Friday, February 1, 2013

The Ten Commandments: A Revolutionary Concept


What has been so compelling about the Ten Commandments? Why are they the cornerstone of Western civilization and American life? Are they anymore?

First, we contemplated the idea of natural morality and wondered whether it exists. We used these excerpts from "The Moral Life of Babies" to do so:
Source A:
Psychologist Paul Bloom on Baby Morality
Like many scientists and humanists, I have long been fascinated by the capacities and inclinations of babies and children. The mental life of young humans not only is an interesting topic in its own right; it also raises — and can help answer — fundamental questions of philosophy and psychology, including how biological evolution and cultural experience conspire to shape human nature. . . .

A growing body of evidence . . . suggests that humans do have a rudimentary moral sense from the very start of life. With the help of well-designed experiments, you can see glimmers of moral thought, moral judgment and moral feeling even in the first year of life. Some sense of good and evil seems to be bred in the bone. Which is not to say that parents are wrong to concern themselves with moral development or that their interactions with their children are a waste of time. Socialization is critically important. But this is not because babies and young children lack a sense of right and wrong; it’s because the sense of right and wrong that they naturally possess diverges in important ways from what we adults would want it to be.

Baby morality experiments
Our experiments involved having children watch animated movies of geometrical characters with faces. In one, a red ball would try to go up a hill. On some attempts, a yellow square got behind the ball and gently nudged it upward; in others, a green triangle got in front of it and pushed it down. We were interested in babies’ expectations about the ball’s attitudes — what would the baby expect the ball to make of the character who helped it and the one who hindered it? To find out, we then showed the babies additional movies in which the ball either approached the square or the triangle. When the ball approached the triangle (the hinderer), both 9- and 12-month-olds looked longer than they did when the ball approached the square (the helper). This was consistent with the interpretation that the former action surprised them; they expected the ball to approach the helper. A later study, using somewhat different stimuli, replicated the finding with 10-month-olds, but found that 6-month-olds seem to have no expectations at all. (This effect is robust only when the animated characters have faces; when they are simple faceless figures, it is apparently harder for babies to interpret what they are seeing as a social interaction.)

This experiment was designed to explore babies’ expectations about social interactions, not their moral capacities per se. But if you look at the movies, it’s clear that, at least to adult eyes, there is some latent moral content to the situation: the triangle is kind of a jerk; the square is a sweetheart. So we set out to investigate whether babies make the same judgments about the characters that adults do. Forget about how babies expect the ball to act toward the other characters; what do babies themselves think about the square and the triangle? Do they prefer the good guy and dislike the bad guy?

In one of our first studies of moral evaluation, we decided not to use two-dimensional animated movies but rather a three-dimensional display in which real geometrical objects, manipulated like puppets, acted out the helping/hindering situations: a yellow square would help the circle up the hill; a red triangle would push it down. After showing the babies the scene, the experimenter placed the helper and the hinderer on a tray and brought them to the child. In this instance, we opted to record not the babies’ looking time but rather which character they reached for, on the theory that what a baby reaches for is a reliable indicator of what a baby wants. In the end, we found that 6- and 10-month-old infants overwhelmingly preferred the helpful individual to the hindering individual. This wasn’t a subtle statistical trend; just about all the babies reached for the good guy.

Does our research show that babies believe that the helpful character is good and the hindering character is bad? Not necessarily. All that we can safely infer from what the babies reached for is that babies prefer the good guy and show an aversion to the bad guy. But what’s exciting here is that these preferences are based on how one individual treated another, on whether one individual was helping another individual achieve its goals or hindering it. This is preference of a very special sort; babies were responding to behaviors that adults would describe as nice or mean. When we showed these scenes to much older kids — 18-month-olds — and asked them, “Who was nice? Who was good?” and “Who was mean? Who was bad?” they responded as adults would, identifying the helper as nice and the hinderer as mean.

So are babies moral?
A fully developed morality is the product of cultural development, of the accumulation of rational insight and hard-earned innovations. The morality we start off with is primitive, not merely in the obvious sense that it’s incomplete, but in the deeper sense that when individuals and societies aspire toward an enlightened morality — one in which all beings capable of reason and suffering are on an equal footing, where all people are equal — they are fighting with what children have from the get-go. The biologist Richard Dawkins was right, then, when he said at the start of his book “The Selfish Gene,” “Be warned that if you wish, as I do, to build a society in which individuals cooperate generously and unselfishly toward a common good, you can expect little help from biological nature.” Or as a character in the Kingsley Amis novel “One Fat Englishman” puts it, “It was no wonder that people were so horrible when they started life as children.”

