(no subject)
May. 8th, 2016 08:41 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
seekingferretThere are a few basic rationales to the Levitical prohibitions at the end of this past week's Parasha Acharei Mot and continuing into this week's Parasha Kedoshim.
Vayikra 18
1 And the LORD spoke unto Moses, saying:
2. Speak unto the children of Israel, and say unto them: I am the LORD your God.
3 After the doings of the land of Egypt, wherein ye dwelt, shall ye not do; and after the doings of the land of Canaan, whither I bring you, shall ye not do; neither shall ye walk in their statutes.
The first rationale is to say that the actions prohibited in the ensuing verses are on their face evil, immoral actions. In this rationale, the fact that the Egyptians and Canaanites perform these actions is proof of their immorality. The Israelites are not being prohibited from doing them because they are what the Egyptians and Canaanites do, they're being prohibited from doing them because they are sinful actions and the reason the Egyptians and Canaanites are being mentioned is because the Torah is also providing the rationale for the Exodus from Egypt and the establishment of the Israelite nation- to bring the Israelites out of a land of evil and temptation and allow them to construct a nation of priests and sanctify Hashem's name.
The second rationale is to say that the actions prohibited are not, on their face, immoral, but they are immoral because they are the habitual actions of the Egyptians and Canaanites, who are immoral because they are idolaters and do not worship Hashem. Therefore, Israel is proscribed from performing these actions in order to distinguish itself from the idolatrous nations of the world and establish itself as a separated, holy nation of priests.
The third rationale is to say that the actions prohibited are not, on their face, immoral, and are not even necessarily immoral when the Egyptians and Canaanites perform them, but they are immoral when performed in the context of the idolatrous rituals of the Egyptians and Canaanites. If this were the rationale, then we might even go so far as to say that it might be permissible for Israel to perform these actions in non-ritual contexts, or we might say that it might be permissible for Israel to perform these actions if was living in the midst of a nation that did not use these actions as part of idolatrous rituals.
And a fourth rationale is that there is no explained rationale, that even though the Torah offers some linkage between these prohibitions and the Egyptians and Canaanites, there is in reality some deeper hidden rationale which only Hashem knows. The reason to observe these prohibitions, then, is only in service to Hashem, whose omnipotence and omnibenevolence is our guide as Jews.
I do not think one must necessarily pick one of these rationales exclusively. Some of the Levitical prohibitions in question make more sense using one rationale than another, while others might be justified under more than one rationale.
For example, the prohibition on tattoos lends itself rather nicely to the third rationale, and it's possible to read the Rambam as endorsing it, and a liberal thinker trying to stretch normative halacha might even argue that some of the prohibitions on sexual relationships (including the prohibition on homosexual relations) are only forbidden in the context of idolatrous fertility rituals and temple harlots, but it's harder to read the prohibition on adultery in this light, especially in context of the Sotah law.
But I think probably much more important than the sort of rules-lawyering that the third rationale allows in some cases is to think about the difference between the first and second rationale in terms of how we think about these laws. Because especially in Kedoshim, a lot of the ritual prohibitions are sandwiched between what are more clearly moral prohibitions. Prohibitions on idol worship and soothsaying are set alongside exhortations to take care of the poor, the handicapped, the disadvantaged in all corners of life.
If we operate by the first rationale, then both kinds of law in Kedoshim are really the same kind of law- prohibitions on us doing the immoral acts of the Egyptians and Canaanites. If we operate by the second rationale, then there are two kinds of laws here in Kedoshim, laws prohibiting immoral behavior and laws prohibiting behaviors merely because they are stained by association with immoral behavior.
I do not think one of these two rationales is morally superior, but I do think they are significantly different ways of looking at the structure of Acharei Mot/Kedoshim, and correspondingly, they are significantly different ways for us to think about our performance of these Mitzvot.
Vayikra 18
1 And the LORD spoke unto Moses, saying:
2. Speak unto the children of Israel, and say unto them: I am the LORD your God.
3 After the doings of the land of Egypt, wherein ye dwelt, shall ye not do; and after the doings of the land of Canaan, whither I bring you, shall ye not do; neither shall ye walk in their statutes.
The first rationale is to say that the actions prohibited in the ensuing verses are on their face evil, immoral actions. In this rationale, the fact that the Egyptians and Canaanites perform these actions is proof of their immorality. The Israelites are not being prohibited from doing them because they are what the Egyptians and Canaanites do, they're being prohibited from doing them because they are sinful actions and the reason the Egyptians and Canaanites are being mentioned is because the Torah is also providing the rationale for the Exodus from Egypt and the establishment of the Israelite nation- to bring the Israelites out of a land of evil and temptation and allow them to construct a nation of priests and sanctify Hashem's name.
