual, with the help of specific words and actions, the sacred experience can be made perennially present, and believers can renew their religious orientation to the world.

The precise characteristics of this sacred reality and the particular type of orientation (physical, moral, or spiritual) that it provides are as varied as the human cultures in which religious experience has occurred. Still, it may be helpful to consider some of the salient features of Jewish religion as exemplary of religious experience in general. Judaism asserts the existence of a supernatural being, God, who created and sustains the natural order and who has blessed human life as the culmination of creation. The multiple forces of nature that sometimes threaten humans are actually part of a unified whole, created with purpose and designed to sustain human life. Traditional Judaism has asserted that human history is purposeful as well, and is anything but a clash of blind forces, “full of sound and fury, signifying nothing,” as Shakespeare wrote.⁷ Instead, history is a drama in which God calls humankind to divine service and in which humans sometimes succeed and sometimes fail to realize God’s will. Judaism has asserted that the physical existence that ends in death is not the whole of life. Rather, human beings possess a divine element, a soul that can outlive the body and return to its source. In all these respects, Judaism affirms the existence of a supersensible reality, one that transcends ordinary life and thereby provides it with meaning and orientation.

At this point, it is possible to answer the question posed at the outset of this section. Religious answers to the basic questions that the human condition forces on us can be distinguished from nonreligious answers by the sort of experience that religions take to be central. Whatever else religions do, they assert that “ordinary experience” is secondary in importance to “sacred experience,” and that it is the latter that provides a true and proper perspective for thinking about all questions of existence, purpose, and value.⁸ To adopt a religious perspective toward life, then, is to believe that there is a supermundane reality and that by placing ourselves in proper alignment or relationship with that reality we gain insight (if not ultimate truth) about the basic questions of human existence. It is this aspect of religion that William James had in mind when he formulated his famous definition of religion as “the feelings, acts, and experiences of individual men in their solitude, so far as they apprehend themselves to stand in relation to whatever they may consider the divine.”⁹ The point is that religious people do not merely conceptualize or experience “the divine”; they stand in relation to it. As this study will illustrate, this relation is a multifaceted one.

One other important aspect of religion distinguishes it from many other approaches to human life: its intrinsically social character. To be sure, many religions begin with the profound experience of a single individual, such as Mohammed (Islam) or Mary Baker Eddy (Christian Science). However, a religion, to be worthy of attention, must be sustainable, which means it must be communicated to and shared by a group (however small) of adherents. Because this experience of sacred reality provides a distinctive orientation to all of life, the social life of any group of religious devotees will likewise be shaped in some way by religious experience and belief.¹⁰ That is, the form that a religious group takes and the way it organizes and perpetuates itself will be another facet of its religious practice, often a very significant one. Some religious communities are very hierarchical; others are egalitarian. In some religious groups, authority is acquired through direct lineage to great leaders of the past; in others, it is acquired through personal visions or ecstatic experiences; and in still others, it is acquired through years of rigorous study. So religious views of human life are distinctive in part because they are shared by a group and serve to define the characteristics of that group. Just as the twentieth century philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein noted that there is no such thing as a “private language,” so too there are no private religions.¹¹

Because religions are social, they often create institutional structures that facilitate the communication and perpetuation of religious beliefs and practices. Everyone is familiar with the institution of the clergy, a specific group of individuals whose training or preparation qualifies them to represent the religion, transmit its teachings, perform its rites, or otherwise serve the needs of the religious community and give it direction. Similarly, many religions institutionalize the places where religious activities occur. Synagogues, churches, and mosques are but a few examples of places devoted to the purposes of the religious community, including worship, study, contemplation, and social interaction. Religions, of course, vary in the types of institutions they foster and in the degree of complexity those institutions exhibit. Few, if any, religions can perpetuate themselves, however, without institutional structures of some sort. So a study of a religion must attend not only to its beliefs and practices but also to the social structures that it employs.

Because religions are social phenomena, and because the experience of the sacred at the core of a religion can be symbolized and ritually celebrated and shared among a group of people, religions can be preserved and transmitted from one generation to the next. We speak of a religious tradition as a system of symbols, beliefs, practices and institutions that have been perpetuated across time. Some traditions, such as Judaism, can be traced back across many centuries. Many of its ideas (such as monotheism) and rituals (circumcision), as well as its institutions (synagogues and rabbinic leaders) were first developed in ancient times. Any attempt to understand such a religious tradition faces certain challenges. Because these will be a central focus of this book, it is important to discuss them at the outset of this study.

Religious traditions are complex, very stable in certain respects and yet ever changing. On the one hand, certain symbols and rituals (the cross and the Eucharist in Christianity, for example) persist over time and exhibit strong resistance to change. It is difficult to imagine a group that identified itself as Christian but that rejected the cross as a symbol. Yet it is clear that over many centuries, Christians have used this symbol in many ways: as a model for the design of cathedrals, on Crusaders’ flags when they went into battle, it as a piece of jewelry around their necks, and on the front cover of their bibles. Even more significantly, they have understood the meaning of the cross differently. It can symbolize God’s love and forgiveness, the redemptive power...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Preface
• Introduction: Preparing for the Journey
• Chapter One Religion, Ethics, and Religious Ethics
• Chapter Two Judaism and Jewish Ethics
• Chapter Three Sources of Jewish Ethics
• Chapter Four Contours of Jewish Moral Life
• Chapter Five Foundations of Moral Obligation in Judaism
• Chapter Six Jewish Ethics in Modern Times
• Chapter Seven Three Case Studies: Continuity and Diversity in Contemporary Jewish Ethics
• Conclusion: Learning the Language of Jewish Ethics
• A Note on Translations and Sources
• Notes
• Glossary
• Suggestions for Further Reading
• Index