It is one of the most difficult tasks to explain to a modern layman the paramount importance of Jewish Law in Jewish Life. Jewish Law is known as the Halakhah, and it is derived from the word halikhah which means “going,” and the very name indicates that Jewish Law is both dynamic, moving, and that it is a “way,” that is: Jewish Law is the Jewish way of life. I say that it is difficult to explain the importance of Halakhah because of the contemporary prejudice as to what is meant by “law.” There are probably many who suspect that Jewish Law, like ordinary common law, is a highly specialized legal profession and is the private, sacred and exclusive domain of Jewish “lawyers” who happen to be called “Rabbis.” How far that is from the real truth. I wish I could reconstruct for you the attitude of our Jewish laymen of old towards Halakhah. I wish I could sufficiently well describe to you a typical Bet ha-midrash where Rabbis, students and laymen of all sorts delve into the great tomes of the Talmud with love, with holiness, with brilliant logic, and even with a sharp sense of humor. I wish you could hear the traditional sing-song in which the Talmud is studied. I wish some of you could enjoy the warm radiating beauty of a Halakhic argument; the Halakhah which encompasses every aspect of all of life; the Halakhah which analyzes even intimate prayer with the sharp eye of legal logic, and which makes of sharp, legal logic an intimate prayer.

But barring these opportunities for personal experience with the Halakhah, let us discuss, tonight, in a very sketchy manner, some of the basic aspects of Jewish Law with which we should be acquainted. For tomorrow we shall read that portion which contains most of the civil legislation of the Torah first revealed to Moses on Mount Sinai. And let us do so with the mental reservation that this is only a rough beginning, that we shall come back to this important topic many a time in the future.

May I, with your indulgence, discuss three main aspects of Halakhah: The Necessity for Law, the Source and Authority of Jewish Law, and Change in Jewish Law.

The Necessity for Law

One of the main functions of any system of law is to impose discipline: to curb excesses, to protect the weak, to allow for an organized society to function smoothly and, in Judaism, to raise the Jew to the highest level of G-dliness. Whatever its nature, Law means Discipline – of the individual, community, nation – for all people.

The necessity for Discipline is recognized: First, in Government. Second, in education – even in progressive education. Third, the necessity for Discipline is present in all of life.

One can illustrate this third point, that Discipline is needed in all of life, from the Court Martial in the Caine Mutiny. Lt. Greenwald, after winning acquittal for his client by proving Queeg to be a sick man, gives a long and dramatic speech. In essence, he says, Queeg was really right – discipline and authority must be accepted, even if at times distasteful. This is the main idea of the book. Such a book could only have been written by a man who recognizes the value of Discipline in religious and personal life as well. And Herman Wouk is a traditional, Orthodox Jew.

Source and Authority of Jewish Law:

When talking of Jewish Law we must always beware of “taking the law into our own hands,” of acting as if we were going to set up the law to suit ourselves, as some “Rabbinical” bodies occasionally do. For Jewish Law was not designed by man. It is higher than man, although its function is to ennoble man and raise him to even loftier heights. Jewish Law is at the heart of Jewish Religion, and it should be so respected. This is for two reasons:

First, the source of Jewish Law is not man, but the Creator of all men – G-d. We believe in Torah min ha-Shamayim – i.e., that Moses received, from G-d, the Torah as we have it, the Written Law, and – in addition – a large body of Oral Law, called Torah she’be’al peh, which was handed down by Tradition and finally committed to writing some 2000 years ago.

Second, when the Law – any Law, religious or secular – is not regarded as being higher in authority than the people it governs, then tyranny and dictatorship have fertile grounds. An eminent Philosopher of Law, Roscoe Pound, says that the Law employs “a received and … authoritative technique by the light of received and so authoritative ideals.” This idea of “received and authoritative” law has been sufficient and workable. But when Law is not regarded as such, then you have a situation where tyranny breaks through and, as Pound puts it, they “would apply the term (Law) to whatever is done by those who wield the powers of a politically organized society simply because, and no matter how, they do it.” In other words, where Law is not respected for its authority, where it is not “received,” then anarchy, looseness, and tyranny will follow. We Jews go along with such ideas. And to the idea of the authority of Law, we add that Halakhah is, in addition, sacred. Because G-d is its author.

Change in Jewish Law:

Let me first state that it is impossible, within the time limits of this lecture, to give a fair treatment of the problem of if and when and how change takes place in Jewish Law. That requires a series of lectures in its own right. Let us, at the present time, give only the most rudimentary facts.

