If we are to trust anything about our understanding of DNA, then
we must admittedly conclude that thousands of years ago, we stood at the foot
of Mount Sinai, imbedded deep within the kishkes of our ancestors. We, as they,
were directly exposed to an energy of God, which we later transformed into Ten
Commandments. That transformation rendered clear, powerful and absolute words
which we cherish till this day…
Thou shall not steal
Thou shall not bear false witness
Thou shall not murder
Each year, leading up to Shavuot, we remember the victims
of the Shoah, the Holocaust, and recall a period of time when every one of
those famous commandments was in some way trampled, broken, and violated. As a
prelude to Shavuot, Yom haShoah bears a bone-chilling message: treat these commandments
lightly and this is the kind of world you end up with. Scary! But what
complicates the message is that sometimes the crimes committed are not those of
the perpetrators, but those of the victims, who in a fight for survival or in
an act of revenge, stole, lied, or killed. Are we to condemn them for their
sins? In rationalizing their misdeeds, do we expose a double-standard, a
hypocrisy of sorts?
Immanuel Kant (1724-1804), perhaps the greatest of all
modern philosophers, would say that we do. Kant’s work helped us to understand
why science could come to definitive truths about the world around us but
failed to do the same in such areas as ethics. And yet, civilization depended
on ethical living, people who would keep promises, pay debts, testify
truthfully and so forth. What to do? Kant argued that the only way to live
morally, was to live in such a way that our actions were worthy of becoming
universal law. So, for example, if truth is the foundation of all morality,
then one must be truthful at all times, independent of circumstances or
consequences, because only truth was worthy of universal law. This idea has
been given a fancy philosophical term: the categorical imperative. And it sounds
good and reasonable, but then Yom haShoah gets in the way. Consider this…
You’re a Jew in Nazi Germany, 1942. Your family has been
taken away and your Jewish neighbors have disappeared. You have been witness to
countless acts of violence, verbal and physical, directed against Jews by
Gestapo agents and Nazi soldiers. You run to another town where no one knows
you and due to your blond hair and perfect German accent, you pass yourself off
as a Christian, obtaining work with a family as a maid. Periodically, Gestapo
agents enter the home to interrogate the family. They ask you about your
background and you fabricate your birth date, birthplace and religion. You know
of Jews hiding in the neighborhood, and when asked about whether you have heard
any such rumors to that effect, you not only deny any such knowledge but
patriotically declare it an honor to transfer such information, should it ever
come to you, directly to the Gestapo. You lie. In the course of that
interrogation, and indeed in every second of your life, you lie. Immanuel Kant
would use you as an example of an unethical and immoral person. Jewish
tradition would regard you as a courageous soul.
The Ten Commandments are not the Ten Commandments, at least
not in Hebrew. In Hebrew, we refer to these so-called commandments as Aseret
HaDibrot, which roughly translated could be the Ten Utterances or the Ten
Speakings or the Ten Musings. Commanding and uttering are two different
animals. A commandment tends to end with a period—Do X, no if’s, and’s or but’s.
But an uttering or a speaking or a musing is an invitation to a conversation. If
only morality or ethics could be summarized with a few hard and fast rules,
creating a just world would be so much easier. But the blind adherence to a few
ethical rulings, divorced from all circumstances, will lead you to a freakish
morality. A woman is running away from an armed rapist. She takes refuge in
your home. The rapist comes to your door and demands to know if she is there. You
say she is because you cannot tell a lie. Kant would declare this a moral act. Jews
might view this as an instance of idolatry where even the truth has been turned
into an object of worship.
There is a famous argument in the Talmud between Hillel and
Shammai about what to say to a bride. Does one praise the bride commensurate
with her beauty or lack thereof, the view of Shammai, or does one exuberantly
praise her beauty and charm, whatever her appearance, the view of Hillel? It
should come as no surprise that Shammai’s slavish obedience to some ethical
principle was rejected. In place of that our tradition chose the magnanimity
and graciousness of Hillel. Does that mean that Hillel encourages us to lie? No.
It means that we cannot advance along the path of morality by following a
recipe book—Do X, period. We come to morality through dialogue and
deliberations that take into account the thousands of details which comprise
every given challenge. That is the wisdom of the Aseret HaDibrot, in
establishing not commandments but musings or speaking that require thoughtfulness
and conversation, something that Jews have been doing ever since that fateful
meeting at a place called Mount Sinai, where we all stood, imbedded deep within
the kishkes of our ancestors.
