Episode 12: Jewish Law - The Way And The Weight

In this episode, Rabbi Yossi and Dr. Malamet discuss Halacha, Jewish law, which provides us with an agreed upon set of values. They discuss whether Halacha is capable of standing on its own without the presence of God, and what life might be without it?

The different types of Halacha are broken down into things that are antiquated, things that are anachronistic, things that are archetypal - that's the way Judaism can be understood in general. But beyond that, does one need the Halacha to act as an engine starting battery?

Some people need Halacha to remind them to wash their hands before they eat. But for without Halacha others might eat without washing first or others might do so instinctively for sanitary reasons.

If you're the kind of person that needs a Halacha jumpstart, that's great. But not everyone thinks they do.

Judasim informs us that God is the inspiration for the Halachic system by which one can start on the right path. But the idea also that Halacha must be a permanent companion in everything you do, in order to lead a righteous life, might be challenged by some.

The full transcript follows below:

RYS: Well, I want to look at the miracle of Hanukkah. I no longer say I have to start with the premise that Chazal’s latest version of the miracle story is the most accurate version. I can say, “why are there so many different background stories to Hanukkah?” Maybe they too were struggling with the meaning of it.

EM: See what that does, it releases you, but it doesn't release the person who actually wants to maintain a kind of, a little bit of an, ideological commitment to halacha and they don't want to just blow it off and say, “okay, I'll do what I want, I'll think what I want.” But they do want reasons for their belief.

RYS: Here’s the, here's the thing. I am not interested in changing your halacha belief system because I am okay. If that's where you want to be. The difference is that if someone really believes in halacha they're generally not okay with where I want to be. 

EM: What about people are in between, right? People are not… who don’t… they can adopt a kind of down the line, whatever halacha says is fine, I'm not even going to think about it. But they also don't want to exclude themselves from the system entirely. So they just want, let's even say, let's even concede that they're fine with authority. They get that there needs to be a structure with authority, for something to have gravitas, but they don't want mindless law and they don't want law that's just petrified, meaning like ossified Into rigidity by tradition. 

They say, we do it because this is the way we've always done it. Which isn't in fact, I've expressed this to you before, is my dilemma with tradition. Because just saying, this is how we did it, maybe it makes you feel better that you've got this long tradition to find yourself in, to place yourself in, but if it's not a tradition that makes sense to you, then is not that noble. 

RYS: It’s more complex for me. I always think that there are people who use halacha's power that it gives them. It gives them authority because they have a little badge called God's law. 

I also think that when people stop doing it, we need to look at why. The other thing I also understand is if you've ever crossed over and said, “let me imagine a world without the halacha,” the interesting thing that happens is the halacha actually becomes much smarter than just being about law.

And I have found the more free I am to say, "let me understand it rationally," the more you start understanding that halacha was also the output of rational thought, not the output of rigid, technical observance. Which means to tell you that halacha originally was about human beings, thinking human thoughts, and they codified it as opposed to creating human slaves.

That's the irony for me.

EM: Do you believe that the people who formulated halacha at the beginning felt that they were interpreting divine will? 

RYS: No. I feel that the people who codified halacha at the beginning were interpreting what they imagined a divine will would look like for human beings. 

EM: Well, that's what I meant. I meant, in other words, they're taking what they think is God's will and converting it into …

RYS: It’s the other way around. They took what human capacity is and they tried to codify it in a way that's sanctified and made life sacred. They did not say “God said whatever, it's irrational, it doesn't make a difference, we're going to jam humanity through this little filter called divinity, whatever happened.”

EM: What do you need God for then? Basically all you're doing at that point in that version that you just articulated is you're saying, this is what I think people need, and so, whatever God said, I'm going to interpret in a way that's going to fit with what people. 

RYS: Don’t forget - I'm not saying this is what I'm saying. We are talking about the wisdom of thousands of years, of constant dialogue and debate and movement and subversion of principles. We're talking about a lot of smart people and a lot of people who had lived experience doing this.

So this is not, I said…

EM: I didn't mean you personally. I know what you mean. What about the relationship between expedience and uncomfortability? What do I mean? 

So if it's just expedience, meaning we want to use religion in a way that we feel will help people, but what about the uncomfortable, which is at first glance, I really don't want to do this, and it's only because I bought into say, the mythos of God commanding it, that I'm going to do it. 

So I'm going to work against my natural inclination, I'm going to do this thing because at some point I'm surrendering my will to God's will. 

So does, does that make any sense for a modern person? 

RYS: We should, at some point break down the different types of halacha into things that are antiquated, things that are anachronistic, things that are archetypal - that's the way I understand Judaism in general. But beyond that, do you need the halacha, sort of as your, as your battery to get your engine started? 

Some people do some people don't. I do not need halacha to get me to wash my hands before I eat bread.

But for many people, if they didn't have halacha that tells them they have to wash their hands before they eat bread, they would eat bread without washing their hands, or they'd wash their hands because that's what they would do naturally. 

If you're the kind of person that needs a halacha jumpstart, you that's great. But if you want me to buy into the idea that without halacha, humanity does not need God, that's not true. 

The truth is that God is the inspiration for creating a system by which we can start ourselves on the right path. But the idea also that halacha is a permanent companion in everything you do once you've got your, life started, is also silly.

Halacha can not be the permanent guide for every turn you make while driving your car. Battery starts you, you go where you want to go, you do what you want to do to drive how you want to drive. There's a code of the road, there's morals, there's values, et cetera. But what jumpstarts us is this idea that there's a higher calling.

For most people, the idea there's a higher calling and life is sacred and life is meaningful and life is ancient and life is modern. All these things are not things that we think about. We often feel we have to rediscover everything halacha says not only do you don't have to rediscover it, we actually have a code by which you can manage your life.

