When Theory Meets Jews: A Stress Test for Modern Ideologies

When Reality Refuses to Cooperate with Theory

Modern ideologies that claim to explain the world often do so through seemingly elegant, simplified and totalizing frameworks. The most visible ideologies reduce the moral and social complexity of the real world into a binary lens of guilt and innocence, dominance and submission, right and wrong, with little room for ambiguity or inconvenient facts.

Marxism categorizes all people into two economic classes: the proletariat and the bourgeoisie. If you are not being exploited, you must be the exploiter. Any middle ground—such as the aspirational or entrepreneurial working class—must be dismissed or renamed to protect the model.

Post-colonialism sees global history through the lens of European (and only European) conquest, dividing peoples into colonizers and the colonized. If a group doesn't clearly fit into either role, the theory invents new terms (like "internal colonialism" or  the modern use of "settler colonialism") to make them fit. Complexity is flattened into narrative clarity.

Critical Race Theory maps society onto racial hierarchies of power, privilege, and oppression. Those with power must be perpetuating structural racism, and those without must be victims of it. If groups of people contradict that model, the theory accuses them of internalized racism or reclassifies them as "white-adjacent."

Identity Politics breaks moral authority into group membership, granting credibility only to those deemed oppressed. Morality flows not from argument or behavior, but from status. Anyone challenging the ideological structure, even from within a marginalized group, is labeled a traitor to their identity.

Liberalism,  in its classical form, frames the world as a tension between individual liberty and government overreach. Everyone is either for freedom or for tyranny. Liberalism supports freedom as a sufficient moral value,  while remaining silent about immoral ideas that can flourish and subvert liberty itself within the system. 

Environmentalism-as-apocalypticism divides the world into saviors of the planet and enemies of nature. Any technological optimism or nuanced cost-benefit thinking is framed as denial or betrayal. Solutions that don’t fit the doomsday narrative are dismissed as tools of the oil lobby or capitalist manipulation.

These frameworks don’t just describe the world—they offer moral clarity, identity, and belonging. They claim to turn chaos into order.

But what happens when reality pushes back? When facts don’t fit the model? The answer, in almost every case, is that the ideology adjusts the facts to preserve the theory. Contradictions are explained away. Data is reclassified. Motives are projected onto dissenters. The result is that these ideologies behave, under pressure, not like philosophy or science – but like conspiracy theories.

Ideology Becomes Conspiracy

A conspiracy theory is not defined merely by its content, but by its structure. What makes a theory conspiratorial is its refusal to admit disproof. Every counterexample becomes a secret confirmation. Every dissent is proof that the dissenter is compromised. Every failed prediction is reframed as deliberate misinformation planted by the enemy.

This is precisely how modern ideological frameworks operate:

Trait	Conspiracy Theory	Modern Ideology (Marxism, Post-colonialism, CRT)
Immunity to Falsification	"That’s what they want you to believe."	"That’s internalized oppression / false consciousness."
Binary Thinking	The righteous vs the secret cabal.	Oppressor vs oppressed.
Dissent as Guilt	Disagreement proves you're in on it.	Disagreement proves you're privileged or complicit.
No Complexity	Every fact must fit the story.	Nuance is a distraction from justice.
Moral Absolutism	The theory is always righteous.	The theory cannot be questioned without moral failure.

These modern ideologies offer not just an analysis of the world, but a moral identity to their followers. They are too brittle to accommodate counterexamples, but they are too ideologically constrained to admit that the real world contradicts their core tenets. Counterexamples collapse their theories, so they must be explained away and belittled.  Correction is not an option. Reality must be reframed or denied to conform to the theory.

Case Studies in Ideological Failure

• Marxism predicted proletarian revolution in advanced capitalist states. Instead, those states democratized and raised living standards. The response? Declare the workers "false conscious" or blame imperial interference. The theory also could not explain the emergence of a growing, politically moderate middle class—so it created the category of the "petit bourgeoisie," a rhetorical wastebin for those who failed to fit neatly into the oppressed-oppressor binary. This allowed Marxists to dismiss the aspirations, agency, or needs of the middle class as either reactionary or irrelevant.

• Post-colonial theory should see Israel as a triumph of indigenous return. But after Israel's triumph in 1967, the theorists were uncomfortable with victory over Arabs who were viewed as "more" indigenous. So the theory rebranded Jews as white settlers and Israel as "settler colonialist" - a category that no one applied to Israel before 1967. Similarly, the countries of South America, which gained independence in the early 19th century, present a challenge to post-colonial categories. Rather than acknowledge the limitations of the framework, the theory pivots to ideas like "internal colonialism," where creole elites are cast as colonizers despite being native-born. Entire histories of local complexity are flattened to fit the model.

• Critical Race Theory cannot explain the success of Jewish or Asian communities, or the antisemitism that emerges from other minorities. So it reclassifies these groups as "white-adjacent" to keep the model intact, even if it requires erasing their distinct histories of persecution.

• Identity Politics proclaims that only the oppressed may speak on justice. But when internal dissent arises from within minority communities, it is dismissed as betrayal, not evidence.

In every case, empirical contradictions are ignored, minimized or reprocessed into ideological fuel. New jargon is invented to plug leaks in the framework, not to update or repair it. 

The Jewish Exception: When Theories Break

Across these modern ideologies, there is one case that poses a unique and persistent problem: the Jews - and especially the Jewish state. Again and again, the existence of Jews defies ideological categorization in these rigid systems. Jews are both historically oppressed and disproportionately successful. They are both indigenous to the Land of Israel and accused of being foreign colonizers of the same land. They have been scapegoated by both the far right and the far left. No binary framework can contain them.

For Marxists, Jews were inconveniently middle-class or mercantile - neither industrial proletariat nor feudal aristocracy. Worse, they were often upwardly mobile, becoming successful through hard work, which Marxism cannot accept as a possibility. Thus the term "petit bourgeoisie" became a pejorative used to sideline and discredit Jewish shopkeepers. 

