This afternoon, we begin reading the tractate Avot. The very first Mishnah introduces us to the שלשלת המסורה, the chain of Tradition: משה קיבל תורה מסיני ומסרה ליהושע – “Moses received the Torah at Sinai, and gave it over to Joshua.” Now, this is somewhat puzzling. Why did the Sages choose this particular tractate as the one to introduce with the chain of Tradition? The answer offered by Rabbi Ovadiah Bartenora and others is that the other tractates are all halakhic, legal. This tractate is fundamentally that of מוסר – morals and ethics. Now, it is obvious – if one does not delude himself, and despite the futile efforts to do so by certain movements in Jewish life – that הלכה is meaningful only if it is rooted in Tradition, in divine authority. For the הלכה to survive 2000 years of Jewish exile, when we had no police force and very few means of coercion, it had to be subscribed to on the basis of its authority: the authority of Sinai. Otherwise, it would be like playing a game where you make up your own rules as you go on.

  However, Avot is all מוסר. It is constituted largely of private dicta, such as הוא היה אומר – “he used to say” – and one might therefore assume that it is highly individualistic: all subjective and a product of personal imagination, sentiments, and ideas; that הלכה is “hard,” and מוסר is “soft.”

  Thus, one might conclude – as did many 19th-century philosophers – that ethics is separate from religion, that the two are divorced from each other.

  Hence, we begin this particular tractate with the account of the origin of Tradition: משה קיבל תורה מסיני. Ethics, like law, derives from a divine sanction. Morality, no less than הלכה, is firm, fixed, not subject to human whim. Both מוסר and הלכה have their roots in מסורה.

  The word מוסר is not grammatically related to מסורה, but the fact that they sound alike points to a conceptual continuity between them: מוסר too has a sacred מסורה – tradition; it derives from מסיני.

  Our sidra this morning mentions the death of the two sons of Aaron: וימותו בקרבתם לפני ה׳. Why did they die? The Torah tells us, clearly though enigmatically, that they offered up an אש זרה before God – i.e., they brought a fire to the altar, but they did it in a manner not prescribed by the ritual of the Temple. The Rabbis ask the same question – why were they punished? – and offered a series of answers, among them the most popular: הורו הלכה בפני רבם – they presumed to decide questions of law in the presence of their own teacher (Moses), a serious breach of reverence for teachers.

  One wonders: how did the Rabbis dare to offer a reason other than that mentioned in the Torah? The answer is obvious: in reality, the answers are identical or at least similar. Both offer the same type of motive. The Torah tells us that they brought a “strange fire,” by which is meant that their religious emotion was present – but it was divorced from halakhah. They brought אש, but it was זרה. The Rabbis teach us that their הלכה was divorced from ethical conduct; it is true that הורו הלכה – they taught the law – but it was בפני רבם, in the presence of their teacher, and therefore irreverent.

  Hence, whether you are unethical in your הלכה, or non-halakhic in your ethics, the result is a breakdown of one or of both.

  Essentially, what I am saying is that just as הלכה is fundamentally absolute – given fluctuations in decision-making and differences of opinion and occasions when halakhic norms seem to contradict each other – so morality is absolute, despite any fluctuations and marginal problems in applications. Hence, Judaism forcefully takes exception to the whole modern tenor of our culture, with its teachings about the relativity of ethics and “situational morality.”

  The real problem in our age is not crime and injustice. Amoral behavior is a human constant. The real issue is the rationalization of this conduct, and hence its acceptability in polite circles.

  A wise commentator on the modern scene, Mr. Vermont Royster, made the following poignant observations:

Somewhere along the line, there has been an erosion of our sense of right and wrong; that is, we have lost our belief that certain actions are wrong simply because they are wrong, whether or not they violate civil statutes... It is not that we do not live up to professed moral values; the latter-day concept is that there are no fixed, permanent moral values for anyone to profess.

Were I a theologian, I would say that we have lost our sense of sin, that we no longer believe in the existence of evil.

(Vermont Royster, “The Public Morality: Afterthoughts on Watergate,” The American Scholar, Spring 1974)

  The slogan of our ethical relativism or situational morality is, “It all depends.”
Is mugging wrong? – it all depends!
Is it wrong to steal? – it all depends!
Is there anything wrong in knocking a victim senseless? – it all depends!
Is adultery acceptable? – it all depends!...

  May I put private property to the torch? Well, it all depends: if my purpose is simply arson, it is bad; if I am a hotheaded student who wants to prove some point – no matter what it is, but mostly that I am idealistic – then that is quite all right.

  Is it all right to steal documents? Here, one must avail himself of pilpul: it all depends on who you are.
If you are a reporter, then it all depends: from the point of view of the government, it is bad; but The New York Times says it is good.
If you are a CIA agent, then it all depends again: the government holds that it is good; The New York Times thinks it is a dastardly crime.

  Is it permissible to oppress millions because of race, color, or national origin, and to expel these people?
It all depends: if you are a Western country, it is imperialism; if you are a Third World country such as India or Uganda, it is quite a virtuous piece of anti-colonialism.

  I do not mean to deny that Judaism ever considers circumstances. Of course it does! But that does not change the nature of the act, which remains a sin – or in halakhic terminology: an עבירה – under all circumstances.

  For instance, we would hardly be harsh towards a man who stole in order to feed his starving children. We would feel sympathetic to him. Yet the act remains wrong – stealing remains a crime! With all our leniency, the act itself does not lose its negative quality.

  Or to take a more serious example: we recently read about slum-dwellers, young hooligans who tormented elderly people and preyed on them. We then learned that the background of these young people was dreadful – they were all abandoned children, with no one to guide them through life.

  Now, their act was vicious, and punishment must be swift – any soft-heartedness here is simply a manifestation of soft-headedness because of the consequences for society. And yet, we most certainly will take a pastoral attitude toward them, exercising compassion and understanding and undertaking a major effort to rehabilitate them and try to make up for what society denied them. But that does not change the fact that their act was cruel and vicious.

  In all these and in similar cases, right and wrong are absolute – but our treatment of the perpetrators depends upon conditions.

  That is why in Avot, which deals with ethics and morals and מוסר, we begin with the שלשלת המסורה, the chain of Tradition.

  Thus too, the beginning of our sidra teaches that after the death of the two children of Aaron, God said to Moses:
דבר אל אהרן אחיך ואל יבוא בכל עת אל הקודש
“Speak to your brother Aaron, and let him not at every time [come] into the Sanctuary.”

  Man must not break into the precincts of the Sanctuary at his whim; only according to law may he enter the Holy of Holies.

  Or better: בכל עת – a man should not bring with him עת, every “time,” every passing mood and concept and sentiment and fact, into the sacred areas of his life. Only that which originates in מסיני can be accepted as valid Jewish doctrine.

  It all depends – on that.