Friday, April 18, 2025
Elder of Ziyon
This has been a fundamental question ever since the Enlightenment first separated moral reasoning from religious doctrine. Thinkers from Immanuel Kant to John Stuart Mill, and from Marx to Ayn Rand, have proposed frameworks to ground human morality in logic, reason, emotion, or social need. Yet time and again, these secular ethical systems have failed—either in application, coherence, or resilience.
Utilitarianism is a good example. At its most basic level, it says that people should choose the action that gives the greatest good to the greatest number of people. But the naive version of utilitarianism would therefore say you can kidnap a healthy man and steal his heart, liver, kidneys and lungs to save the lives of up to five people. Seems like a simple calculation - 1 person's life for 5. Of course, this is monstrous.
Since that cannot be moral, utilitarians added layers of complexity on top of the theory. One version says that rules are layered on top of the direct results, because a rule that you can't murder someone is better for society in the long run. Others add the negative psychological effects of people knowing that they can be snatched at any time which is also bad for society. Another school created "preference utilitarianism" saying that people's preferences are a major factor in the "greatest good" calculation, and most people prefer not to donate their organs before death. Others added a layer of "bodily autonomy" as another factor in calculating people's welfare. John Stuart Mill adds another factor, of people's rights, as an additional layer of the calculus - while utilitarianism does not recognize rights, the concept of rights indirectly helps everyone's welfare. Another prominent utilitarian added that it can operate on multiple levels - sometimes an individual can make his utilitarian calculations and sometimes he has to fall back on the "rules utilitarianism" mentioned above.
In the end, we have a mess to explain why the straightforward philosophical test case of why 1 healthy life for 5 is in fact immoral. It is as if the philosophers know that there is a major flaw in the elegant rule, but instead of throwing away the rule they are making the simple rule absurdly complex and unusable for average people making their decisions. Every one of these exceptions and qualifications and reframings undermine the very simplicity that makes the philosophy attractive to begin with.
The utilitarians know intuitively that the idea of a calculation to determine morality is wrong, since this trivial case proves it. The only reason they know that is because they have an internal moral compass that screams "this is wrong." But they are so emotionally tied to the elegance of the idea in its pristine form that they cannot let it go so they create new fences around the rules to protect the idea, the single moral value of maximizing good. And yet, despite the increasing complexity, the original flaw remains: the system cannot tell you why sacrificing one for five is wrong - it can only try to obscure the horror through layers of abstraction.
All secular philosophies have their own problems. Some, like Kantianism, offer rigid rules but no real mechanism to decide the overriding values when they conflict. Still others, like existentialism, place moral weight entirely on the individual conscience, which opens the door to moral relativism or nihilism. These systems may be elegant but they are either too simple, too brittle, or too context-insensitive to govern the real moral complexity of life.
The appeal for a secular system of ethics is clear. Such a system, if it works, can be used as a baseline for the world, across cultures and belief systems, giving everyone a common ethics language. Yet the question remains: how can an ethical system be built that is rigorous, adaptable, and inspiring without recourse to religion?
I am arguing that Jewish ethics and the Jewish ethical framework, as we've been describing it in previous chapters, may be the best candidate to serve as the foundation of a universal, secular moral framework.
Jewish ethics does not require faith in God for one to understand, adopt, or apply it. Its strength lies not in divine command theory, but in its accumulated wisdom, its case-based reasoning, its openness to critique, and its built-in tools for self-correction. It is the closest thing humanity has to a moral large language model, trained on centuries of dilemmas, arguments, precedents, and diverse perspectives.
I would argue that the values we've listed, like life, truth, dignity, compassion, justice, community, humility and responsibility, are fairly universal. There may be disagreement on their relative values but they are truly universal.
The system really shines in the framework itself, which is independent of the underlying values.
It is the adjudication layer, to balance competing values, and the integrity layer, to ensure the process includes course corrections and is resistant to political pressure, which makes the Jewish ethical model both unique and suitable for everyone. Unlike many secular systems, Jewish ethics doesn’t pretend that there is always one right answer: it shows you how to think about the question through multiple viewpoints, not just one rule. Like Supreme Court opinions, the process not only records the winning argument but enshrines the losing argument too, because next year or next millennium circumstances may change and the minority opinion may become relevant in another context.
The system's transparency allows criticism and refinement. Its decentralization makes it difficult to be hijacked. Its longevity and long-term views ensure that it will not decide based on passing fads.
There is nothing in the system that is inherently faith based. Because it uses a halachic/legal framework, it is structured like a legal tradition. It can be studied and applied without belief. Just as the U.S. Constitution was inspired by ideas from Jewish covenantal thinking but functions as secular law, so too can Jewish ethics. While Jewish law can and does answer questions with "because God said so," Jewish ethics does not.
