How do we respond when we discover that a mitzvah of the Torah or a rule of halakhah conflicts with our sense of ethics and justice? For some, of course, that's not a problem at all: since the Torah is always right, our sense of ethics and justice must be wrong or distorted. We liberal and progressive Jews, of course, see things differently. And as a matter of fact, so do the Rabbis of the halakhic tradition. When they confront such a conflict, they don't pretend that it doesn't exist, nor do they simply reject ethics to exalt Torah. Instead, they seek to understand the halakhah in light of the standards of ethics and justice that they regard as normative, right, and proper. This installment is the first in a series exploring some ways in which the Rabbis reach that understanding, some ways in which they respond when halakhah and ethics collide.
Source sheet available at www.freehofinstitute.org/learning .
