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August 1970

Kiddush Hashem and Hillul Hashem (1970)

General Jewish Thought
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The question is often posed to us, sometimes by ourselves: can I not be good without being religious? Is it not possible to be decent without accepting all the minutiae of religion? Is not good behaviour sufficient without observance of all the rituals? That question has recently been answered ‒ in a sophisticated fashion ‒ by a number of theologians who have declared ‒ borrowing a phrase from Nietzsche, the German philosopher ‒ that “G‑d is dead.” This means that G‑d has no relations with our world, that He is unconcerned with man, and that therefore He is irrelevant and meaningless. Hence, they conclude, we must construct a morality in human terms ‒ without reference to traditional religion; we must devise a secular ethic and propound a G‑dless goodness.How shall we respond, we who | are believing and observing Jews, we who deny that — Heaven for-bid — "G-d is dead,” but who insist instead, on affirming un-dying faith in the Torah’s Elohim hayyim, the living G-d of the Bible?First, we cannot deny that there are good people who do not believe in G-d. We have all met such people in our own personal experience. However, Judaism maintains that such goodness can-not last forever. The moral instincts that prevail today among the non-religious are but the residue of a religious reser-voir which is rapidly drying up. They are living off the ethical I interest from the quickly dwind-ling religious capital of two or three generations qgo.For ethical living is the branch of a tree of life, of which the roots are religion. When you cut off the root, the branch does not wither immediately, but eventually it must die. So, ethics is a natural consequence of religion. Reject religion, and within a few generations ethical living and ׳ moral instincts must die as well. .Why Good ... and to what extent?Secular ethics, G-dless goodness, is inadequate for yet another reason, as the late Dr. Isidor Epstein has pointed out. It simply is not inwardly compelling. There comes a time when…
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The question to which this essay is addressed – the ethical practice of committed, religious Jews – is one of the most urgent of the complex of problems which afflict Jews and Judaism in modern times. I seriously doubt whether it is within the competence of any essay to propose an adequate solution and the effective means of dealing with the issue. Nevertheless, in the hope that some insights may be gained even if by inadvertency, from this kind of impressionistic analysis, I am pleased to contribute whatever I can to the discussion. That there is a painful discrepancy between the theory and practice of Orthodox Judaism, that too many Jews who are observant of the “ritual” law are flawed ethically – needs, unfortunately, no confirmation. It is obvious to anyone who lives in the Orthodox community, and has eyes to see, that all is not well with us.However, this self-evident fact must not be exaggerated, lest we befoul the problem with cur own guilt feelings, and con-found an already complex issue with an even more complicated collective masochism. Any attempt, for instance, to read a pro-pensity for corruption into the essential character of the Jewish people, to locate the source of ethical weakness in "some basic trait" in our people, is the kind of extravagance which, in addition to revealing a racist bias, befuddles any attempt at clear under--2-standing. Further-more, it should not be blithely assumed that Orthodox Jews are any worse in their social ethics than any other Jews or any other human beings. It is possible, of course, that independent research will corroborate as an objective fact what is now merely a suspicion that observant Jews possess less integrity than others. But unless and until such "proof" is forthcoming, what is but an assumption should not be elevated to the status of a fact. My personal impression is that this is certainly not the case.Moreover, the focusing of our concerns on the social and personal dimensions of Judaism should not be …
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