For post-colonialists, Zionism should have been a triumph: a displaced people returning to their ancestral land to reclaim sovereignty. But the theory could not tolerate a non-European people exercising power, so Jews were recast as white Europeans and Israel as a settler-colonial outpost - regardless of the facts.

For CRT and identity-based ideologies, Jews violate the theories in multiple ways: by succeeding despite persecution, by being targets of hatred from other minorities, and by resisting the white/non-white dichotomy. To preserve the hierarchy, Jews are demoted from oppressed to privileged. Their suffering is downplayed. Their achievements are proof of their being oppressors. Their very visibility becomes a threat - something the ideology must explain away, denounce, or erase

And because the theories cannot adapt, they must scapegoat. Instead of admitting that Jews expose the theory’s weaknesses, the ideologies double down. The result is not just distortion. It is antisemitism. When Jews are reclassified as villains for failing to conform to the narrative, the ancient pattern of blame resurfaces in a modern vocabulary.

This is not a new failure. It is the latest chapter in a very old refusal to let Jews exist outside someone else's system.

What makes this all the more ironic is that these ideologies often present themselves as the cutting edge of modern moral evolution—enlightened, scientific, and intellectually progressive. Yet when challenged, they are more brittle than many of the religious traditions they deride as outdated. These secular ideologies lack any internal mechanism for doubt, contradiction, or change. They are more dogmatic than anything claimed to have been given by God.

Jewish Ethics: A System That Can Learn

In contrast, Jewish ethics is not built to control reality. It is built to wrestle with it.

It supports and encourages arguments and disagreement within its framework. It adapts to new realities, whether they are political, social or technological. It doesn't  pigeonhole people into predefined categories but has the built in concept of repentance and self-improvement. It is not fixated on a single value but has a framework that can balance and prioritize multiple values in conflict. 

This is what moral maturity looks like.

Where ideology rejects contradiction, Judaism turns contradiction into dialogue. Where ideology shames uncertainty, Judaism elevates it into wisdom.

Conclusion: Against the Theology of Theories

Ideologies that cannot learn are not ethics. They are theologies pretending to be science. They demand loyalty, not inquiry. Their rigidity is not strength, but fragility. Like all closed systems, they fear the free movement of truth.

Jewish ethics stands apart not because it is ancient, but because it remains open. It preserves a memory older than modern ideologies and offers a humility deeper than any theoretical model: that humans are flawed, truth is complex, and justice requires listening.

In an age of moral panic and ideological echo chambers, that humility may be the most revolutionary ethic of all.

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Buy EoZ's books  on Amazon! "He's an Anti-Zionist Too!" cartoon book (December 2024) PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

 

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The Conspiratorial Mind of Antisemitism

Bret Stephens says, "Antisemitism is not merely a form of hatred. It is a conspiracy theory about how the world works." 

He is not the only one to frame antisemitism this way. Deborah Lipstadt has echoed similar ideas, describing antisemitism as a “conspiracy theory that blames Jews for every problem under the sun.” In her book Antisemitism: Here and Now, she emphasizes that this form of hate is unique in its persistence and in its insistence that Jews are not merely wrong, but secretly powerful and malicious. This framing, she argues, makes antisemitism self-reinforcing and impervious to logic. Historian David Nirenberg has likewise suggested that antisemitism functions as a kind of moral or explanatory engine: when things go wrong, the Jew is cast as the hidden cause.

At first glance, this is an appealing explanation. It seems to unite many divergent forms of antisemitism under a single intellectual umbrella: the belief that Jews operate in secret, behind the scenes, manipulating events for their benefit and others’ ruin. And across the ideological spectrum, this indeed shows up again and again.

The Nazi obsession with blaming Jewish financiers controlling the First World War. Islamist narratives about Jews as breakers of covenants and corrupting the Torah. Progressive suspicions that Jews serve as hidden faces of capitalism, whiteness, or settler colonialism. Far-right theories about Jews bringing in immigrants, controlling Hollywood and the government. 

These conspiracies differ in content, but share one thing: they give the hater a moral story that makes their hatred feel justified. Even Nazi ideology, which felt that subhuman Jews would eventually become extinct under social Darwinism, embraced Elders of Zion conspiracies to explain why Jews survived. 

But are antisemitic philosophies conspiracy theories themselves, or are conspiracy theories an aspect of antisemitic philosophies?

I started this series with an article called A Unified Field Theory of Antisemitism. As I explored and analyzed all the major types of antisemitism, I saw that my initial theory was not quite right. 

I identified several aspects that antisemitic groups have in common. They are all eliminationist, wanting to see Jews or Judaism or the Jewish state disappear. They all have a hate for Jews that is far deeper than the feelings normal people have towards their perceived enemies. They all have extremist and absolutist beliefs.

What dimension does the fact that they all resort to conspiracy theories add to the conversation? 

It helps prove that all of these philosophies hate Jews because they regard Jews as an existential threat - to themselves.

Across cultures and ideologies, Jews have often represented something both enduring and distinct. That distinctiveness, especially when Jews are successful, moral, or intellectually visible, creates a psychological problem for absolutist belief systems.

Christianity promised to replace the Jews. But Jews kept existing.

Islam declared itself the final truth. But Jews wouldn’t submit.

Marxists envisioned class liberation. But Jews didn’t fit in their classes.

Progressives advocate for the oppressed. But the most oppressed people on Earth built a nation out of the ashes.

People avoid normal threats. But they only want to eradicate threats that they believe makes their entire lives meaningless.

For these and other antisemites,  conspiracy theory is not the reason for the hate, but a consequence of it.  It is a coping mechanism -  a psychological defense to explain why the Jew has not disappeared, and why their very presence feels like a threat to their own self-definition. It is a result of cognitive dissonance.

This exposes something deeper: antisemitic ideologies are not defined by conspiracy theory, but by an inability to tolerate the Jew. The conspiracy theory is merely the justification they create to preserve their worldview. the philosophies that end up antisemitic are the ones that cannot tolerate the continued existence of the Jew. And more importantly, they are the ones that require conspiracy thinking to resolve their own internal contradictions and reduce their cognitive dissonance. If Jews should not exist in their philosophies, yet they not only exist but thrive, the Jews must have cheated somehow - which is the justification for their destruction.

