I’m asking this as more of a question, but it stems from a debate my girlfriend and I keep having about where we get our morals. She firmly believes that religion is the basis of morals, and that you can tell a lot about a person’s character and moral judgement based on the religion they choose.
She is very Catholic and sees the New Testament as the basis for her morals; where the NT preaches forgiveness and compassion rather than retribution and revenge.
She was thus concerned that the Jewish religion, which stuck with the OT and the Torah, lacked suitable morals as set out in the NT.
So I am here to ask: where does the Jewish religion find the basis for their morals?
For those that are Jewish or know a lot about the Jewish religion, how would you characterize your morals, as compared to Christians?
First off, I’m not Jewish or catholic, but I have to say that your friend is wrong to think that morals come from religion. What, does she think that all the athiests and agnostics are running around robbing, raping, and murdering all the time?
In general, Judaism finds it’s basis for it’s morals in the Torah. I’m not quite sure what your girlfriend means by lack of suitable morals. Perhaps that needs to be cleared up before the conversation can continue further.
Some may look at passages in the Torah such as lex talionis and state that it is barbaric. Knowing that Jews keep to the laws of the Torah, you might think that we go around poking each others’ eyes out. However, one must keep in mind that Jewish literature has never taken this passage literally, as the punishment for putting someone’s eye out (as for any other damage that is done to someone) is strictly monetary in nature.
It’s nice to point to passages in the Christian Bible which preach love your neighbor and do not hate others. But many of these are lifted right out of the Torah as well. Both of these famous commandments of Jesus’ are right out of Leviticus.
I’m curious to know exactly which morals your girlfriend thinks we lack. Upon getting that information, I might be able to better answer your question.
as a general rule when discussing religion, it is most logical to look at what people DO as a result of their religion, and not what people SAY . It is easy to pull quotes from the Bible or the Koran, and “prove” that they condone violence, or promote love, or any combination of the two.
What counts, though, is what the believers actually do.Christians freely murdered non-believers (and each other) for 1500 years in the name of Christ.Muslims did the same for a couple hundred years, and now are reverting to the old tactics.
But if you look objectively, I think you’ll see that morals don’t come from religion.Religions are the organized way of society to continue doing whatever they want to do at a given time in history.When it’s convenient to love each other, then religion helps. When its convenient to start wars, then the same religion “helps” , too.
It’s certainly true that there are many moral atheists out there, and that they don’t get there morality directly from the Christian or Jewish Bibles. However, athiests today in the United States have grown up in a culture that did get many of their morals from the Bible and, as a result, that has rubbed off on them and affected their view of morality. Had these same athiests grown up in a different culture dominated by a different set of religious beliefs, I’m willing to bet that there morals would be significantly different, even if they were still atheists.
However, by explictly stating that Jews (and, I would presume athiests as well) lack suitable morals because we don’t hold the NT to be a document of authority, is outright wrong.
Zev Steinhardt
OK, I think I can approach this one from both angles…
[Atheist hat on]I have to agree with Kalhoun that morality has very little to do with religion. There are many, many a-moral and downright immoral people who are religious; there are also many who are not. There are many many moral people who are religious; there are also many who are not. I simply fail to see any connection.
[/Athiest]
[Jewish hat on]But, since you asked about Judaism, and the morals expected of its followers: Judaism was the religion under which the concepts of “Love thy neighbor as thyself” and “Do not do unto others what you would find hateful if done upon you” originated (man, talk about loose translations… :smack: ). Judaism also inaugurated, to the best of my knowledge, the notion of a “Safe Haven” (Arei Miklat), to which anyone accused of a crime - even murder - could run, and stay there without fear of retribution from the victim or their family. The expectation being that if innocent, the accusee would have a chance to prove the fact; and if not, that (s)he would eventually be “asked” to leave the haven…
So I’d have to say that many ideas that are obvious to us today - such as equality before the law and due process - were pioneered by Judaism, in a very different era, when these notions were strange indeed. It used to be quite the Avant Guarde religion in its day… It is a pity indeed that Judaism (as a religion) has, IMO, ossified in the past 400 years or so, to the point that it is now far behind the times in many walks of life.
[/Jew]
I know, I know, I’ve been trying to convince her of that for a while.
Thanks Zev. To follow up, the reason behind her comments about Jewish morals stemmed from a friend of her’s that was converting to Judaism. The ritual involved what she saw as predominately cultural customs, ie what to/not to eat, how and when.
She compared this to her knowledge of how someone converts to Christianity. She felt this process involved far fewer cultural customes, and preached a lot more of “how to be a good Christian.” That is to say, the fundametals of converting required adopting the Christian notion of forgiveness and compasion as set forth by Jesus.
Said in another way, some religions encorporate morals into their beliefs. To be a good Christian involves being a good person. So just going to church and praying on Sundays (the cultural customs) would not make you a good Christian, if you failed to be a good person.
