Torah for Christians: Ethics in the Bible

TORAH FOR CHRISTIANS

 SEASON 5   EPISODE 10

 ETHICS IN THE BIBLE

          I’ve heard it said many times that the Old Testament is a collection of laws while the New Testament is a collection of love. Nothing could be further from the truth. Let’s find out why. I’m Rabbi Jordan Parr and this is Torah for Christians.

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          Welcome to Torah for Christians. I’m Rabbi Jordan Parr.

          Yes, the Hebrew Bible contains a lot of laws. We learn of Shabbat, of the holidays, of commerce and of family. Laws are necessary for a civilization to survive, and the Torah fulfills that obligation.

          But society also needs an ethical structure. Many of the laws incorporate a sense of ethics – and then there are ethical principles that stand alone. We’re going to look at just a few examples from Leviticus and Isaiah. These are representative of the entire Bible – but of course we can’t discuss all of them in this setting.

          In Leviticus 19, we read that when we harvest our fields, we must leave the corners unharvested. Also, anything that falls on the ground when reaping must lie there. Why? The Torah says that we leave these crops where they are so that the poor may glean from our fields. 

          What does this mean? In its simplest sense, this law is an ethical principle; we sacrifice some of the profit from selling our crops so that those who cannot afford to purchase our grain don’t starve. Furthermore, it is an extension of the idea found in Genesis that all humans were created b’tzelem Elohim, in the image of God.

          While this ethical principle exists in theory in Leviticus, we also learn an important principle when it’s put into practice.  Let’s look at the Book of Ruth. We read in Ruth that she and Naomi returned to the Land of Judah and began to glean in the fields of Naomi’s kinsman Boaz. Here was Ruth, picking grain in a field so that she and her mother-in-law do not starve.

          What happens next proves the point. Because Boaz observes this mitzvah, the commandment to leave the corners of his field unharvested, he is greatly rewarded. Had he not followed this mitzvah, he never would have met Ruth, fallen in love with her and ultimately become the ancestor of David, the future King and Messiah. 

          When we observe the mitzvot from an ethical perspective, great things can happen to us and for us. God rewards those who exhibit ethical behavior, not just the rote performance of mitzvot.

          Another ethical mitzvah found in the same passage in Leviticus also has a simple meaning and a deep ethical foundation. The Torah says that we should not curse the deaf. Simple enough; the deaf cannot hear us to refute our words. Sounds obvious.

          But if you think that is all that this commandment means, you would be sadly mistaken. In the Midrash, that wonderful collection of rabbinic exposition of the Torah, there is a beautiful interpretation of this mitzvah. The Rabbis ask: What does it mean when we are forbidden to curse the deaf? While agreeing with the simple meaning of the verse, the rabbis add another layer; what the mitzvah truly means is that we should not talk behind another’s back. When we are sitting in our homes and a friend or colleague is gossiping about us, we are not there to set the record straight. 

Truth be told, we are deaf to the one who is spreading gossip. Here again, the simple meaning of this mitzvah leads us to a deeper understanding of this ethical principle.

          Finally, the verse goes on to proscribe gossip; we should not be a talebearer among the people. The simple meaning is right there: don’t be gossip, just as we learned from the previous mitzvah.

          But again, the Talmud gives us an extraordinary rabbinic explanation of this verse. The rabbis state that gossip is akin to murder. In fact, gossip is even worse than murder because we must live with the effects of that gossip while alive. Combining several different rabbinic statements, we learn that gossip is a 3-fold murder; gossip murders the one who spreads the gossip, murders the subject of the gossip and murders the one hearing the gossip.

          Let’s start with the gossiper. If you knew that a person was prone to spreading gossip, would you ever trust that person? The gossiper has murdered his own reputation due to his actions.

          Let’s jump to the person who hears the gossip. We all know from personal experience that even when we discover at a future time that the gossip we had heard was wrong, we still have a lingering doubt about the subject of the gossip. For example, we hear that a man we know, God forbid, molested a child. Two hellish years later, after a lengthy court trial, that man was found innocent and totally cleared of all charges, we still might doubt that the jury had rendered the proper verdict. How is that man supposed to live a good life after those accusations? 

Sadly, we probably know people who have been accused of this horrific crime and yes, found guilty. But perhaps we also know people who have been found innocent. Do we still trust them? Do we want them around our children? That is the murder of a reputation.

          And what about the subject of the gossip? Have you ever been so embarrassed that your face turns white? In the Talmud, this is called malbish panim, the whitening of the face. When embarrassed, the blood drains from our faces; it is as if we have died.

          The person causing this embarrassment, either directly or through gossip, is a murderer. That person has killed the reputation of his or her victim, the subject of the gossip.