Other moral and philosophical systems do not need to explain away Jewish persistence. They do not feel threatened by Jewish moral or national distinctiveness. They can tolerate, or even embrace, Jewish survival, visibility, and sovereignty. For example:

• Utilitarianism seeks outcomes, not targets. It has no built-in reason to resent Jews.

• Kantian ethics values moral autonomy and duty. Jews fit that model.

• Classical liberalism cherishes pluralism. Jews thrive within it.

• Moral relativism, despite its flaws, does not centrally oppose any one tradition.

• Buddhism, Stoicism, and Confucianism show no historical pattern of anti-Jewish sentiment.

None of these frameworks are perfect. Elsewhere we have criticized some of them. But none feel compelled to invent a moral explanation for why the Jew exists. That burden belongs to broken systems.

So while Stephens and Lipstadt are right to identify conspiracy theory as a hallmark of antisemitism, their analysis stops short of the root cause. The conspiracy theory is not the root. It is a tool used by philosophies who consider the Jew’s existence a refutation of their beliefs. 

The Jew is not just a scapegoat in these systems, but intolerance of the Jew is a metric that shows the philosophy is not only dangerous, but failing.

If we are going to fight antisemitism, it is critical that we know exactly what it is and why the practitioners hate Jews so much. Exposing the conspiracy theory alone is not enough, since those theories of evil Jewish power is just a symptom of the problem. 

This also explains the so-called horseshoe theory, why radically opposed ideologies - like Marxism and Islamism, or progressive anti-racism and white nationalism  -  all converge on antisemitic narratives. They share a psychological need to explain why the Jew, who should not exist in their systems, continues to succeed. The conspiracy a necessity to allay their internal contradiction. We must understand the moral discomfort that precedes the hate - the loathing oft Jews is a kind of moral check, a mirror that reflects back the flaws of the system.

That’s why Jewish ethics isn’t just a counter-narrative. It’s a diagnostic tool. It reveals exactly how and where a system can’t handle contradiction, humility, or difference - and how quickly that failure metastasizes into hatred.

This isn’t just a rhetorical point. It’s the key to understanding why antisemitism outlives every ideology it infects. 

The conspiracy theories will never stop as long as people teach and learn philosophies that cannot explain why the Jews are still alive.

 

Buy EoZ's books  on Amazon! "He's an Anti-Zionist Too!" cartoon book (December 2024) PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

 

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Jewish Ethics vs. the New Secular Messianisms

I have argued that Jewish ethics can become the basis for a secular morality. But not being incompatible with secularism is not the same as being attractive to secularists. What could secularists get out of a Jewish ethical system? 

Let's turn the question around. What do they get out of joining extreme Leftist movements?

The extreme Leftist, usually secularist, movements like Animal Liberation Front, Extinction Rebellion and BDS have something in common rarely seen in their Rightist counterparts - a seemingly religious fervor and a quasi spiritual dimensions. They regard themselves as modern doomsdayers, warning the world of catastrophe if we do not repent from our evil ways like climate change. They demand that we "decolonize" our minds and embrace the new edicts as written in their sacred texts - Ibram X. Kendi's How to be an Anti-Racist and the Call to BDS. They chant new rhyming psalms at their demonstrations to the point of self-hypnosis. They anoint new prophets like Great Thunberg. Those who are part of the "oppressor" groups like white men must publicly repent and acknowledge their status, and salvation can only come from allyship with the oppressed.  People who do not follow their dictates - especially believers who turn away - are "canceled," i.e., excommunicated. They actively recruit new followers, especially targeting young people. Finally, they promise a utopian vision of a world that they will perfect with their actions and redeem with their struggles - a pseudo-messianic vision. 

While they claim that religions are one source of oppression, they have created a new set of beliefs that have all the trappings of religion, without God.

Blaise Pascal wrote, "What else does this craving, and this helplessness, proclaim but that there was once in man a true happiness, of which all that now remains is the empty print and trace? … [T]his infinite abyss can be filled only with an infinite and immutable object; in other words, by God himself’ (Pensées, 425).”  Based on the extremist secularist movements actions, it appears that at least for some non-believers, they indeed are looking for a spiritual experience. People who reject religion still crave meaning, justice, community, and moral clarity, and these movements provide a shallow replacement for religion.

As we have seen, antisemitism thrives in groups that view Jews or Jewish beliefs or Israel as a threat to their entire existence. The Jewish ethical system does not accept one-dimensional, simplistic answers to life's questions. It rejects the binaries of oppressor/oppressed, colonizer/colonized, white/people of color, animal lives as sacred or worthless. 

So if these movements succeed because they fill a need, what would it take for Jewish ethics to meet that same need more honestly—and more durably? Can a secular version of Jewish ethics, with few pat answers, offer what people are missing from their lives?

Yes. 

While these movements present themselves as moral revolutions or secular equivalents to spiritualities, they bear far more resemblance to cults than to religions. They imitate religion’s outer forms—ritual, purity codes, sacred texts, prophets, and excommunication—but they lack its inner core: the pursuit of enduring truth through humility, tradition, and moral complexity.

Cults offer brainwashing in place of moral introspection. They satisfy the desire to belong, but only through enforced conformity. They promise redemption, but only through submission. They silence doubt, they punish dissent, and they demand emotional loyalty above all else. This is not spirituality. It is programming.

And once someone is drawn in, it is incredibly difficult to break the spell. Former cult members often describe their experience as a kind of moral gaslighting: they were told they were good only if they chanted the party line. Their doubts were demeaned. Their previous relationships were severed. The world was reduced to a binary of us vs. them, good vs. evil. The moral complexity of real life was replaced by a simple script. And the answers they were promised were all lies, often meant to give more power to their leaders.

Meanwhile, Jewish ethics form the true DNA of causes like human rights. "The Jewish tradition is a tradition of law and justice. The Ten Commandments and the teachings of the prophets are a source of inspiration for the Universal Declaration of Human Rights," according to René Cassin, who drafted the Declaration itself.