When she watched her friend convert, she got the impression (right or wrong) that being a good Jew meant not eatting pork etc., but said nothing of the person’s moral character.
So to reframe the question: Does Judaism have a moral code to which they are tied? Such that being a good Jew requires being ___
Maimonides certainly mentions it in his Mishneh Torah since it is part of normative Jewish law. But this interpretation predates Maimonides by at least 1200 years. This is actually codified in the Talmud, which is really just a codification of a much earlier oral tradition.
That’s certainly a part of it, but far from the whole.
In Judaism there are 613 commandments. Many commentators have broken down the commandments into diferent “types.” One of those breakdowns is a distinction between commandments that are bein Adam LaMakom (between Man and God) and bein Adam L’Chaveiro (between a man and his fellow man [literally: friend]).
While many of the commandments (eating Kosher, keeping Shabbos, etc.) fall into the former, there are many that fall into the latter category as well.
That is demonstrably wrong. Kindness, charity, loving one another are central characteristics of Judiasm.
Judaism requires that we give charity to the poor (Duet 15:11).
We are required to return lost articles (Duet 15:11).
We cannot slander people (Lev 25:17), hate people (Lev 19:17).
When we reap our fields, we are required to leave a portion of it for the poor (Lev 19:9).
We are required to return a pledge for a debt it’s owner when it is needed – even if the debt has not yet been paid (Duet 24:13).
We’re even commanded regarding kindness to animals:
One may not tear a limb from a living animal to eat it (Duet 12:23).
When taking eggs from a nest, one must send away the mother bird. (Duet 22:6)
Likewise, a mother bird and it’s children cannot be taken together (same); nor may an animal and it’s mother be slaughtered in the same day (Lev 22:28).
The Talmud teaches that the Second Temple was destroyed (and we were sent into exile for all these years) for one sin and one sin alone: baseless hatred of one another. The 24,000 students of Rabbi Akiva died, the Talmud teaches, not because of any sin to God that they committed, but because they did not properly respect one another.
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observant of all the commandments, both those that are bein Adam LaMakom and those that are bein Adam L’Chavero.
emacknight, part of your girlfriend’s dilemna may lie in interpretation of Jesus’ origin and role. Jesus grew up in, and was a part of, a society whose religion was based on maintaining a righteous relationship with God and with one’s fellow man. Some (most? all?) Christian sects teach that Jesus was the “fulfillment” of all the Commandments - the perfect embodiment of obedience to God and love of fellow man. Christians, in placing their faith in Jesus, are appealing to the generations of Jewish religious thought that produced Jesus.
Christians claim other functions and roles for Jesus besides that of perfect moral teacher, but nothing that Jesus taught with respect to behavior was invented out of whole cloth - it all rose out of Judaism.
But the morals themselves had to be demonstrated somewhere before they were jotted down on paper. People lived with each other before organized religion existed. Some were shitty neighbors, some were good. The good neighbors left a good impression on others. People would see that treating each other well was better than treating each other poorly. Thus, morality was born. Then some guys decided to write it all down. I see what you’re saying…this is our culture. But our culture adopted these morals from real life first.
I’m not sure what sort of “ritual” she observed, but it doesn’t sound much like any part of my conversion (under Conservative auspices, FWIW). The formal process of conversion generally involves a hatafat dam brit (ritual circumcision) if the convert is male, a mikvah (ritual immersion in a special facility as a symbolic purification), and appearance before a bet din (a court of – usually – three rabbis who examine the convert on the sincerity of his intentions and understanding of the obligations he’s accepting). None of these (for obvious reasons, except the bet din) is conducted in public. Once all of these steps are completed and the bet din is satisfied of the convert’s worthiness (for want of a better term), there is often a brief ceremony to formally accept the convert into the community of Judaism and to bestow on the convert a Hebrew name, but this is practically an afterthought in most cases, certainly not the main event. There certainly wasn’t anything like a sermon on the commandments in my case.
No offense intended, but what “process”? Most Christian denominations accept converts on baptism and profession of faith – i.e., on a mere declaration by the convert that he/she has accepted Jesus as their savior; in other words, you’re a Christian if you say you are and get sprinkled or dunked (depending on the practice of the chosen denomination). Some denominations may offer or even require more steps, but the prevailing practice in Christianity is that baptism and profession of faith are sufficient. The question of whether faith (i.e., beliefs) alone is sufficient for salvation or whether works (i.e., observing and fulfilling laws and commandments) is one of the thorniest and most-debated in Christian theology, but I know of no Christian denomination of any size that maintains that works alone, without faith, is sufficient. In Judaism, while correct behavior accompanied by intention (kavanah) is valued more highly than correct behavior done out of habit or by rote, what is essential is that the correct behavior be performed. It’s about what you do, not what you believe.