Morality, then, is a synthesis of the biological and the cultural, of the unlearned, the discovered and the invented. Babies possess certain moral foundations — the capacity and willingness to judge the actions of others, some sense of justice, gut responses to altruism and nastiness. Regardless of how smart we are, if we didn’t start with this basic apparatus, we would be nothing more than amoral agents, ruthlessly driven to pursue our self-interest. But our capacities as babies are sharply limited. It is the insights of rational individuals that make a truly universal and unselfish morality something that our species can aspire to.

Bloom, Paul. “The Moral Life of Babies.” New York Times Magazine. 5 May 2010. Web. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/09/magazine/09babies-t.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0 31 January 2013.

Then we looked at possible Biblical sources for natural morality:
Source B: Is there natural morality? Genesis 4:4-11
ד  וְהֶבֶל הֵבִיא גַם-הוּא מִבְּכֹרוֹת צֹאנוֹ, וּמֵחֶלְבֵהֶן; וַיִּשַׁע יְהוָה, אֶל-הֶבֶל וְאֶל-מִנְחָתוֹ.
4 And Abel, he also brought of the firstlings of his flock and of the fat thereof. And the LORD had respect unto Abel and to his offering;
ה  וְאֶל-קַיִן וְאֶל-מִנְחָתוֹ, לֹא שָׁעָה; וַיִּחַר לְקַיִן מְאֹד, וַיִּפְּלוּ פָּנָיו.
5 but unto Cain and to his offering He had not respect. And Cain was very wroth, and his countenance fell.
ו  וַיֹּאמֶר יְהוָה, אֶל-קָיִן:  לָמָּה חָרָה לָךְ, וְלָמָּה נָפְלוּ פָנֶיךָ.
6 And the LORD said unto Cain: 'Why art thou wroth? and why is thy countenance fallen?
ז  הֲלוֹא אִם-תֵּיטִיב, שְׂאֵת, וְאִם לֹא תֵיטִיב, לַפֶּתַח חַטָּאת רֹבֵץ; וְאֵלֶיךָ, תְּשׁוּקָתוֹ, וְאַתָּה, תִּמְשָׁל-בּוֹ.
7 If thou doest well, shall it not be lifted up? and if thou doest not well, sin coucheth at the door; and unto thee is its desire, but thou mayest rule over it.'
ח  וַיֹּאמֶר קַיִן, אֶל-הֶבֶל אָחִיו; וַיְהִי בִּהְיוֹתָם בַּשָּׂדֶה, וַיָּקָם קַיִן אֶל-הֶבֶל אָחִיו וַיַּהַרְגֵהוּ.
8 And Cain spoke unto Abel his brother. And it came to pass, when they were in the field, that Cain rose up against Abel his brother, and slew him.
ט  וַיֹּאמֶר יְהוָה אֶל-קַיִן, אֵי הֶבֶל אָחִיךָ; וַיֹּאמֶר לֹא יָדַעְתִּי, הֲשֹׁמֵר אָחִי אָנֹכִי.
9 And the LORD said unto Cain: 'Where is Abel thy brother?' And he said: 'I know not; am I my brother's keeper?'
י  וַיֹּאמֶר, מֶה עָשִׂיתָ; קוֹל דְּמֵי אָחִיךָ, צֹעֲקִים אֵלַי מִן-הָאֲדָמָה.
10 And He said: 'What hast thou done? the voice of thy brother's blood crieth unto Me from the ground.
יא  וְעַתָּה, אָרוּר אָתָּה, מִן-הָאֲדָמָה אֲשֶׁר פָּצְתָה אֶת-פִּיהָ, לָקַחַת אֶת-דְּמֵי אָחִיךָ מִיָּדֶךָ.
11 And now cursed art thou from the ground, which hath opened her mouth to receive thy brother's blood from thy hand.

Source C: Genesis 6:5
ה  וַיַּרְא יְהוָה, כִּי רַבָּה רָעַת הָאָדָם בָּאָרֶץ, וְכָל-יֵצֶר מַחְשְׁבֹת לִבּוֹ, רַק רַע כָּל-הַיּוֹם.
5 And the LORD saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.