So the question becomes: how can we prevent people from falling into these kinds of ideological cults? And how can we help those already captured to reorient themselves toward genuine ethical inquiry?

The answer, I would argue, is not just to critique the cults—but to offer something better, earlier, deeper. The antidote to cult thinking is moral maturity and literacy.

We must teach people—early and often—how to navigate ethical tension, how to hold multiple values in tension, how to argue without dehumanizing, how to seek justice without demanding perfection. And we must do this in community, through discussion, with humility rather than performative rituals of moral superiority. That might take the form of paired study groups, discussion circles, online forums, or even digital tools that foster thoughtful disagreement. 

Imagine a secular activist who feels burned out by the moral absolutism of their climate or anti-colonialist group, constantly shamed for not being "pure" enough. They stumble upon a Jewish ethics discussion group, where chesed encourages them to practice kindness without judgment, where machloket lets them debate ideas without fear of cancellation. For the first time, they feel both morally grounded and free. 

The medium can vary. The principle is what matters: we must teach people to think morally, not just claim the mantle of morality.

Jewish ethics offers a model for this. Not because it is the only source of moral truth, but because it is one of the few surviving systems that trains people from youth to think ethically without collapsing into ideology. The chavruta system of studying in pairs, the halachic process, the culture of respectful dissent and precedent - all of these immunize against unthinking cult-like movements. 

This is not just a philosophy—it is a method. And if we can share it widely, honestly, and humbly, we may offer people not only protection from cultic-style ideologies, but a path to reclaim their moral autonomy after having been misled by them.

The secular extremists claim that they are brave, that they are courageous, that they are speaking forbidden truths. Yet when people try to talk to them, as we saw during the anti-Israel university encampments in 2024, most of them duck the questions and refuse to have a discussion. That isn't courage - it is cowardice. 

Moral courage is being able to defend your beliefs in the face of the mob. That takes time and effort, it takes honest debate and discussion. The Jewish ethics system excels at teaching people how to find a moral position, refine it, and defend it against all arguments. 

Becoming a mature, thinking person might not be as fun as shouting slogans and vandalizing buildings. But it is a lot more rewarding.

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Buy EoZ's books  on Amazon! "He's an Anti-Zionist Too!" cartoon book (December 2024) PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

 

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The (usually unstated) foundational axioms of Jewish ethics

We have described a three-tier framework for Jewish ethics:

1. The Values Tier (life, dignity, truth, justice, etc.)

2. The Adjudication Tier (weighing and balancing those values in real-world cases)

3. The Meta/Interpreter Tier (ensuring the process is transparent, humble, and open to critique)

There is also a foundational tier for this framework, which  we can call Tier Zero. This tier consists of axioms that the other tiers implicitly depend on.

Before any values can be selected, adjudicated, or interpreted, there must be basic philosophical assumptions in place. These are the bedrock axioms upon which the entire Jewish ethical system rests. No one talks about these axioms too often because they were considered obvious truths. But in today’s intellectual environment, many of these premises are under direct attack. They must be named, clarified  and defended.

These axioms are assumptions about human nature, moral reasoning and reality itself. These are not "values" in the traditional sense. They are metaphysical or epistemological commitments without which values are meaningless.

Truth Exists and Can Be Known: There is an objective reality, and moral and factual truths can be discovered and reasoned about.

This has been challenged by various philosophies over the past two centuries. Postmodernism says truth is relative, dependent on social, linguistic, or cultural context. Relativism, critical theory and other schools also disparage the existence of objective, knowable truth.

Judaism utterly rejects these ideas. Truth isn't relative, facts aren't subjective, different narratives do not have equal value. When one discards truth then one discards the very basis for a universal moral system.

Humans Have Moral Agency: People contain the capacity to choose, to reason, and to be held accountable for their choices. 

Many philosophical schools disagree. Hard determinism, behaviorism and neuroscientific reductionism insist that biology, environmental factors or the unconscious determine how we act. The conclusion is that people cannot be held responsible for their actions.

This is anathema to Jewish thought. While Judaism recognizes that everyone has predispositions and their environments influence them, ultimately humans are able and are expected to transcend their inclinations and try to improve and perfect themselves. Those who paint themselves as eternal victims of circumstance are tragic; the person who rises above is heroic.

Right and Wrong Are Real Categories: There is such a thing as objective morality.

Moral relativism and postmodernism say that right and wrong are dependent on external factors like language and culture; moral naturalism says the concept of morality is an evolutionary artifact; Nietzsche says morality is simply an attempt by the weak to control the strong. 

This is completely foreign to Jewish thinking. The concepts of  justice, truth, and dignity are universal and foundational. A society that rejects morality is itself an evil society. 

Humans Are Capable of Growth: Beyond moral agency, people have the inherent capacity to improve themselves. 

Behaviorism claims all behavior is the result of environmental conditioning and people only change from external factors. The schools that deny moral agency inherently deny moral growth as well.

Judaism says that moral growth is not just possible but expected. The entire concept of teshuva, repentance, is based on the idea that everyone can change. Moral development is a lifelong pursuit. The idea of the "pintele Yid" that is within each Jew, even those who have done immoral acts, is the spark of the Divine that wants to do the right thing. Within the Jewish religion, everyone has a sacred soul; but even without the religious aspect, Judaism says that everyone can change. 

Moral Disagreement Has Value: Arguments and differences of opinion are essential and eternal tools to reach objective truth.

This is a unique aspect of Jewish philosophy. While Greek philosophers valued debate to arrive at moral truths, once they decided they found it they rejected further discussion. Christian theology strived to arrive at consensus and other opinions were often framed as heresy. Other more modern philosophies reject the entire concept of truth.

Judaism sees argument as the path to truth - but acknowledges that truth is often complex, layered, and elusive. Sometimes the Talmud concludes with teiku - leaving the question unresolved until Messianic times. This is why all sides of the arguments are preserved - the assumption is that while there is objective truth, it is not always easy to determine, and it may have multiple aspects. Moreover, the arguments themselves help people grow. The moral decisions they make are the result not only of dictates from above but their own contributions to the discussion and  humility to engage with others in pursuit of truth.

