Many of the commandments found in the Torah appear immoral from a human perspective.
ed note–Gonna be something of a long one, so bear with us here ladies and Gentile-men…
Firsto, there are lots of different ‘faiths’ in the world, some of them ‘normal’, some ‘unorthodox’ or ‘unusual’, and some of them quite frankly, downright strange.
Fine, ‘different strokes for different folks,’ as the old saying goes. People adopt/adapt to whatever seems right for them in getting through this twisty, thorny journey known as life. ‘Live and let live…’
Where a person’s ‘faith’ becomes problematic however is when the application/practice of the ‘protocols’ of that ‘faith’ impact others in a profoundly negative way, at which point, the ‘profoundly-malaffected’ have every right, reason, and interest in studying the ‘protocols’ of that faith and determining for themselves in a rational manner what it is that makes the followers of this ‘faith’ behave the way that they do.
Afterall, lest we forget, this was PRECISELY the ‘protocol’ put into effect immediately after 9/11, where the religion of Islam was studied, analyzed and ‘diagnosed’ by entire swaths of militantly pro-Israel ‘experts’ of the non-Gentile persuasion who loosed a tidal wave of lies, disinformation and mischaracterizations of that faith and its adherents in order to seduce Ma & Pa Americana into signing on to that ‘pound of flesh’ contract known as the ‘War on Terror’ that to date has resulted in millions of innocent lives being destroyed.
Now, having said that, let’s shift into 2nd gear in getting this discussion moving forward–
Jews, being of course the followers of Judah-ism, are an extremely powerful group of people. They maintain LARGELY-unrepresentative/disproportionate percentages in strategically-important areas of society such as finance, media, banking, academia, political influence, etc, etc, etc, and with those disproportionate percentages, exercise a PROFOUND effect upon the mechanisms of Western political, economic and military power, and their (affected) disingenuous assertions that they do not ‘control’ these institutions whenever this REALITY is brought up for discussion are as factually-vacuous as saying that there are very few Chinamen in China.
Furthermore, as the history of the last century has proven conclusively and without any shadow of doubt, the aggregate CONTROL that the followers of this ‘faith’ known as Judah-ism possess and wield within those aforementioned ‘institutions’ has had a PROFOUNDLY NEGATIVE EFFECT on the life, liberty and pursuit of happiness in the West and elsewhere where the REALITY of this CONTROL has been marshaled.
War, particularly in the Middle East, political upheaval, social upheaval, election fraud, economic instability and the general malaise and mental illness that features not as much a ‘problem’ as it does a pandemic resulting from the ‘disproportionate influence’ this particular stratum of humanity wields over Hollywood and modern media have all been ‘the norm’ and show no signs of abating anytime soon.
HAVING SAID THAT, those of us of the Gentile persuasion whose quality of life has indeed been mal-affected by those of the non-Gentile persuasion in their acting according to the ‘protocols’ of their ‘faith’ have every right, reason, and interest in determining for ourselves in a rational manner what it is that makes the followers of this ‘faith’ behave the way that they do.
it is axiomatic that a people bound together by a common belief system do so as a result of the ‘glue’ that is produced by the ‘medicine men’–meaning the prophets and priests–tasked with ‘ministering’ to that glued-together-by-a-common-belief-system people.
Which in and of itself is not necessarily a bad thing. Patients who are sick submit/surrender themselves to their doctor whose training and education puts him/her in a better position of healing that person’s malady, provided of course that he/she is competent and has the best interests/good health of his/her patient in mind.
But what of the ‘doctor’ whose training is backwards, benighted, and rooted in ‘medicine’ that has no science or fact behind it?
Worse yet, what of the ‘doctor’ who is on a mission to harm as many people as possible, such as those who butcher living children in the wombs of their mothers or those who seem to make the news more and more these days for deliberately poisoning to death those under their care?
As far as those ‘prophets and priests’ are concerned, what of those who concoct spiritual medicines that destroy the moral health of the people under their ‘care’?
Take for example the guy featured at the top of the page cutting the heart out of someone.
In Aztec history, he was the ‘Tlamacazqui’, the priest whose job was ‘ministering’ to the spiritual needs of the Aztec people, which included the grisly business of involuntary human sacrifice in appeasing the ‘gods’ of the Aztec empire so that there would be rain, good harvests, and all the other things needed in order to sustain human life there.
Now, it’s a pretty good bet that this business of involuntary human sacrifice was not the result of the ‘democratic’ process, wherein everyone got together and discussed/debated the pros and cons of this new ‘policy’, voted on it, and–VOILA–it became law.
Rather, like most bad ideas, it started with ONE guy or a small group of them of the ‘prophet and priest’ class who stood to benefit the most from it and then became ‘the norm’ to the point where very few (except those who happened to feature as the sacrifice of the day) questioned the morality of it all.
And thus we see the process by which an entire people bound together by a BAD idea will create an out-of-control monster that is only stopped in its appetite for evil by some outside force, as was indeed the case with the Aztecs whose bloody business was brought to an end through the person of one Hernán Cortés de Monroy.
Now, some reading this ed note will reflexively object to the comparison being made here between the bloody business of human sacrifice practiced by the Aztecs that was officiated and kept in place by the ‘Tlamacazqui’ priesthood and the ‘faith’ of Judah-ism officiated and kept in place by the ‘Tlamacazqui’ priesthood known as the Rabbinate.