Putting the Bible into its historical, political and social context helped us then see the differences between the law codes in the ancient world and in the Bible.
Source D: Social Justice in the Ancient World
Mesopotamia was very interested in kittum, truth and right, and mesarum, equity and justice.
Fun fact: Hammurabi’s laws are not categorized in ways that would be familiar to modern man. Many rules were grouped together because they contained the same words and therefore created phonetic flow when being recited.
Stele of the Code of Hammurabi:


ca. 1780. Basalt, approx. 7’4” high, from Susa, Iran, now in Louvre Museum.
The law code of Hammurabi contains almost 300 laws written in over 3500 cuneiform characters. Hammurabi’s is one law code that survives from the ancient world, and its most famous one. Other law codes include the laws of Ur Nammu, the laws of Eshnunna, the laws of Lipit-Ishtar, Hittite laws, and Middle Assyrian laws. It wasn’t until Solon in Greece over 1000 years later that a ruler really codifies a list of written laws for his people.
A major contrast between ancient Near Eastern thought and Israelite conception of law is that Mesopotamians felt there was a law beyond the gods. Just as Hammurabi was given laws and just ways from Shamash, at some time Shamash had received them from some higher source. This is not so in Israel. God makes laws, laws are derived from Him and there is nothing beyond Him.



















We also noted that in the pagan world there is no unity in heaven. There is chaos, war, love, betrayal of love and friendship, just as there is on earth. The gods don’t provide a model of justice and morality for humanity.
Source E: Mischievousness of the Gods


Anzu, the bird-man god, steals the tablet of fates from Ea, the water god, who can be identified by the streams of water running out of his shoulders. In other words, the gods can create mischief for each other.

Furthermore, in the pagan world the gods are in charge of all manner of areas God in the Bible does not concern himself with.
Source F: Genesis 4:20-22: God is Not an Arts and Crafts Teacher
כ  וַתֵּלֶד עָדָה, אֶת-יָבָל:  הוּא הָיָה--אֲבִי, יֹשֵׁב אֹהֶל וּמִקְנֶה.
20 And Adah bore Jabal; he was the father of such as dwell in tents and have cattle.
כא  וְשֵׁם אָחִיו, יוּבָל:  הוּא הָיָה--אֲבִי, כָּל-תֹּפֵשׂ כִּנּוֹר וְעוּגָב.
21 And his brother's name was Jubal; he was the father of all such as handle the harp and pipe.
כב  וְצִלָּה גַם-הִוא, יָלְדָה אֶת-תּוּבַל קַיִן--לֹטֵשׁ, כָּל-חֹרֵשׁ נְחֹשֶׁת וּבַרְזֶל; וַאֲחוֹת תּוּבַל-קַיִן, נַעֲמָה.
22 And Zillah, she also bore Tubal-cain, the forger of every cutting instrument of brass and iron; and the sister of Tubal-cain was Naamah.

Laws from the Code of Hammurabi have been accused of being primitive, barbaric. However, the "eye for an eye" law actually shows that the Babylonians conceived of a world where monetary payment could not replace certain types of damages. In other words, Hammurabi's laws are the precursor to the high value Western civilization places on human life.

Despite that advancement, Hammurabi's laws fall short in extending this value to all humans. Hammurabi and the civilizations of the ancient world were hierarchical. A commoner's or slave's eye was not the same as the eye of an aristocrat.
Source G: Laws from the Code of Hammurabi
These are the famous “eye for an eye” laws in Hammurabi. What kind of society do the laws reveal?


Of course, in Egypt, the land from which God rescued the Israelites, slavery and mistreatment of slaves and foreigners was commonplace. 
Source H: All men are not created equal:


Ramses II Smiting Enemies, painted limestone, New Kingdom (ca. 1550-1070 BCE), 19th Dynasty
Here Ramses II is shown smiting captured slaves: a Libyan, a Nubian and a Syrian.