Human Dignity Is Inherent and Universal: Every human being has inherent worth that does not depend on merit, productivity, or identity. This is foundational to Jewish ethics and grounded in the idea that all people are created b’tzelem Elokim—in the image of God.

Some ethical and political systems reject this. Utilitarianism ranks people by usefulness; Nietzschean ethics mocks universal dignity as weakness; totalitarian regimes define worth by political utility or race; and modern reductionist science sometimes reduces people to neurological machinery. Even well-intentioned identity politics can fall into this trap by awarding dignity based on category rather than common humanity.

Judaism resists all of these. Human dignity, like life itself, is not earned. It is simply and profoundly there. Any moral system that fails to recognize this invites cruelty.

This is beyond "tzelem Elokim" in the values tier, which calls on everyone to treat everyone else with dignity. This is a underlying concept that the value builds upon. 

For most of human history, these axioms were implicit. But in today’s intellectual landscape, postmodernism challenges the existence of truth. Deterministic science challenges free will. Moral relativism challenges the existence of good and evil. Behavioral economics and neuroscience reduce humans to predictable inputs and outputs.

These are not mere academic fads; they have filtered into popular culture, university curricula, public policy, and even technology design. Any ethical system must now defend its very right to exist.

The Jewish ethical system, by contrast, affirms these axioms explicitly through its structure, laws, literature, and traditions. And by naming these Tier Zero commitments, we show that:

• The system is honest about its philosophical assumptions.

• These assumptions are themselves open to critique, reflection, and reasoned defense.

• The structure is robust precisely because it acknowledges the need for a moral metaphysics.

Without Tier Zero, the other layers collapse. With it, they form the most resilient, dynamic, and coherent moral system ever developed.

Tier Zero is what makes the other tiers possible. It is not itself an ethical method but the precondition for all ethical methods. Jewish ethics begins by assuming what many modern systems forget: that moral reasoning is real, humans are responsible, and truth matters.

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Buy EoZ's books  on Amazon! "He's an Anti-Zionist Too!" cartoon book (December 2024) PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

 

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Jewish Ethics vs. Western Rights: When Duties Became Entitlements

So far, we have emphasized the Jewish sources and inspiration for Western ideas and philosophies that have been instrumental in the US Constitution and the Western legal system. 

There is one important area where Jewish ethics diverges from Western law: the concept of rights.

The idea of "natural law," meaning that there is a rational moral order in the universe that can be determined by reason, has its origins in the ancient Greek and Roman worlds. Thomas Aquinas fused that idea with theology, saying that natural law reflected the will of God and that the moral laws that could be derived from reason also aligned with Biblical principles. And as we have seen, John Selden codified natural law as a basis for the Western legal systems based on his study of the Noachide laws and Jewish sources, grounding natural law in shared duties.

All of this thinking centered the idea of human responsibilities.

John Locke, in his "Two Treatises of Government" (1689), introduced the revolutionary idea that beyond duties and obligations, all humans are born with natural rights to life, liberty, and property. These were not responsibilities but entitlements, discoverable by reason and granted by God. Later thinkers, most notably Thomas Jefferson, strengthened this concept by declaring these rights “unalienable”—meaning they could not be surrendered, even with consent, such as through a social contract with the state. This marked a major philosophical shift: rights were no longer dependent on reciprocal duties, as in earlier natural law traditions like John Selden’s, but became moral absolutes that stood apart from obligation.

As the idea of rights became more entrenched in Western thought, such as in the United States Bill of Rights and in the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen, rights became the central concept of political morality, replacing obligations.  (Importantly, the U.S. Bill of Rights was originally framed as a check on state overreach, not a generator of positive entitlements.)

The West has been adding to the list of rights over time while declaring them self-evident - the right to free speech, the right to privacy, the right to bear arms, the right to pursue happiness. The sea change from the centrality of duties to that of rights has weakened the Jewish ethical idea of the moral and legal obligations that people have towards another.

This is not to say that Jewish ethics denies the concept of rights. Rather, rights emerge as a byproduct of mutual obligations. If everyone has an obligation not to steal, then everyone gains a de facto right to their property; the prohibition against murder and the value saying everyone is created in the image of God (tzelem Elokim) leads to the right to life. But the emphasis is different: rights are the result, not the foundation, of moral codes.

Placing rights higher in the moral hierarchy compared to duties also subtly changes the focus of one's role in the world. When obligations are central, it teaches people to be selfless - you treat others with dignity, you respect others' property, you do what you need to do to ensure a frictionless society where everyone treats all others as having inherent value. When rights are central, then the self becomes the focus - the world owes things to you.

Responsibility gets replaced with entitlement.

The concept of rights as inalienable has prompted some groups to use the language of rights to bypass any legal or ethical objections to an ever-lengthening list of "rights," real or imagined. While Locke emphasized rights from interference (from anyone taking away people's life, liberty or property,) today's rights language is oriented towards "positive" rights, to receive things for free (education, healthcare, income, housing.) They have changed from promoting freedom into entitlements, And over time, more and more of these rights are being asserted as social obligations of entitlements from the state, with no obligations in return: rights to free college education, abortion, paid vacation, parental leave, Internet access. These have further expanded to include controversial assertions: the right not to be offended, the right to compel others to use one's chosen pronouns, or the right to unrestricted access to social media platforms or national borders. When these are framed as inalienable, debate is shut down rather than encouraged.

As more social demands get turned into purported "rights," they inevitably interfere with other rights. The "right" not to be offended contradicts freedom of press.

Rights have gone from an assertion of basic human needs to a political weapon to silence opponents.

The repercussions of a rights-centric society are being seen today. While the list of rights - real or imagined - keeps getting longer, the list of responsibilities expected of people diminish. The world is becoming egocentric instead of altruistic.

What can be done?