Jewish ethics has helped a minority people survive millennia, navigate moral complexity, adapt to wildly different political regimes, and maintain integrity. It is not a thought experiment. It’s a lived system.
Earlier chapters have shown that Jewish ethics goes beyond halacha. Concepts like lifnim mishurat hadin (going beyond the letter of the law), naval b’reshut haTorah (a scoundrel within the bounds of the law), and ethical writings like Pirkei Avot make clear that the Jewish moral tradition goes way beyond legality. Indeed, it asks people to do the right thing, not just what is legal.
This is what secular systems are missing: an ethic that combines rigor with compassion, structure with adaptability, and values with humility.
The Talmudic phrase lo bashamayim hi - "it is not in heaven" - means that once the Torah was given, moral reasoning (and even legal interpretation) became a human responsibility. Even divine authority does not override the consensus of human interpreters when applying law and values. This idea, astonishing for its time and still powerful today, affirms the legitimacy of human reason to interpret and apply moral frameworks. And it is the key to allow secularists to adapt it as a usable, functioning ethical system.
In other words, the Jewish system itself says: You don’t need prophecy. You need commitment, curiosity, logic, and moral courage.
To be sure, a system based on Divine revelation is more compelling for people of faith than for secularists. The faithful may cite scriptural texts to support their ethical decisions, but not to decide them. Yet the system does not rely on any such revelation, and therefore should not be objectionable to secularists. In fact, rejecting it purely because of its religious origin, rather than pointing to actual flaws in the system, would be evidence that secularists are just as prone to blind judgment and bias as any religious person.
If secular moral thought is genuinely objective, then it should be willing to evaluate frameworks not by their origin, but by their structure, adaptability, and results. Jewish ethics does not demand belief - it demands engagement. The study of these topics is itself considered a virtue. To reject it outright purely due to its religious roots is to commit the very fallacy secularists often critique in others: irrational bias.
All people are biased. It is better to examine oneself, admit and examine one's biases up front and (if necessary) compensate for them than to deny that they are there and pretend that one is uniquely objective. The bias might be cultural, or religious, or just to be committed to an idea to the point that you can no longer think rationally about whether it is true or not.
The underlying base values of the Jewish ethical system may be considered God-given within Judaism, but one does not need God to say that human life is valuable, kindness is a virtue and honesty is the best policy. Nearly every part of the system beyond the base values have been created, maintained and refined by people, not angels.
The concept that Jews should be a light unto all nations means that Jewish ethics should be inspirational, not imposed. They should be able to stand up to any and every other moral system. Jewish ethics may have begun in particularity but it aspires to universality. It already has informed legal systems, civic virtues, and constitutional design far beyond the Jewish world. Its structure is flexible enough to dialogue with other cultures, and strong enough to offer a coherent moral vocabulary.
One may ask why this moral system is superior to ancient Eastern systems, for example, that have also stood the test of time. I cannot claim to be an expert on Eastern religions or morals. I am arguing for the Western world to adopt the Jewish ethical framework, since that is where I am from and almost certainly where you are from, too. My guess is that the other systems can gain by adopting a Jewish-style framework, feel free to argue.
I’ll happily admit my bias: I believe that Western civilization is worth preserving and improving. It has achieved amazing things. I am alarmed with the direction the West has been moving with influence - often subconscious -from Communism, social justice and progressivism. Antisemitism has been my moral test for these other worldviews - if they accept or encourage hate of Jews or Judaism or Israel as the Jewish state, then they are not moral systems and this is a good indication that they must be fought against, not merely accepted as other valid viewpoints.
This is what this project is about - to define an alternative that is moral, universal and tested.
As a bonus, Jewish ethics is already interwoven with the moral DNA of the West—through law, culture, and conscience. No one has to adopt a new culture, a new ethical vocabulary or make major changes in their way of thinking. While I recognize that Jewish ethics is not the only moral system with value, it is already congruent with what most people in the West accept. If a moral system both honors tradition and fosters reform, respects the individual and the collective, and has already shaped the world we live in, why reinvent the wheel?
This is not about cultural superiority. It’s about moral maturity.
The Jewish ethical framework has been battle-tested through oppression, exile, renewal, and complexity. It is a moral language that integrates past and present, law and values, community and conscience.
It can be learned. It can be adapted. And it can form the backbone of a secular ethical system that is not fragile, not ideological, and not simplistic.
For secular thinkers searching for a better way, Jewish ethics is not an outdated, rigid, fanatic worldview. It’s a model that fits what they want most of all - an ethical system that actually works. It cannot give all the answers but it is the best way to frame the questions, and that is the best that we can ever hope for in a world that is anything but simple.
Let’s learn from the longest-running moral system still in use - and make it our own.
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"He's an Anti-Zionist Too!" cartoon book (December 2024) PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022) |
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