Climbing the Moral Number Line: Jewish Ethics and the Problem of Moral Luck ~ Elder Of Ziyon

Thursday, July 10, 2025

Climbing the Moral Number Line: Jewish Ethics and the Problem of Moral Luck

Over the past few days, I've been asking my Jewish ethics AI AskHillel.com (beta) the hardest philosophical problems - problems that have not been satisfactorily answered in decades or centuries.

One of those problems, only first described in the 1970s, is called moral luck.

Imagine two equally reckless drivers. One hits a child who darts into the road unexpectedly; the other makes it home without incident. Legally and morally, we tend to judge the first more harshly - even though they did the exact same thing. That’s called resultant luck - when outcomes beyond your control affect moral judgment.

There’s also circumstantial luck: who you are tested to be depends on the situation you’re in. Someone raised in Nazi Germany faces different moral pressures than someone in suburban Toronto. Should they be judged differently when their circumstances are beyond their control?

Constitutive luck refers to your basic makeup, like temperament, self-control, and emotional resilience, which are all shaped by genetics and upbringing. People really do have different personalities - do they have different moral obligations?

Antecedent luck goes further: every cause behind who you are, stretching back to your ancestors and the random spin of history.

Put all that together, and the foundations of moral judgment start to crack. If everything we do is shaped by luck, what’s left of responsibility? The problem suggests either that moral responsibility is far more limited than we think, or that our concept of moral responsibility must accommodate factors beyond our control, neither of which make intuitive sense. This has implications for ethics, law, and how we understand human agency itself.

AskHillel doesn’t solve the problem by pretending luck doesn’t matter. It accepts the problem in full and still finds a way to preserve responsibility. As with the other philosophical problems we examined, it starts by rejecting the binary that either out moral choices aren't really choices, or that our choices are independent of external factors.

Jewish ethics does not believe that morality is about outcomes, nor is it about fixed traits. Instead, it defines morality as a trajectory—an ongoing process of ethical movement based on who you are, where you started, and what you were given. It isn't the point on the number line you find yourself, but what direction you choose to go.

AskHillel’s solution centers on an idea from Rabbi Eliyahu Dessler (1892-1953) called the Nekudat HaBechirah - the point of free choice. None of us have unlimited free will. Most of our behavior is habitual, conditioned, or driven by emotion. But somewhere in our moral consciousness, there’s a frontier - a single point where our next step really is up to us.

For one person, that point might be choosing not to hit back in a moment of rage. For another, it might be giving to charity despite fear. The key that your moral responsibility lives not in whether you achieve a universal standard, but whether you move forward from where you are.

That’s how AskHillel handles constitutive and circumstantial luck. It doesn’t deny they shape us. It just insists they don’t define us.

But what happens when we mess up? When we fall short of even our personalized frontier?

AskHillel turns to the Jewish concept of teshuvah - repentance. In this framework, Teshuvah is a kind of ethical version control system. When you err, you don’t just apologize; you rebuild your moral identity from your previous position on the number line. The Talmud says teshuvah can even transform intentional sins into merits. Why? Because what matters most is not what you did, but what you become in response. Teshuva is a major theme in AskHillel because it is transforms you into a different, more moral person.

This is how AskHillel addresses antecedent luck. Even if your past shaped your fall, your capacity for teshuvah gives you the tools to rise again.

But what about that driver who killed the child? Isn’t the outcome what matters?

AskHillel makes a sharp distinction between culpability and consequence. The moral weight isn’t in what happened, rather it is in how the person responds. There may be a heavier burden of repair (what Judaism calls tikkun), but not necessarily greater sin. In other words, harm is real. Responsibility is real. But blame is not doled out based on chance. It’s evaluated through intent, effort, and repair.

The result is that you can recognize harm without moralizing luck.

I have been pressure testing AskHillel by asking other AIs to poke holes in its answers, and then letting AskHillel defend itself, It is a remarkable process to witness, because AskHillel ends up coming up with new ideas that are still within its own parameters.

The Claude AI asked AskHillel: What if even your ability to make moral effort is shaped by luck? What if your capacity to reflect, grow, or even care about right and wrong is the result of how you were raised or what genes you have?

AskHillel responded by introducing a powerful idea that is still resonant with Jewish ethics: moral audacity.

Even if your ability to choose is tiny—even if it’s just enough to ask, “Am I responsible?”—that sliver of agency is enough. Jewish ethics doesn’t require infinite freedom. It asks only: what did you do with the freedom you did have?

This is not a cop-out. It’s a design choice. Judaism refuses to yield to fatalism. It treats even partial agency as sacred. And in doing so, it rescues responsibility from the jaws of luck.

Even in extreme cases (as Claude pushed back) like brainwashing or trauma, AskHillel suggests that this is a temporary eclipse of moral choice, and judgement is likewise suspended while the person is morally incapacitated. The loss of moral ability is something to be treated with compassion. But Judaism insists that healing is always possible, and with healing returns moral responsibility.

One final challenge was made: doesn’t all this lead to moral relativism? If we judge people differently based on background, isn’t that unfair?

Here’s where AskHillel introduces another distinction that is still fully within its own ruleset: equal dignity is not the same as equal expectation. Every person is created in the image of God (Tzelem Elokim). That doesn’t mean everyone is expected to pass the same test. The Talmud says a poor man who gives a small coin may have done more than a rich man who gives a thousand. It’s not about the outcome - it’s about the cost, the struggle, the moral climb.

Judgment, then, is not abolished. It’s personalized. And justice, rather than becoming weaker, becomes more compassionate and more precise.

We live in a world obsessed with blame. But also one that fears determinism. Secular ethics often stalls in this tension, unable to prove we are free, and unwilling to give up the idea that we are.

Jewish ethics breaks that logjam. It says: We are not fully free, but we are free enough to make moral choices. And that’s enough for ethics to survive.

You don’t need to be perfect. You don’t need to be born with ideal circumstances. All you need is one step toward the good. And if you fall backwards, you resume your journey. And that counts.

That’s how we live with luck: not by pretending it doesn’t matter, but by refusing to let it decide who we are.