And if you don't know how to manage your life, there's a code for it. But if you do know how to manage your life, well go for it! You don't have to keep looking back at the code to know on what day you can trim your nails so they don't grow on Shabbat. 

EM: And so partly the language you use is the language of a sort of modern spirituality. Like, look at the metaphor you use. If you need a halacha to start the engine, In other words, that's the language of inspiration, but as far as I understand it, the philosophy of halacha is not just the philosophy of inspiration. It's the philosophy of regulation. In other words, this is what God wants you to do in every sort of dotted “I” cross “T” of your life.

Now it's clear to me that, you know, a lot of people don't think this way. And it comes down to some way envisioning what you think God would want. Right? It's easy to say that a God would not want us to kill innocent babies and a God would not want us to thieve from our neighbours. It's harder - well, nigh impossible to say, God cares if I rip toilet paper on Shabbat, or God cares, you know that I've put chicken on my plate with, with cheese or whatever it is. 

So, there are two almost irreconcilable views of halacha here, Right? One is halacha as a sort of code of morals to live your life, even that has tensions obviously.

RYS: Correct. 

EM: And the other is that it is divine will, you surrender to it, It's sort of like the binding of Isaac it's everything that is authority driven and you don't have to understand it. Even the language you used a few moments ago where you said “antiquated, archaic, anachronistic,” Who's the arbiter of those word? Right? 

Now I know where you're coming from when you use those words, you're coming from a sort of common sense contemporary perspective, where people look at some of the laws and say, that's completely out of date, it's out of touch. Right? 

But if you extend that point of view far enough, so basically the one who decides what makes sense, from, you know, in other words, what made sense in terms of what God said, is me. I decide.

RYS: Here’s, what's wrong with your argument, not that you're wrong, it's wrong. Halacha has always self revised. Halacha has always declared itself to be outdated. Halacha has always been subverted by the next leader of the next generation. Halacha has always been modified by people making change. Halacha was designed to be a living, breathing set of guidelines, as opposed to this idea. 

Now we can agree that there's a moral code and ethical code that comes out of halacha, but that actually should not change over time. 

EM: A code that is ground zero unchangeable?

RYS: No, it's not unchangeable. It actually is the foundation of general moral agreement amongst all people. of the world. 

EM: Why, why? In other words… Why say

RYS: Don't steal, don't cheat, fine. It if you want, if you want to make the argument,

EM: What do I need now for, in other words, if there's a general…

RYS: well, now you understand what I've been saying. Maybe you don’t! maybe we're infantilizing halacha and we're making halacha teach us how to be good people when that already has come and gone 3000 years ago. Maybe halacha role is actually doing what Robert Yohanan does or when you, when you're faced with a cataclysmic shift in Jewish life, and the earthquake of identity is about to open up in front of you, you get out ahead of the curve and you say let's reimagine Jewish identity. Wouldn't it be great of halacha stopped being so pedantic and whether you can squeeze a lemon on your salad ,and actually talk about the ethical idea of having a salad and not sharing it with other people. Or forget, forget the halacha being the grand moralizer. Why doesn't halacha actually provide for us exactly what it used to provide, which is a guarantee that we have an agreed upon set of values? 

But that agreement is shifting and it always shifts. It's shifted for different cultures, for different Jewish cultures, for different civilizations for different times, postwar pre-war, everything is, is shiftable. 

But we like to imagine halacha as being a rigid set of guidelines I can always reach out and touch. It's my touchstone, it never moves. 

And it's always moving and it's always changing. And that's not me speaking, that's 3000 years of halacha speaking. It's always moving and always changing. 

So in my opinion, it is silly to allow the rigidity of halacha to retain its primacy, rather than the flexibility of halacha to retain its primacy. 

We should be focusing more on what can halacha to do for me than what I could do for, for God and halacha.

EM: I mean, you're, I don't think anybody would argue that the law doesn't contain inherent flexibility and that it hasn't been changed. That that's a given. 

The meta argument here though, is whether religious authority and religious command as a necessity is a non negotiable or it's something that I can look to, or not look to. 

Because in your binary, it seems to me halacha almost becomes unnecessary. 

RYS: It can be, yeah, it can be. it doesn't always have to be necessary and it should not be always necessary. I mean, one of the essential ideas of Jewish life was that we were untethered as opposed to tethered. That's the whole story. We were not tethered to the, to the heavens. We're not tethered to earth. We're not tethered to a book.

We're tethered to a set of clear spoken values that everybody can participate in. 

Well, what is wrong with the idea that we can untether ourselves and still always go back to our source, should we need corrective or new information or a revised understanding? Why are we so afraid to let go of halacha? What would happen? 

Suddenly what, we'd all become immoral? I don't think so. Suddenly we'd all become, irreligious? I don't think so. We'd stop observing? I don't think so. 

I think what would happen is what I feel happens to me, which is I become more and more and more deeply engaged and more feeling because now I have some investment in it.

I have the authority to look at it and say, I understand what this means, It makes sense to me. 

But so long as we don't allow people to make sense of things, because it preexists, everything that ever has been spoken has been spoken, the law exists it's over, that was done, now get on with observing it…

It's not going to work. And needless to say, the number of people who are truly observant of halacha is the elite few, and even then the question would be is, are they living better lives? And I'm not convinced. 

[BREAK]

RYS: I just want to be clear that, this podcast was intended to go further, but Elliot had a really bad cough, so I took advantage of my opportunity to finally win our argument because Elliot could no longer speak. 

So whatever you're thinking, Elliott could have answered me, send it to us in the comments. I'm more than happy to read it, perhaps, but most importantly, I'm sure Elliot will have another opportunity to speak about this.

So tune back in for another great podcast on the things that really matter. 

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