Au contraire, mes amis…They are almost identical, a fact proven by the deranged rebbe himself in the following essay.
As the reader will see first hand, when the question is posed concerning the ‘morality’ of the various demands and decrees found within Judah-ism where–quoting our deranged rebbe–the followers of this ‘faith’ are commanded to ‘kill innocents’ and to ‘take advantage of those who are dependent on the conquering Hebrews for their safety and wellbeing’ and which commands the ‘indiscriminate’ murder of ‘all the inhabitants of a condemned city regardless of their individual culpability’, what is being described here is but a slight variation of the same ‘faith’ practiced by the Aztecs, just in another part of the world and with more sophisticated means than a mere flint knife.
What’s worse is that the ‘protocols’ of this ‘faith’ that command such murder and mayhem have been sitting there as an open secret for THOUSANDS OF YEARS in the most-read book in human history, the Bible, and yet, despite the bloody business contained within it and the fact that it has been/is now being used as a roadmap in destroying the world as we know it in preparation for bringing back the ‘protocols’ of that ‘old-time religion’ that the followers of Judah-ism have decreed must and WILL govern all human affairs, most of the Gentile world–all 7 billion of them–maintain (at best) a careless disregard for what is in effect a murder contract against them written in their own blood.
Yes, yet another prima facie example of ‘how they do it’ as well as the eternal wisdom in the words left to humanity by none other than Jesus Christ Himself when warning of the ‘leaven of the Pharisees’ and the deadly nature of their ‘ministering’ to the spiritual needs of the people under their sway–
Cursed be you, teachers of the law! You travel over land and sea to win a single convert, and when you have succeeded, you make them twice as much a child of hell as you are.
Rabbi Ysoscher Katz
Question–Is the Torah immoral?
It is a perennial question almost every Jewish educator confronts, particularly in the autumn when Jews the world over restart the annual cycle of Torah study.
A mere four weeks into the cycle, we read about our forefather Abraham, a paragon of kindness, being told by God to acquiesce to the demands of our matriarch Sara and to banish his other wife and that woman’s firstborn child to the desert where they are sure to die. Immediately thereafter we encounter God’s command to Abraham that he sacrifice his beloved son, Isaac.
These stories are not exceptional, but instead set the stage for a general idealogical thrust whereby morality does not always seem to be God’s metric for evaluating the legitimacy of His own demands.
Conscientious readers, as a result, are horrified. How could a kind and loving God make such cruel demands of people? Where is God’s morality?
These questions grate on the contemporary reader’s conscience, but the discomfort these troubling stories generate is predicated upon a paradigmatic fallacy.
To assume that any biblical story showcases God’s immorality is wrong. To expect divine adherence to our moral standards assumes that God is the best kind of human possible, by a factor of infinity, and if moral perfection is a prerequisite for human greatness, then God, all the more so, needs to conform to the highest (human) moral code.
But that is incorrect. The reason God is God is not that God is better than we are. It is actually the other way around: God is God because God is not us. God transcends humanity. Human attributes are not attributable to God. God is neither kind nor mean, neither harsh nor forgiving, and — as regards our dilemma — neither moral nor immoral. God is amoral.
When we read stories that to the human eye seem immoral, we are using the wrong metric, inappropriately applying human criteria in evaluating divine behavior. God is beyond those categories. The demands made by God on human beings may appear capricious from a human perspective, but they are not immoral.
But what of the rest of the Torah, where the do’s and don’ts are spelled out?
There too the reader encounters what seem to be divine disregard for contemporary moral standards. The examples cited above happened in the past and don’t make any demands on our behavior.
But what of demands to do things which from a human perspective are immoral?
In the Torah, God commands us to kill innocents and allows us to take advantage of those who are dependent on us for their safety and wellbeing. Deuteronomy 13:13 commands us to indiscriminately kill all the inhabitants of a condemned city, regardless of their individual culpability. Exodus 21:7 tells us that a father has the right to sell his daughter as a slave.
Here the challenge is far more difficult. We are no longer evaluating God’s own morality. These are instances where humans are entitled or even enjoined to act immorally.
For those committed to Orthodox Judaism, our response is necessarily limited. These commandments cannot be excised from the text or assumed to have been inserted by anyone other than by God.
One solution is to circumvent the problem, rather than solve it.
While these commandments indeed are problematic in the abstract, historical circumstances have conspired to render most of them immaterial, and as such, they no longer have the power to make ethical demands on our conscience. Their applicability disappeared when we lost sovereignty and, as a result, have now been extracted from our religious purview. It is as if they do not exist.
History eliminated their relevance, perhaps permanently. Presumably, even with the restoration of full Jewish sovereignty, those troubling laws will not be reactivated.
Such a claim, of course, is predicated upon a metaphysics which believes that God operates within history. The historical events which caused the suspension of the ‘immoral’ commandments therefore are not a fluke or accident, the divine hand played a role in them. One can perhaps assume that their elimination occurred with God’s acquiescence.
This is hardly the only solution to these perplexing questions, nor is it predicated upon a universal understanding of Jewish beliefs. But it is one legitimate approach that can help the contemporary reader reconcile some of the overwhelming conflicts between our deeply held traditions/beliefs and strongly felt moral convictions.
As the late Rabbi David Hartman correctly pointed out, rabbinic Judaism does not champion ‘a theology’. It instead presents us with a smorgasbord of theologies. None of them will suffice on its own, answering all questions all the time.