Did he just say that?
Shmarya over at Failed Messiah has been active lately with some of the reactions to the Noah Feldman article (see here about the “cropping out” that probably never was). In his latest post he quotes from an on-line opinion piece by R. Norman Lamm in the Forward. The following quote caught my eye,
Why not admire scholars of Jewish law who use various legal technicalities to preserve the text of the original law in its essence, and yet make sure that appropriate changes would be made in accordance with new moral sensitivities? (italics are mine, MM)
Did he really just say what I think he said? Is R. Norman Lamm admitting that Jewish law responds to “new moral sensitivities”? Has this not been one of the claims of Conservative Judaism which was often criticized by Orthodoxy? My guess is that R. Lamm would respond by saying that yes, Jewish law does respond to “new moral sensitivities”, but only within the parameters of the halakhic system. To that I can say-Amen. The problem is that people disagree on what are the “parameters of the halakhic system” or what constitutes “new moral sensitivities”.
There was another comment of R. Lamm which I can also agree with,
Surely you, as a distinguished academic lawyer, must have come across instances in which a precedent that was once valid has, in the course of time, proved morally objectionable, as a result of which it was amended, so that the law remains “on the books” as a juridical foundation, while it becomes effectively inoperative through legal analysis and moral argument.
I once had a conversation with Prof. Ismar Schorsch regarding the issue of texts, such as those discussing the violation of the Sabbath in order to save the life of a non-Jew, and he brought up this same strength/weakness of Jewish textual tradition. No matter what (re)interpretations have been written, the original text is still studied and learned. Every week Jews go back and read from the Torah, returning to the Ur-Text of Jewish life, yet at the same time this text has been subject to generations of (re)interpretation, often resulting in the changing, limiting, and/or reinterpreting of the text.
August 7th, 2007 at 3:15 pm
Interesting post. About going back to the Ur-Text. The process of reinterpreting is pouring new wine into old skins. What one is left with is the new. One can’t say that a later definitive statement is the equivalence of the loaded ur-text. The “new wine” is bound to be dated as philosophical fads change. If saying that a non-jew should perish on shabbos is moraly reprehensible for lack of universalism, saying that the ur-text could be redefined to mean what we currently poured into it is also moraly reprehensible - for lack of intellectual integrity.