Now we can appreciate just how revolutionary the Ten Commandments were: God is One, and the Source of Law is unified, consistent and clear. There is none of the confusion and chaos of competing and conflicting Gods. Moreover, God frees the Israelites -- which He mentions in the Ten Commandments in Deutoronomy -- not to enslave them once again as His people, but to offer them a covenant which they have the freedom to accept or reject. The law of the Sabbath in particular shows the democratic nature of the new social contract God wants to enact with the Israelites. Everyone -- man, woman, child, slave, even beast -- enjoys the rest of the Sabbath. Compare the language of the Ten Commandments with the facts we've learned about the pagan world, and then see what Chief Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks says about this week's Torah portion, Yitro:  
Source I: The Ten Commandments: Exodus 20:1-13
א  וַיְדַבֵּר אֱלֹהִים, אֵת כָּל-הַדְּבָרִים הָאֵלֶּה לֵאמֹר.  {ס}
1 And God spoke all these words, saying: {S}
ב  אָנֹכִי יְהוָה אֱלֹהֶיךָ, אֲשֶׁר הוֹצֵאתִיךָ מֵאֶרֶץ מִצְרַיִם מִבֵּית עֲבָדִים:  לֹא-יִהְיֶה לְךָ אֱלֹהִים אֲחֵרִים, עַל-פָּנָי.
2 I am the LORD thy God, who brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. Thou shalt have no other gods before Me.
ג  לֹא-תַעֲשֶׂה לְךָ פֶסֶל, וְכָל-תְּמוּנָה, אֲשֶׁר בַּשָּׁמַיִם מִמַּעַל, וַאֲשֶׁר בָּאָרֶץ מִתָּחַת--וַאֲשֶׁר בַּמַּיִם, מִתַּחַת לָאָרֶץ.
3 Thou shalt not make unto thee a graven image, nor any manner of likeness, of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth;
ד  לֹא-תִשְׁתַּחֲוֶה לָהֶם, וְלֹא תָעָבְדֵם:  כִּי אָנֹכִי יְהוָה אֱלֹהֶיךָ, אֵל קַנָּא--פֹּקֵד עֲוֹן אָבֹת עַל-בָּנִים עַל-שִׁלֵּשִׁים וְעַל-רִבֵּעִים, לְשֹׂנְאָי.
4 thou shalt not bow down unto them, nor serve them; for I the LORD thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate Me;
ה  וְעֹשֶׂה חֶסֶד, לַאֲלָפִים--לְאֹהֲבַי, וּלְשֹׁמְרֵי מִצְוֹתָי.  {ס}
5 and showing mercy unto the thousandth generation of them that love Me and keep My commandments. {S}
ו  לֹא תִשָּׂא אֶת-שֵׁם-יְהוָה אֱלֹהֶיךָ, לַשָּׁוְא:  כִּי לֹא יְנַקֶּה יְהוָה, אֵת אֲשֶׁר-יִשָּׂא אֶת-שְׁמוֹ לַשָּׁוְא.  {פ}
6 Thou shalt not take the name of the LORD thy God in vain; for the LORD will not hold him guiltless that taketh His name in vain. {P}
ז  זָכוֹר אֶת-יוֹם הַשַּׁבָּת, לְקַדְּשׁוֹ.
7 Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy.
ח  שֵׁשֶׁת יָמִים תַּעֲבֹד, וְעָשִׂיתָ כָּל-מְלַאכְתֶּךָ.
8 Six days shalt thou labour, and do all thy work;
ט  וְיוֹם, הַשְּׁבִיעִי--שַׁבָּת, לַיהוָה אֱלֹהֶיךָ:  לֹא-תַעֲשֶׂה כָל-מְלָאכָה אַתָּה וּבִנְךָ וּבִתֶּךָ, עַבְדְּךָ וַאֲמָתְךָ וּבְהֶמְתֶּךָ, וְגֵרְךָ, אֲשֶׁר בִּשְׁעָרֶיךָ.
9 but the seventh day is a sabbath unto the LORD thy God, in it thou shalt not do any manner of work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, nor thy man-servant, nor thy maid-servant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates;
י  כִּי שֵׁשֶׁת-יָמִים עָשָׂה יְהוָה אֶת-הַשָּׁמַיִם וְאֶת-הָאָרֶץ, אֶת-הַיָּם וְאֶת-כָּל-אֲשֶׁר-בָּם, וַיָּנַח, בַּיּוֹם הַשְּׁבִיעִי; עַל-כֵּן, בֵּרַךְ יְהוָה אֶת-יוֹם הַשַּׁבָּת--וַיְקַדְּשֵׁהוּ.  {ס}
10 for in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested on the seventh day; wherefore the LORD blessed the sabbath day, and hallowed it. {S}
יא  כַּבֵּד אֶת-אָבִיךָ, וְאֶת-אִמֶּךָ--לְמַעַן, יַאֲרִכוּן יָמֶיךָ, עַל הָאֲדָמָה, אֲשֶׁר-יְהוָה אֱלֹהֶיךָ נֹתֵן לָךְ.  {ס}
11 Honour thy father and thy mother, that thy days may be long upon the land which the LORD thy God giveth thee. {S}
יב  לֹא תִרְצָח,  {ס}  לֹא תִנְאָף;  {ס}  לֹא תִגְנֹב,  {ס}  לֹא-תַעֲנֶה בְרֵעֲךָ עֵד שָׁקֶר.  {ס}
12 Thou shalt not murder. {S} Thou shalt not commit adultery. {S} Thou shalt not steal. {S} Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour.{S}
יג  לֹא תַחְמֹד, בֵּית רֵעֶךָ;  {ס}  לֹא-תַחְמֹד אֵשֶׁת רֵעֶךָ, וְעַבְדּוֹ וַאֲמָתוֹ וְשׁוֹרוֹ וַחֲמֹרוֹ, וְכֹל, אֲשֶׁר לְרֵעֶךָ.  {פ}
13 Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's house; {S} thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's wife, nor his man-servant, nor his maid-servant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor any thing that is thy neighbour's. {P}