Looking closer at an example where Jewish ethics conflicts with Western rights can help illuminate a way forward.

In the American context, free speech is treated as a near-absolute right. But in Jewish ethics, while speech is certainly valued, it is also heavily regulated. The laws of lashon hara (gossip or harmful speech), motzi shem ra (slander), and ona’at devarim (verbal abuse) all limit speech that is legal under secular law.

Jewish ethics asks, “Should I say this?” while Western law often stops at, “Do I have the right to say this?”

Having secular law incorporate the laws of lashon hara is not the answer nor would it be desirable. We are already seeing the negative effects of today's supposed human rights defenders now policing the speech of their political opponents. The rights framework is failing in front of our eyes.

The answer comes from how Jewish thought has bridged the gap between law and ethics. As we have seen, the concept of lifnim mishurat hadin - going beyond the letter of the law - is at the intersection between what the law demands and how people should want to act, and it plays a vital role. The multi-tiered Jewish ethics system ensures that even if an action is technically permissible, one should consider whether it is right.

Western ethics should do the same. Just because free speech is legal does not mean it is moral. Instead of justifying hateful speech and incitement by recourse to legality, the Western world needs to revert to thinking about whether the speech is ethical. The responsibility belongs to the speaker.

One of the dangers of a rights-only framework is that it invites people to maximize their own entitlements while minimizing their duties to others. This mindset encourages people to assert their rights aggressively, even when doing so causes harm, division, or cruelty. It enables moral minimalism: “If it’s not illegal, it’s fine.”

Jewish tradition pushes in the opposite direction. It cultivates moral maximalism: “What more can I do to act with compassion, integrity, and responsibility?” It actively discourages things that are "patur aval assur" - technically legal but still unethical. 

There are similar conflicts between law and ethical responsibility. One has the right to their money, but a responsibility to give charity to others. One has the legal right to sex between consenting adults, but it could ruin marriages, families and lives.

In all of these, the Jewish framework urges us not to hide behind legality, but to evaluate our actions against a higher standard.

This does not mean abandoning rights. Rights are vital for protecting individuals from tyranny. But Judaism proposes a complementary paradigm: one in which people voluntarily restrain their use of legal rights in order to uphold ethical responsibility.

A society built on rights alone can become fragmented and adversarial. A society built on responsibilities cultivates trust, cohesion, and moral aspiration.

In this way, Jewish ethics offers a vital corrective to the rights-centric moral language of the West. It asks not “What am I allowed to do?” but “What is the right thing to do?”

This approach may offer a bridge between legal systems and moral conscience. Western societies would benefit from embracing not just individual freedoms, but the ancient Jewish insight that true morality is based on responsibilities, and rights are the outcome of these responsibilities, not the precondition to them.

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Can Jewish Ethics Be the Foundation for Secular Morality?

Can ethics exist without a religious framework?

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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Lifnim Mishurat HaDin: The Fuzzy Line Between Jewish Law and Jewish Ethics

Are Jewish ethics just a component of Jewish law, or are they overlapping but distinguishable concepts?

At first blush, it appears that from the perspective of Judaism, Jewish ethics is identical to halacha (Jewish law.)  Halacha  includes lots of ethical imperatives like charity, kindness to strangers, visiting the sick and honoring one's parents. Legal questions come up with each of these - for example, does one have to listen to their parents' advice when it would be detrimental to the child? The same rabbis that decide whether something is kosher also decide how much charity one must give.

But a little thought shows that while Judaism treats ethics and law similar ways, using similar methodologies and anchoring both in sacred texts, ethics is treated as something beyond the law. 

In Pirke Avot, one opinions says that someone who says "what's mine is mine and what's yours is yours" is acting like a resident of the wicked city of Sodom. Why should that be? Clearly, from a legal perspective, he is saying something accurate. Why would such a person be considered to be like the famously evil Sodomites?

One commentator, the Bartenura, says the reason is that the Sodomites did not want any visitors, even though their land had lots of resources and could accommodate guests. This character trait is what made them evil. People risk becoming callous towards others when they insist that what is theirs is theirs, and this starts the slide towards being akin to a Sodomite. 

This illustrates the tension in Judaism between halacha and ethics: one is expected, urged and - at times - obligated to act in ways beyond the letter of the law.

This is what the Talmudic phrase lifnim mishurat hadin means (Bava Metzia 30b).  It says that people not only can but should act beyond the strict interpretation of halacha. It demands a higher ethical standard. 

This is a remarkable concept. Lifnim mishurat hadin appears to exist at the intersection of formal law and ethical aspiration. It seemingly accepts the idea that halacha itself can never be an all encompassing system and it requires ethical concepts beyond halacha to cover all potential questions. The halachic system itself acknowledges its own limitations and encourages people to go beyond them. There are cases where lifnim mishurat hadin were mandated by batei din, Jewish courts, others where it is just encouraged,  and stories of people who were praised or going above and beyond what was legally required of them.

There are other similar concepts in halacha where strict adherence to halacha itself is strongly disparaged. A "naval b’reshut haTorah" is a disgusting person who does everything within halachic bounds and not one millimeter beyond. The Talmud states an opinion that Jerusalem was destroyed because people followed only strict law and did not go beyond it.

Some examples make it sound like going above and beyond is praiseworthy, some that it is expected, some that it is mandated. What seems clear is that lifnim mishurat hadin goes beyond the halachic system, yet it can justify itself within the halachic framework by using Deuteronomy 6:18, "Do what is right and good in the eyes of the Lord," as an overarching Biblical source for extra-judicial ethics.

A recent responsum by Rav Yosef Zvi Rimon illustrates this idea of Jewish ethics asserting itself independently of halachic detail.

