Can a Jew be ethical?

From a train between London and Manchester

Two Thursdays ago, I was rushing for a train when in front of a shop in west London a Jewish man propping up handmade signs next to a bicycle caught my attention, he’d been protesting outside the Israeli Embassy with a friend and was now carrying on alone in the cold, he wanted Israel to “Stop Starving Gaza”. I’d been reading Jewish ethics this term at Oxford and mentioned Hillel the Elder’s famous comment: “What you dislike don’t do to others; that is the whole Torah. The rest is commentary. Go and learn”, he replied with Maimonides, I wanted to stay but knew I would miss my train and before leaving gave him my card, he recommended the book Judaism, A Portrait by Leon Roth (his wife’s grandfather). An email arrived from Jonathan last night, “I believe that we are at a time of moral crisis for my religion, Judaism”. I had started to study theology (and philosophy) to give myself a better understanding of the populations I met in my work, be that the Taliban in Afghanistan or the Shias in Iraq. And ultimately to know myself better, what was this religion I’d been given at birth that had shaped me? Would I ever be conditioned to think the things I did? We had discussed free will as every philosophy undergraduate does, concluding we don’t know if we have it but we live as if we do, that we live with that uncertainty. Early thinkers in Islam, such as the Mu'tazilites of Baghdad and Basra, had wrestled with the idea of free will but I’ll take that up in another post.

I’d written an essay titled “Can a Jew be ethical?” for my course which I’ll outline briefly here and below you’ll find a list of references if you are interested in reading more. The essay starts with showing only God provides an example for man to follow, that Jews cannot turn to kings, priests or prophets for ethical direction, even Moses was imperfect, having needed the help of his brother Aaron and seventy-two elders to lead the Israelites to Canaan (Agus, 1969, pg 73). And then heads into a well known arena in Jewish ethics: how is the Jew to be ethical? Scholars agree that the Fall of Man from the Garden of Eden (see Genesis 1-3) which angered God is the reason for the instructions given to man to be holy “for I, your God, am holy” (Lev 19:2) and to do this by walking in God’s ways. Since God is forgiving, and will not “nurse His anger for all time” (Psalms 103:9), it is possible to recover from the initial sin and what may the Jew look forward to, perhaps the same as Moses for whom God resolved his soul and body into one and made his whole being a ‘mind, pure as the sunlight’ (Agus, 1969, pg 77). The Ten Commandments, found twice in Exodus (20:2–17 & 34:11–26) and once in Deuteronomy (5:6–21), are familiar ways to do as God wishes giving wide rules such as “You shall not murder” (Deut 5:17), in Leviticus 19:2 there are more specific directions as God speaks to Moses, such as not allowing cattle to mate with different kinds and not sowing fields with two kinds of seed (Lev 19:19). Past these rules there is the concept of imitatio Dei (imitation of God), “an imperative of the Halachah” (Jewish law) but there is a distinction, this is not man becoming God but imitating him, his attributes (Shapiro, 1963). We have already seen what happens when man tries to become as God by eating from the tree of knowledge.

It is not all as neat as simply following commands, God is merciful and Deuteronomy tells us “If your brother, your own mother’s son, or your son or daughter, or the wife of your bosom, or your closest friend entices you in secret, saying, ‘Come let us worship other gods’”, then you must “Stone that person to death”, (Deut 13:7-11), that “If it is true, the fact is established, that abhorrent thing was perpetrated in Israel, you shall take the man or the woman who did that wicked thing out to the public place, and you shall stone that man or woman to death” (Deut 17:5-6), can one be full of mercy to one but also stone her to death? Here I found Martin Buber, who argued it was impossible to imitate God since we cannot know nor imagine Him, that we cannot understand His ways, Buber finds comfort in believing the design of life is such that we are “destined to be like Him”, God has told us there is salvation so if we follow what He says we will get back to Him (Kaplan, 2005). But following Him does mean killing people that do not, that’s as explicit as the other directions. I left the discussion in the essay wondering if in the practice of their religion more will be revealed to the Jews.

Today as in the days of Rabbi Hillel most followers seek direction from their religious leaders, I plan on learning more myself. This term we covered the Abrahamic faiths and the ethics of each, I left with a greater appreciation of what Jews and Christians think and why, Muslims too. Growing up in the north of England in the eighties, mosque was more about protesting against Salman Rushdie and being beaten with bamboo sticks by Pakistani imams than learning about the faith, which is why we used to skive off and play cricket instead, that’s changed today, I had a pleasant experience on a Quranic Arabic course at the East London Mosque recently meeting imams who cared about their faith and were enthusiastic in passing on their knowledge. I hope this brief overview has given you some value. If you’d like to read on the references follow, and I’ll see you back here soon.

Adnan

References

Agus, J.B. (1969) The Vision And The Way, An Interpretation Of Jewish Ethics. New York:Ungar

Hebrew Bible, Available at: https://www.sefaria.org/texts Accessed 6 Nov. 2024.

Kaplan, L. (2005) Martin Buber on the imitation of God. [Online] A Journal of Jewish Philosophy & Kabbalah. Available at: http://www.jstor.org/stable/24220822. Accessed 6 Nov. 2024.

Kellner, M. Singer, P (ed). (1993) A Companion to Ethics. Oxford:Blackwell

Shapiro, D.S. (1963) The Doctrine of the Image of God and Imitatio Dei. [Online] Judaism, Vol. 12, Iss. 1, (Winter 1963): 57. Available at: https://www.proquest.com/docview/1304358265/fulltextPDF/45FA9940AAB047F3PQ/1. Accessed 6 Nov. 2024