          We know that there are mitzvot that stand on their own as legalisms; thou shalt not murder, for example. But most of the mitzvot also have an ethical foundation; in our examples today, we see that feeding the poor and refraining from gossip are derived from ostensibly direct mitzvot: do not curse the deaf and do not act as a gossip among your people. The rabbis even go so far to say that if there is not an ethical basis for a mitzvah, it is not a mitzvah at all.

          But the question to ask is why we should act ethically. Let me give you two reasons. First, many of these Biblical verses end with the words, “I am Adonai”. Nothing more needs to be said; if we are created in God’s image, as the first chapter of Genesis tells us, then acting in an ethical manner is to act in a godly manner.

          Second, these verses often end with the words, “I am Adonai, who led you out of the land of Egypt to be your God.” Do we ever ask why God brought us out of Egypt? Fulfilling our Covenant with God means that we must emulate God. God brought us out of Egypt, not just to occupy the Land of Canaan and to be holy but also to act godly, to act in an ethical manner. We were slaves in Egypt, where ethics took a back seat to survival; now that we are free, ethical behavior becomes the means to our survival.

          So, which is more important: acting ethically or following the mitzvot? To answer this question, we turn to Isaiah – but only after the break. I’m Rabbi Jordan Parr and this is Torah for Christians.

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          Welcome back to Torah for Christians. I’m Rabbi Jordan Parr. If you are enjoying this podcast, I encourage you to go to our website, www.torahforchristians.net, where you can find previous episodes, which cover a variety of topics. You can also access them on various podcast websites, such as iTunes, Spotify and Google.

          Also, please subscribe to my Substack column, Bible Stories They (Never) Taught You in Religious School, a commentary on the weekly Torah portion that I publish every Friday morning. You can subscribe to this column, either on Substack or on our website.

          The Isaiah of the Exile gives us insight into the importance of ethical behavior. Specifically, we focus on Isaiah 58, which starts, “Cry with a full throat, without restraint, Raise your voice like a shofar! Declare to My people their transgression, To the House of Jacob their sin.”

          What is their sin? The Jews strictly observe the Sabbath and other mitzvot – but they also oppress the poor. 

          Specifically, Isaiah says, “Because on your fast day You see to your business and oppress all your laborers.” Fasting is meant to be a spiritual as well as a physical practice. Fasting is like the death and rebirth of the body; our sins are fleshed out and we are born anew.

          This is why we read this passage on Yom Kippur Morning. On Yom Kippur, Jews spend the day in fasting and prayer, a state of complete penitence. We beseech God to forgive our sins and enable us to live another year. We begin our fast before the evening prayers, not to break it for another 25 hours.

          But then, in the late morning when hunger pains are at their worst, we read this passage. Isaiah is telling us that fasting is useless if we do not perform the ethical aspects of the mitzvot as well. Only when we combine adherence to Torah with a sense of ethical and social responsibility will God look favorably upon us and grace us with the blessings of a new year, including the gift of life.

          The ethics of the Torah, according to Isaiah, take precedence over the perfunctory performance of mitzvot. For Jews, this is an amazing principle and not one always carried out in practice. It is easier to put our heads down and perform a mitzvah because God told us to do so. It is much harder to consider the ramifications of doing a mitzvah before we act on it.

          Which is why the rabbis tell us that to save a life, including our own, all mitzvot can be abandoned without Divine punishment, except for blasphemy and murder. In other words, if, as Job’s friends said to him, “Curse God and die,” then we should die. To take the other case, if a person sticks a knife in our back and says to kill that person over there or I will kill you, you are to die. Both imply that martyrdom is preferable. But in all other cases, we learn, as Deuteronomy instructs us, to “choose life so that we and our children might live.” The mitzvot are meant to be life-affirming, but they can only affirm life if we abide by them in an ethical manner.

I want to thank you for listening to Torah for Christians. Please like and review this and all my podcasts on our website, www.torahforchristians.net or on iTunes. You can also subscribe to my Substack column, Bible Stories They (Never) Taught You in Religious School, on the website or directly on Substack. 

          Next week, we will continue our discussion of ethics in the Torah and discuss the topic of infertility. Difficulty in childbirth is a common Biblical motif and it is well worth exploring, especially since infertility is common in our world today – as well as being an incredibly painful topic to discuss. Hopefully by looking at infertility from a Biblical perspective, we can bring insight and comfort to those struggling with it today.

          Again, thank you for listening to Torah for Christians. I’m Rabbi Jordan Parr and I wish you a wonderful week. Hinei Mah Tov… L’hitraot, till we meet again. I’m Rabbi Jordan Parr and this has been Torah for Christians.