The second rationale is to say that the actions prohibited are not, on their face, immoral, but they are immoral because they are the habitual actions of the Egyptians and Canaanites, who are immoral because they are idolaters and do not worship Hashem. Therefore, Israel is proscribed from performing these actions in order to distinguish itself from the idolatrous nations of the world and establish itself as a separated, holy nation of priests.
The third rationale is to say that the actions prohibited are not, on their face, immoral, and are not even necessarily immoral when the Egyptians and Canaanites perform them, but they are immoral when performed in the context of the idolatrous rituals of the Egyptians and Canaanites. If this were the rationale, then we might even go so far as to say that it might be permissible for Israel to perform these actions in non-ritual contexts, or we might say that it might be permissible for Israel to perform these actions if was living in the midst of a nation that did not use these actions as part of idolatrous rituals.
And a fourth rationale is that there is no explained rationale, that even though the Torah offers some linkage between these prohibitions and the Egyptians and Canaanites, there is in reality some deeper hidden rationale which only Hashem knows. The reason to observe these prohibitions, then, is only in service to Hashem, whose omnipotence and omnibenevolence is our guide as Jews.
I do not think one must necessarily pick one of these rationales exclusively. Some of the Levitical prohibitions in question make more sense using one rationale than another, while others might be justified under more than one rationale.
For example, the prohibition on tattoos lends itself rather nicely to the third rationale, and it's possible to read the Rambam as endorsing it, and a liberal thinker trying to stretch normative halacha might even argue that some of the prohibitions on sexual relationships (including the prohibition on homosexual relations) are only forbidden in the context of idolatrous fertility rituals and temple harlots, but it's harder to read the prohibition on adultery in this light, especially in context of the Sotah law.
But I think probably much more important than the sort of rules-lawyering that the third rationale allows in some cases is to think about the difference between the first and second rationale in terms of how we think about these laws. Because especially in Kedoshim, a lot of the ritual prohibitions are sandwiched between what are more clearly moral prohibitions. Prohibitions on idol worship and soothsaying are set alongside exhortations to take care of the poor, the handicapped, the disadvantaged in all corners of life.
If we operate by the first rationale, then both kinds of law in Kedoshim are really the same kind of law- prohibitions on us doing the immoral acts of the Egyptians and Canaanites. If we operate by the second rationale, then there are two kinds of laws here in Kedoshim, laws prohibiting immoral behavior and laws prohibiting behaviors merely because they are stained by association with immoral behavior.
I do not think one of these two rationales is morally superior, but I do think they are significantly different ways of looking at the structure of Acharei Mot/Kedoshim, and correspondingly, they are significantly different ways for us to think about our performance of these Mitzvot.
(no subject)
Date: 2016-05-09 09:47 pm (UTC)It's striking that we are prohibited from walking by the חקת of Canaan and Egypt, but most of the laws in the subsequent list aren't (at least usually interpreted) as חקת, ie prohibitions that can only be understood in terms of your fourth rationale. So the idolatrous nations may be doing callous to cruel things simply because they believe that's what their false gods want, because really, it's not a big step from believing that your statue wants gifts and prayers to believing that it "wants" you to hurt people.
I also have an inkling that the notorious תועבה label marks things that are , because I agree, we don't have to explain the whole set of mitzvot with the same rationale. That's mine, I can't quite textually prove it, but most of the times I've noticed it in Torah other than that one verse which can't really be approached neutrally, it seems to refer to things that are ritually inappropriate but don't have an obvious negative moral valence.
(no subject)
Date: 2016-05-10 02:45 pm (UTC)But idol-worship means putting material objects ahead of people, so in the context of worshipping a false god something like tattoos (scarification?) shows willingness to mutilate a living person in order to honour a mere image,
I like this insight a lot, but it does seem to come worryingly close to the homiletic idea that idol worship has been replaced in modern times with the worship of money, the great god Mammon and all that. Which has always struck me as missing something fundamental about idol worship, that idol worship isn't just the valuing of objects over living things, it's the deification of objects. Maybe the former is in some sense the precursor of the latter, you can't deify an object until you think of it as important enough to endow with volition, but I'm not entirely convinced that a prerequisite for that is putting down the volition of people.
Do you know Northrup Frye? He argues in The Great Code that if you trace the language of the Chumash in some theorized chronological order, you see evidence of a change from sort of an object-oriented language to more metaphor-driven language. I don't recall the exact vocabulary he used, but it feels relevant to this question about what's so fundamentally immoral about idolatry.
Of course, the most traditional Jewish answer is probably just that idolatry is immoral because it willfully denies the fundamental truth about how the universe is constructed.