 Source J: The Ten Commandments in Deuteronomy 5:6-17:
 אָנֹכִי יְהוָה אֱלֹהֶיךָ, אֲשֶׁר הוֹצֵאתִיךָ מֵאֶרֶץ מִצְרַיִם מִבֵּית עֲבָדִים:  לֹא-יִהְיֶה לְךָ אֱלֹהִים אֲחֵרִים, עַל-פָּנָי.
6 I am the LORD thy God, who brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. Thou shalt have no other gods before Me.
ז  לֹא-תַעֲשֶׂה לְךָ פֶסֶל, כָּל-תְּמוּנָה, אֲשֶׁר בַּשָּׁמַיִם מִמַּעַל, וַאֲשֶׁר בָּאָרֶץ מִתָּחַת--וַאֲשֶׁר בַּמַּיִם, מִתַּחַת לָאָרֶץ.
7 Thou shalt not make unto thee a graven image, even any manner of likeness, of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.
ח  לֹא-תִשְׁתַּחֲוֶה לָהֶם, וְלֹא תָעָבְדֵם:  כִּי אָנֹכִי יְהוָה אֱלֹהֶיךָ, אֵל קַנָּא--פֹּקֵד עֲוֹן אָבוֹת עַל-בָּנִים וְעַל-שִׁלֵּשִׁים וְעַל-רִבֵּעִים, לְשֹׂנְאָי.
8 Thou shalt not bow down unto them, nor serve them; for I the LORD thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children, and upon the third and upon the fourth generation of them that hate Me,
ט  וְעֹשֶׂה חֶסֶד, לַאֲלָפִים--לְאֹהֲבַי, וּלְשֹׁמְרֵי מצותו (מִצְוֹתָי).  {ס}
9 and showing mercy unto the thousandth generation of them that love Me and keep My commandments. {S}
י  לֹא תִשָּׂא אֶת-שֵׁם-יְהוָה אֱלֹהֶיךָ, לַשָּׁוְא:  כִּי לֹא יְנַקֶּה יְהוָה, אֵת אֲשֶׁר-יִשָּׂא אֶת-שְׁמוֹ לַשָּׁוְא.  {ס}
10 Thou shalt not take the name of the LORD thy God in vain; for the LORD will not hold him guiltless that taketh His name in vain. {S}
יא  שָׁמוֹר אֶת-יוֹם הַשַּׁבָּת, לְקַדְּשׁוֹ, כַּאֲשֶׁר צִוְּךָ, יְהוָה אֱלֹהֶיךָ.
11 Observe the sabbath day, to keep it holy, as the LORD thy God commanded thee.
יב  שֵׁשֶׁת יָמִים תַּעֲבֹד, וְעָשִׂיתָ כָּל-מְלַאכְתֶּךָ.
12 Six days shalt thou labour, and do all thy work;
יג  וְיוֹם, הַשְּׁבִיעִי--שַׁבָּת, לַיהוָה אֱלֹהֶיךָ:  לֹא תַעֲשֶׂה כָל-מְלָאכָה אַתָּה וּבִנְךָ-וּבִתֶּךָ וְעַבְדְּךָ-וַאֲמָתֶךָ וְשׁוֹרְךָ וַחֲמֹרְךָ וְכָל-בְּהֶמְתֶּךָ, וְגֵרְךָ אֲשֶׁר בִּשְׁעָרֶיךָ--לְמַעַן יָנוּחַ עַבְדְּךָ וַאֲמָתְךָ, כָּמוֹךָ.