The first fact to keep in mind is that essentially the Torah is everlasting, eternal, immutable. The essentials can never and will never change. Ninth in the list of Maimonides’ 13 Principles of Faith is אני מאמין באמונה שלימה שזאת התורה לא תהא מוחלפת, “I believe with perfect faith that this Torah will not be changed.” Never will it be permitted to murder or to worship idols; to steal or desecrate the Sabbath; to lie or to eat non-kosher food. The essentials of Torah are blessed with eternity and fortified with permanence. And this must be so – for G-d is eternal, and if He enunciated principles by which men should live, then these principles – Jewish Law – are also eternal.

But does that mean that change is absolutely impossible? No, it does not. In tomorrow’s reading ושפטו בכל עת is interpreted by the Lubliner Rabbi as: לויט דער צייט.

Excuse me if I present myself as Exhibit A. My grandfather, זצ"ל, was a great and learned Rabbi – but we look different. He preached in Yiddish, I in English. His delivery and style were different from mine. “Zeide” had a beard, I am clean-shaven. He wore a Prince Albert. I wear striped pants. His formal secular education was very limited, mine less so. And yet the content of our messages is the same. We studied the same Torah, observed Shabbat and Kashruth in the same way, and worked towards identical Jewish goals. Sure there is change. But – and this is important – the change is in form and periphery, never in essentials.

Examples: היתר עסקא; שיוט על, etc.

But any change must be legal. That is, the Halakhah itself gives the methods for change. You do not change the Constitution by violating it or just voting a change in any which way. You amend according to legal procedure, according to ways already provided for in the Constitution. The same certainly holds true for Jewish law.

But, friends, until now we have been speaking in vacuo, that is, theoretically and academically, about the elasticity or changeability of Jewish Law. Let us now face the facts: changes have been made in the Law. Changes which we do not recognize, and changes which did violence to Torah and Halakhah. They were changes made by people without piety, people who set themselves up as the arbiters of what is good and what can be discarded.

What I refer to specifically is Reform Judaism and to an extent, its diluted other self, Conservatism. What distinguishes Reform from Traditional Judaism is the place that Jewish Law holds in the scheme of Jewish life.

Reform told us that we were losing our youth and educated classes. It told us that we were alienating Jews of the modern world. It told us that by its policy of indiscriminate and reckless change it would bring back the sheep into the fold … And, it cast away Shabbos, chopped off kashruth, decimated the second day of Yom Tov, threw out the Hebrew language. Was that enough change? And, I ask you, my friends, where are these multitudes that the changes of Reform was supposed to attract? Where are the masses that were supposed to crowd the Temples of Reform? Let history be witness to the catastrophic folly of unthinking change …. The youth of American Jewry is anyplace but in the Temples. The educated classes are now more in the Orthodox camp and have always ridiculed watered-down, ungenuine religion. They are empty, these Reform Temples. Perhaps they have the wealth, but not the people. Sabbath, Kashruth, Family Purity, Jewish Marriage, have been brought up as burnt offerings on the altar of change, but they are still empty, these Reform Temples, as empty and hollow and barren as ghost cathedrals! Jewish Law was tampered with, the sacred was profaned, and so the results are catastrophic. Perhaps Reform and all those who clamor for change in the essentials of Torah should take to heart Abraham Lincoln’s famous statement, “Let us never mistake change for progress.” Progress there is in Jewish Law. Halakhah and halikhah – going, rising, climbing. But there are legal, Jewish ways of doing things.

In summary, then, Jewish Law – a Halakhah – stands at the very summit of Jewish Life, and it is that which gives us our distinction. The necessity of Jewish Law lies in the need, by man, to Discipline. The source of the Halakhah is G-d…. Where the supremacy of Law is discontinued, man opens himself to the tyranny of his fellow man. The Torah is essentially unchangeable. But with regard to its forms, to aspects on the periphery, change is possible, but it must be accomplished in accordance with recognized legal methods. And, finally, experience has proven that indiscriminate change is most harmful to Jewish life.

Let us conclude our discussion with the remark of our Talmudic sages, quoted by Rashi on tomorrow’s Scriptural Portion, that the beginning of this portion dealing with the law follows upon the mitzvah of constructing the mizbe’ach, an altar, and this indicates that the Sanhedrin, the Supreme Court of the Jews, sat in session next to the altar in the Temple. For with us Jews … Law is Holiness; students of the Law are its High Priests; and a court of Jewish Law and a school of Jewish Law is a true sanctuary.