Cyberthought by Rabbi Zelizer -- July 8, 2008

Frequent questions to the Rabbi about Judaism. His answers will be appearing as Cyberthoughts over time.

Question # 2

Q. The Torah in different portion says that God authorizes to kill our enemies (and men, woman, and children of innocents).How is it okay to disobey one of the Commandments?
A. How is it okay to obey those Commandments? The answer to that question is one of best demarcations between Orthodox and Conservative approach to Torah.

The question really boils down to a more underlying questions of "Who wrote the Torah?" If God wrote the Torah and these kinds of commands are in there then what do we do with it? That is where we differ with the Orthodox. The Orthodox contend that God wrote the Torah word for word and therefore must find legal mechanisms to leave these Commandments in tact but say they no longer apply. - For example, the Commandment in the book of Numbers to kill the women and children and adults of our enemies of Israel, is interpreted by the rabbis as saying that it only applied to the seven ancient nations around Israel and those nations no longer exist. That answer allows the Commandment to stand on the book but not to apply in "real life." e.g. Ordeal of bitter waters on adulterous woman. (Numbers) Talmud says only effective if man also was adulterer.

In Conservative Judaism, as many of you know - and I will be teaching a course in the Fall, "Who Wrote the Bible and What is in it" -- our viewpoint is that although the Torah was inspired by God, its recording was by humans. That is a quite different way of handling Commandments in the Torah which go against our best moral instinct. We are saying that the Torah in the first place had a Divine and human component and these kinds of morally offensive statements were simply the product of their times and are to be put aside. Conservative Judaism allows us to be faithful to the Torah and intellectually honest with those kinds of questions.
A theological illustration of this is the controversy over statements by diverse religious voices - fundamentalist Orthodox rabbis in Israel, Pat Robertson, and Pastor Hagee that morally terrible disasters like the Holocaust or Katrina are brought against people for their sins - sins of not putting up a mezuzah, sins of homosexuality, the sins of trying to bring all the children of Israel to Israel so the second coming of the Messiah will occur. Those are legitimate conclusions if one's view of the Torah that each letter it was literally written entirely by God. The Torah does say that God punishes for sins! The Conservative approach is more morally right and intellectually honest. - Torah has mixture of God and human in its imprint.