13 but the seventh day is a sabbath unto the LORD thy God, in it thou shalt not do any manner of work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, nor thy man-servant, nor thy maid-servant, nor thine ox, nor thine ass, nor any of thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates; that thy man-servant and thy maid-servant may rest as well as thou.
יד  וְזָכַרְתָּ, כִּי עֶבֶד הָיִיתָ בְּאֶרֶץ מִצְרַיִם, וַיֹּצִאֲךָ יְהוָה אֱלֹהֶיךָ מִשָּׁם, בְּיָד חֲזָקָה וּבִזְרֹעַ נְטוּיָה; עַל-כֵּן, צִוְּךָ יְהוָה אֱלֹהֶיךָ, לַעֲשׂוֹת, אֶת-יוֹם הַשַּׁבָּת.  {ס}
14 And thou shalt remember that thou was a servant in the land of Egypt, and the LORD thy God brought thee out thence by a mighty hand and by an outstretched arm; therefore the LORD thy God commanded thee to keep the sabbath day. {S}
טו  כַּבֵּד אֶת-אָבִיךָ וְאֶת-אִמֶּךָ, כַּאֲשֶׁר צִוְּךָ יְהוָה אֱלֹהֶיךָ--לְמַעַן יַאֲרִיכֻן יָמֶיךָ, וּלְמַעַן יִיטַב לָךְ, עַל הָאֲדָמָה, אֲשֶׁר-יְהוָה אֱלֹהֶיךָ נֹתֵן לָךְ.  {ס}
15 Honour thy father and thy mother, as the LORD thy God commanded thee; that thy days may be long, and that it may go well with thee, upon the land which the LORD thy God giveth thee. {S}
טז  לֹא תִרְצָח,  {ס}  וְלֹא תִנְאָף;  {ס}  וְלֹא תִגְנֹב,  {ס}  וְלֹא-תַעֲנֶה בְרֵעֲךָ עֵד שָׁוְא.  {ס}
16 Thou shalt not murder. {S} Neither shalt thou commit adultery. {S}Neither shalt thou steal. {S} Neither shalt thou bear false witness against thy neighbour. {S}
יז  וְלֹא תַחְמֹד, אֵשֶׁת רֵעֶךָ;  {ס}  וְלֹא תִתְאַוֶּה בֵּית רֵעֶךָ, שָׂדֵהוּ וְעַבְדּוֹ וַאֲמָתוֹ שׁוֹרוֹ וַחֲמֹרוֹ, וְכֹל, אֲשֶׁר לְרֵעֶךָ.  {ס}
17 Neither shalt thou covet thy neighbour's wife; {S} neither shalt thou desire thy neighbour's house, his field, or his man-servant, or his maid-servant, his ox, or his ass, or any thing that is thy neighbour's. {S}