And that, to paraphrase Bertie Wooster, is where your girlfriend makes her bloomer. Keeping kashrut, observing Shabbat, etc. are not “cultural customs” in Judaism, they’re religious commandments about the correct way to behave. These are laws that govern how Jews are supposed to conduct themselves, and are no less important than the laws deriving from the same source that direct Jews not to commit murder or adultery, or to commit lashon ha-ra, etc. Perhaps the distinction that your girlfriend is groping her way towards is that they appear to have more to do with fulfilling an obligation to G-d than with treatment of other people; I believe most rabbis and religious thinkers would argue that this is only an apparent distinction that would evaporate on closer examination, but I haven’t the time to wind that argument out in full.
In short, yes. All Jews are obligated to fulfill the commandments as set forth in the Torah, the Torah comprising both the written Torah (the Pentateuch, or Five Books of Moses) and the oral Torah (the Talmud, or commentary on the law, as promulgated through the rabbinic tradition). Being a good Jew requires being observant of the commandments, to use your formula.
Note that being a “good Jew” is a different thing than being a “good person”, and Jews believe that it is possible for someone who is not a Jew to attain salvation merely by observing the seven Noachide Laws (so-called because they form the basis of the covenant between G-d and Noah, from whom all people descend – hence their universal applicability):
[ul]
[li]Do not murder. [/li][li]Do not steal. [/li][li]Do not worship false gods. [/li][li]Do not be sexually immoral (forbidden sexual acts include incest, sodomy, male homosexual sex acts and adultery) [/li][li]Do not eat anything of the body of an unslaughtered animal (i.e., living animals or carrion). [/li][li]Do not blaspheme. [/li][li]Set up courts and bring offenders to justice. [/ul][/li]
If you’re looking for a set of moral or ethical principles that underlie Jewish practice, this is the starting point. However, Jews believe that we are party to another, more restrictive covenant with G-d, the covenant of Moses, whereby the Jewish people have a unique relationship with G-d in consequence of agreeing to be bound by a much more extensive set of commandments (i.e., the Torah).
(As a side note, one of the reasons why rabbis consider themselves obligated to discourage prospective converts to Judaism is this discrepancy between what is expected of Jews and what is expected of righteous Gentiles – a Gentile need only fulfull the seven Noahide laws to be saved, while a Jew is bound by the full complement of 613 commandments in the Torah. A Gentile who coverts is making their path to salvation much more difficult, and thus imperils himself, and so the rabbi is obligated to try to prevent that).
rackensack, zev_steinhardt, thanks a lot, great posts.
Frankenstein Monster, thank you for waiting 16 posts to ruin my thread with some generic Israel bashing. I was worried when I started this thread that it would be flooded with every immoral act committed by a Jewish person since Moses killed all those idle worshipers (assuming it happened like movie…).
I learned what I needed to know, so let’s let this thread die peacefully without feeling we need to vent our frustrations at the Great Jewish Conspiracy.
Well, there ARE forms of Christianity, such as her Catholicism itself (World’s largest single Christian grouping) that require you to go thru a process of catechesis in which you are “educated” in the ways of the new faith before you make it all the way in. Still I AM puzzled at the idea that not following the NT is necessarily suggestive of a lack of inclination for a “higher” morality. As a Catholic, her Church recognizes “Natural Law”, that there are certain things that are just right or wrong regardless of what any written rule may say, and also teaches that the Magisterium on Faith and Morals includes Church Tradition and Scholarship outside the Scripture.
(And considering Christianity’s own sterling record of failing to live up to the standard laid down by JC, it doesn’t look as if Christians are more predisposed to “higher” morals than anyone else anyway.)
Ritual in Judaism does not replace ethics, it supports and enhances morality.
For instance, Judaism teaches not to be cruel to animals. There are various rules that support and amplify this statement, some of them quoted by Zev above. In addition, there are rules about kosher slaughter – if you’re going to kill an animal for food, there is a fast and painless method that is required to be used. If the process is not done correctly, and the animal suffers, it may not be used for food. The consequence of this is that the butchers are very, very careful not to cause any suffering to the animal, not to botch the slaughtering process, or they lose money.
Judaism codified morality, “Don’t steal, don’t murder, don’t commit adultery.” Judaism does not believe that one can “believe” morality. One has to practice morality. Traditional Christianity preaches that you should love the poor; traditional Judaism commands that you must give charity to help the poor.
Judaism commands that society should seek justice. The goal of society is NOT forgiveness, but justice. We want the theif caught, we want the rapist in jail, we don’t want to just forgive them and then let them loose.
The “eye for an eye” quoted above means that the punishment should fit the crime. This should be understood in comparison to the earlier Hammurabi’s Code, which says that a man who steals a loaf of bread should have his hand cut off. Judaism says that a man who steals a loaf of bread must make equitable recompense.
The argument that Judaism represents some sort of ancient, out-moded ritualistic practice with no concern for “higher morality” has been an accusation of anti-Semites for centuries. It’s right up there with saying that blacks are mentally inferior or that Asians are unscrupulous. Racist stereotyping.