Soldiers are allowed to seek shelter in the homes of their enemies during wartime. One Israeli soldier asked whether he would be allowed to charge his mobile phone while resting in one such home in Gaza, another asked whether he could take items from another home that was about to be demolished and the items destroyed anyway (presumably because it was hiding a tunnel shaft or was booby trapped.) After looking at this through a strictly halachic viewpoint, Rav Rimon adds that when one is engaged in an obligatory war of self defense, one must not gain any personal pleasure from it as that endangers the moral underpinnings of the war itself. He brings as proof the idea from his own teacher, Rav Aharon Lichtenstein, that when King Saul ignored the commandment to destroy all of Amalek and he justified keeping some animals, "he turned his entire war into something unethical. The war against Amalek is a decree from God. When a person benefits from the results of the war, there is personal enjoyment, and he is not acting solely according to God’s direction. Consequently, the justified killing becomes

murder."

This part of the response is purely ethical, not halachic, but the language is extraordinarily strong in its insistence that one cannot personally gain from spoils of war, even when those gains will not cause any additional loss from the owners. 

Concepts like lifnim mishurat hadin  and naval b’reshut haTorah show that Jewish ethics are supra-halachic. This means that they can be examined and studied as an independent system, outside the halachic framework. And moreover, it indicates that, unlike halacha,  Judaism's ethical standards can be seen as a model for the world, not only Jews. 

The Jewish ethical framework may be based on the halachic framework - but it can be decoupled from halacha itself when applied to the world at large. Its rich and deep sources and its unparalleled maturity makes Jewish ethics particularist and universal, ever timely and timeless.

It is an ideal ethical system for everyone.

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Jewish ethics isn't physics

During the Enlightenment, some of the most famous Western philosophers were inspired by physics. The simple beauty of Newtonian equations, like F = ma, caused many to think that if physical laws could be described so elegantly, then human ethics can similarly be reduced to a small set of universal laws.

Immanuel Kant said "Act only according to that maxim whereby you can, at the same time, will that it should become a universal law." Jeremy Bentham said that an action is moral if it tends to promote universal happiness or pleasure and immoral if it tends to produce unhappiness or pain, and proposed a "felicific calculus" to calculate the pleasure or pain from an action. Ayn Rand said one's ethical duty is to maximize one's own benefit in any given situation. They and others attempted to shoehorn all humanity, all decisions,  all actions into their moral calculators.

There's only one problem. Ethics are not physics. People are not objects. 

These philosophers were recognized as the wisest people in the Western world. Their desire to fit the diverse population of  humans, each with their own experiences, their own cultures and their own viewpoints, into a rational structure are laughable. Arguing about which philosophy of ethics is superior is a fun intellectual exercise, but it doesn't mean that any of them are right.

Of course it is seductive to try to find a formula to explain how people should act. That desire to make everything simple has no bearing on reality. In fact, it proves that even the people that are supposed to be the most rational creatures themselves - philosophers - fall for wishful thinking rather than see things as they are.

While they try to fit humans into their worldview, Judaism creates a worldview to accommodate humans as they really are. And you cannot make everything fit on a bumper sticker.

It is true that Hillel said "What is hateful to you, do not do to your fellow," which sounds a lot like what some of these philosophers said. But he added, "That is the whole Torah; the rest is commentary. Go and learn it." The maxim is only the starting point, not the entire philosophy. That "commentary" is a lifetime effort. 

Remember that Hillel said this to an arrogant person insisting on a bite-sized Torah. His response showed respect for a disrespectful question and a way to attract him to a lifetime of studying Jewish ethics. His message was not merely his words but also his delivery and the context. 

That is real wisdom.

It isn't only human ethics that cannot be boiled down to Newton's equations. Ironically, even physics itself can't be described accurately that way. Quantum mechanics broke that illusion of perfect predictability. The universe is a lot more complex than Newton or the Enlightenment philosophers could ever imagine. If you insist on an analogy between ethics and physics, perhaps you can say that:

• The core values of Judaism (life, truth, dignity, responsibility, justice) are like the constants of nature.

• The adjudication layer is like the wave function—fluid, contextual, probabilistic, but still governed by laws.

• The integrity layer is like the observer effect in quantum mechanics. The outcome depends in part on who’s asking, how, and why. An electron can act like a wave or like a particle, and both of those are correct depending on how it is viewed. 

But that is all it is - an analogy. It represents a way of looking at things and it can approximate a view of Jewish ethics but we should not fall for the same fallacy that the philosophers did: wishing that an analogy to physics reflects reality does not make it so.

Physics describes what is. Ethics prescribes what ought to be. Jewish ethics does not treat people like bowling balls dropped from a building or electrons around a nucleus. Equating moral complexity to an equation inevitably produces systems that are brittle, blind to the myriad of circumstances around the issues, and vulnerable to immoral conclusions. 

Jewish ethics, by contrast, has always acknowledged that human beings are complex and flawed, that  moral decisions are embedded in particular times, places, and relationships, and that principles must be balanced with each other, not arbitrarily prioritized. This flexibility isn’t relativism - it is a principled pluralism with internal consistency. The laws of physics are immutable, while Jewish ethical decisions can and must change to reflect the messy reality that we humans live in. 

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The three tiers of the Jewish ethical framework

Previously, we have discussed and listed a set of Jewish ethical values. 

However, a list of values is not enough to build an ethical system.

Again using Progressivism as an example, progressives have values too: equity, inclusion, anti-racism, environmental justice, anti-colonialism, and others. They also would seem to be aligned with some Jewish values, like preserving life, helping the downtrodden, and justice. 

Yet we showed how their values ended up supporting things that are absolutely immoral, like support of terrorism.

The perversion of Progressivism comes from their overemphasis on some values and downplaying others. Anti-colonialism is one of their values, but if is interpreted as  "colonialism is the ultimate evil and must be fought by any means necessary" that can then be used to indeed justify terrorism against perceived colonialists.  The "preserving life" value is somehow defined as less important than the "resisting injustice" value.  We've seen how the term "colonialism" has been applied as a crime only for specific Western states (not Chinese imperialism, the Islamic conquest or the Ottoman Empire), strongly indicating that the value itself is being politicized beyond its definition. 

A separate problem is that when they make these sorts of determinations of the relative weight of values, there is no transparency. They just say that they want "justice" and their loudest members are the self-appointed judges.  When they make a values-based decision, the relative importance of conflicting values is not explained.