Note the difference in the Shabbat commandment between the two versions of the Ten Commandments. The one in Deuteronomy reminds us that God took the Israelites out of Egypt in order to establish a new type of society.

Source K: Of course, I never miss an opportunity to quote Chief Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks:
At Sinai a new kind of nation was being formed and a new kind of society – one that would be an antithesis of Egypt in which the few had power and the many were enslaved. At Sinai, the children of Israel ceased to be a group of individuals and became, for the first time, a body politic: a nation of citizens under the sovereignty of G-d whose written constitution was the Torah and whose mission was to be “a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.”

Even today, standard works on the history of political thought trace it back, through Marx, Rousseau and Hobbes to Plato’s Republic, Aristotle’s Politics and the Greek city state (Athens in particular) of the fourth century BCE. This is a serious error. To be sure, words like “democracy” (rule by the people) are Greek in origin. The Greeks were gifted at abstract nouns and systematic thought. However, if we look at the “birth of the modern” – at figures like Milton, Hobbes and Locke in England, and the founding fathers of America – the book with which they were in dialogue was not Plato or Aristotle but the Hebrew Bible. Hobbes quotes it 657 times in The Leviathan alone. Long before the Greek philosophers, and far more profoundly, at Mount Sinai the concept of a free society was born.

Three things about that moment were to prove crucial. The first is that long before Israel entered the land and acquired their own system of government (first by judges, later by kings), they had entered into an overarching covenant with G-d. That covenant (brit Sinai) set moral limits to the exercise of power. The code we call Torah established for the first time the primacy of right over might. Any king who behaved contrarily to Torah was acting ultra vires, and could be challenged. This is the single most important fact about biblical politics.

Democracy on the Greek model always had one fatal weakness. Alexis de Tocqueville and John Stuart Mill called it “the tyranny of the majority”. J. L. Talmon called it “totalitarian democracy.” The rule of the majority contains no guarantee of the rights of minorities. As Lord Acton rightly noted, it was this that led to the downfall of Athens: “There was no law superior to that of the state. The lawgiver was above the law.” In Judaism, by contrast, prophets were mandated to challenge the authority of the king if he acted against the terms of the Torah. Individuals were empowered to disobey illegal or immoral orders. For this alone, the covenant at Sinai deserves to be seen as the single greatest step in the long road to a free society.

The second key element lies in the prologue to the covenant. G-d tells Moses: “This is what you are to say to the house of Jacob and tell the people of Israel. ‘You yourselves have seen what I did to Egypt and how I carried you on eagles’ wings and brought you to Me. Now, if you obey Me fully and keep My covenant, you will be My treasured possession, for the whole earth is Mine. You will be for Me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation . . .’” Moses tells this to the people, who reply: “We will do everything the Lord has said.”

What is the significance of this exchange? It means that until the people had signified their consent, the revelation could not proceed. There is no legitimate government without the consent of the governed, even if the governor is Creator of heaven and earth. I know of few more radical ideas anywhere. To be sure, there were sages in the Talmudic period who questioned whether the acceptance of the covenant at Sinai was completely free. However, at the heart of Judaism is the idea – way ahead of its time, and not always fully realised – that the free G-d desires the free worship of free human beings. G-d, said the rabbis, does not act tyrannically with His creatures.

The third, equally ahead of its time, was that the partners to the covenant were to be “all the people” – men, women and children. This fact is emphasised later on in the Torah in the mitzvah of Hakhel, the septennial covenant renewal ceremony. The Torah states specifically that the entire people is to be gathered together for this ceremony, “men, women and children.” A thousand years later, when Athens experimented with democracy, only a limited section of society had political rights. Women, children, slaves and foreigners were excluded. In Britain, women did not get the vote until the twentieth century. According to the sages, when G-d was about to give the Torah at Sinai, He told Moses to consult first with the women and only then with the men (“thus shall you say to the house of Jacob” – this means, the women ). The Torah, Israel’s “constitution of liberty”, includes everyone. It is the first moment, by thousands of years, that citizenship is conceived as being universal.

There is much else to be said about the political theory of the Torah (see my The Politics of Hope, The Dignity of Difference, and The Chief Rabbi’s Haggadah as well as the important works by Daniel Elazar and Michael Walzer). But one thing is clear. With the revelation at Sinai something unprecedented entered the human horizon. It would take centuries, millennia, before its full implications were understood. Abraham Lincoln said it best when he spoke of “a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.” At Sinai, the politics of freedom was born.


To return to our original source:
The biologist Richard Dawkins was right, then, when he said at the start of his book “The Selfish Gene,” “Be warned that if you wish, as I do, to build a society in which individuals cooperate generously and unselfishly toward a common good, you can expect little help from biological nature.” 

If that is so, then we need to turn to other codes to establish for us a just and right society. In studying closely the text of the Torah, we can see why it captured the attention of the Founding Fathers as they sought to create a new type of government and why it offers us as Jews a way to conceive of a democratic world that cares for its citizens and offers them, not a bleak, Hobbesian existence, but a noble and dignified one where morality, not selfishness, are developed and admired. Shabbat shalom.

No comments:

Post a Comment