A third problem is that they apply their definitions dishonestly. They declare Israel is "colonialist" or "settler colonialist,"  period. They can point to academic papers to support their viewpoint, but they consciously ignore papers that refute it. They elevate their biased opinions to the status of proven scientific theory - and anyone who disagrees is essentially excommunicated. 

The problem isn't necessarily that their values are definitionally invalid. It is that the process of applying those values is subject to subversion and perversion. In the end literally anything can be justified under the Progressive ideological system.

A moral system that can justify immorality is not a moral system.

Most moral systems have the same shortcomings. Many only define themselves by their values. Some have additional rules. But only the Jewish value system has extensive checks and balances on how it is applied and implemented. Moreover, it has full transparency and self-correcting mechanisms built-in so it virtually impossible for it to be hijacked and politicized. While Judaism is criticized as being outdated and inflexible, in reality the Jewish ethical system, refined over millennia, is better positioned to address and adapt to new situations then any other. 

The Jewish moral framework we are building has three tiers*:

1. Core Values: A list of foundational Jewish ethical ideas rooted in Torah, Talmud, and rabbinic tradition. As we've seen, these include concepts such as Pikuach Nefesh (the supreme value of life), Emet (truth), Tzedakah and Chesed (justice and kindness), Tzelem Elokim (human dignity), and Lashon Hara (ethical speech), among others.

2. Adjudication: The methodology for balancing and applying these values in real-world or complex situations. 

3. Integrity: This governs how the framework is applied and ensures the process maintains integrity. It is not about the outcome, but the process of reaching and explaining the outcome.

We've already listed the core values tier. Here are the informal rules of the adjudication tier:

• Internal Coherence – Does not contradict itself across cases.

• Context-Sensitivity – Values may weigh differently depending on the situation.

• Value Fidelity – Ethical decisions must be faithful to the source values; they cannot be a smokescreen for violating them.

• Ethical Triage – Provides tools to weigh competing values (e.g., when truth and peace are in tension).

• Balance of Principles – Encourages multi-value analysis rather than moral flattening to a single imperative. Every ethical decision must consider whether it violates any of the others, and if so, it must be justified.

The adjudication tier adds important controls to the moral system to ensure that, for example, values are not ignored when they seem to contradict others. 

Already, this makes the Jewish ethical system more mature and less prone to being hijacked than most other systems. 

Uniquely, however, the Jewish system goes beyond these two to another tier that ensures the integrity of the entire system:

• Transparency – Moral reasoning must be public and explainable, modeled after shailot u'teshuvot (responsa literature). Like a good rabbinic teshuva, decisions should be laid out with their logic and sources made clear. This allows others to understand, critique, or build on the decision. Transparency isn't just good practice; it makes the system self-correcting and proof against manipulation.

• Replicability – Others should be able to follow and potentially reproduce the reasoning.

• Open Participation – Anyone can take part in the interpretive process—Jew or non-Jew, scholar or layperson—if they agree to play by the rules. This is not centralized authority but decentralized legitimacy. Authority is earned through fidelity to the values and the process, not conferred by title. (It becomes a meritocracy  - the wisest interpreters generally get reputations that give their opinions more weight, but brilliant newcomers can "break in" to the top tiers.)
  
  Contrast this to other systems where authority is centralized and often coercive.

• Critique-Friendly – The system is designed to be challengeable. Reasoning must be principled and sourced, and those offering interpretations are obligated to respond to valid critiques - either refuting them or admitting that they were wrong (intellectual honesty.)

• Humility – No interpreter claims omniscience. The system assumes human fallibility and encourages correction when mistakes are found. Disagreement to uncover the truth (lishmah) is a central value.

• Curiosity and Sincerity – Those using the system must aim to learn and improve, not score points. Seeking out competing views is not a weakness—it is a requirement.

• Insulation from Power – The process must resist co-optation for personal or political gain. Interpretations that favor powerful interests without transparent justification should be met with suspicion and scrutiny. The top Jewish ethicists rarely hold political positions nor even head major institutions.

• All issues are important - Questions that revolve around a dispute over a penny are treated seriously, because the underlying values are the same for seemingly important and unimportant cases. 

A comparison to open-source software is helpful: anyone can contribute to Linux, but their contribution must meet the standards of the codebase. If they add code that is hiding a virus or malware, the open source allows others to discover the attempt, expose it, and even sanction the offender so they will never be trusted to contribute again.  Similarly, anyone can make a moral argument within this Jewish ethical algorithm, but they must do so transparently, responsibly, and in alignment with the core principles. 

This structure prevents capture by ideology. If someone begins to distort or selectively apply the values - say, always interpreting them to benefit one group or political stance - their reasoning can be challenged, dissected, and rejected by others in the community. It is a form of built-in resistance to corruption.

Most moral systems fall apart not necessarily because their core values are wrong, but because the people interpreting and applying them are either unaccountable, dishonest, or inconsistent. Jewish ethics, through centuries of practical development, has built a system of moral reasoning that includes safeguards against this. To gain respect, the top authorities must be experts in the process, well versed in other fields and of impeachable moral standards. 

The third layer is what gives this moral system its staying power. It acknowledges human fallibility and creates a structure that rewards honest reasoning, respects dissent, and allows course correction.

A secondary but important benefit is that by keeping the system and logical processes transparent, anyone who learns the system can apply the rules themselves to any situation they find themselves in. When they are presented with any information - a newspaper article, a video, a lecture, an advertisement - this process gives everyone the tools to evaluate them objectively. People try to manipulate us all the time, whether to join their cause or to buy their toothpaste. the Jewish moral methodology helps defend us all against being seduced into doing things that might not align with our own values. 

This is not just a framework—it is a blueprint for moral civilization.

It is Jewish, yes—but it is also universal, precisely because it demands clarity, integrity, and accountability from everyone who engages with it.

This is a mature, time-tested system of ethical trust. And anyone willing to uphold its standards is welcome to participate.

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* I want to emphasize that while these tiers have existed for centuries, this may be the first time they are described in these terms. 

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