Differing Defences

By: Jonathan Seidel

Moses vs Abraham: law and ethics 

The haskalah movement sought to engage in scholarship against traditional opposition. Over time this developed into a dangerous deviation from Judaism. There were a handful of intellectuals who though engaged in scholarship and philosophy were opposed to the Jewish enlightenment. Moses Mendelssohn  and Samuel Luzzatto were too such figures and provided defences against the maskilim.

Both sought to ground Judaism in a specific formula denouncing the haskalah trend. Mendelssohn based Judaism in law, a legalistic religion. Shadal saw Judaism as ethical, a moral culture. They personified their positions with ancestral archetypes.      

Mendelssohn emphasises Moses as the founder of Judaism against Shadal’s Abraham as the patriarch. Moses was the lawgiver the core of revelation and rabbinic halakha. Judaism has flourished in the wake of religious obligation. Abraham was the compassionate helper. The basis of social responsibility and care. Judaism is to inspire a moral ethic to the world.

This divide resembles the perpetuated dialectic between two competing notions in Judaism. Moses and Abraham are not only two characters but two archetypes. They represent the law and ethic, halakha and aggadah, particularism and universalism. Shadal’s use of Abraham is a universalistic tone that demonstrates Judaism’s superior morality to the enlightenment’s egoistic nature. Judaism is the teaching that will inspire ethical responsibility. Abraham is the model of caring for others and growing through it. Though he does not specify a universalism and instead wishes to retain the status quo Jewish ethical model, his opposition to the enlightenment project of atticism as a unconcerned individualistic selfish lifestyle does consider the abrahamic model as evidently better on a broader stage. Abraham is the model that everyone should strive for. It is his ideals that empower not some secular philosophy. Alternatively, the particularism of the law is well established in Pauline theology. Judaism is the law and is conditioned for the Jew not the non-Jew. Though there are laws pertaining to others it is on Jewish obedience not non-jewish obedience. Revelation was for the Jew and his decedents, absolving the law is ridding Jewish difference and identity. Moses was the ideal marker of the first Jewish educator and national leader. He brought them to the promised land where they kept God’s commands. 

Abraham is noted as the universalistic patriarch. He connects Judaism Christianity and Islam. Though biblically the story of Abraham is the quest of one family following the failed global attempt, his legacy is of universalistic magnitude. His actions are not regulated to isolated sects but to worldly conduct. His model of kindness and caring is a human impulse. Moses is the leader of the Israelites. Moses though grew up in the the global Egyptian empire sided with the particularistic Jewish sect to lead them out bondage. The law code he provided was rejected by the other two big religions. His legal compatibility is to educate and obey. His actions were for tribal harmony and servitude. Abraham was a rebbe, Moses was a rav.   

Abraham’s sodom protest to God was perpetually modelled in rabbinic literature. Humanity does have a stake in the divine ethos. God’s will is not tyrannical and unreasonable. Man can question and God can change his mind. The exegetical narratives note Israelite protest and God changing his mind. The anthropomorphic poetry highlights the empowerment of man to confront God an argue with him. The people heightened their inner Abraham and stood up for their intuitions. The allegories sections fit with the Abraham model. The allegories breach the canonicity of the law. They offer a human initiative an alternative to the strict black letter divine law. The narrational protest is the Abrahamic response to the divine immorality. The ethical impulse is the human engagement. The mosaic law is filtered by Abrahamic insight.      

Halakhists and poskim continue to fuel this dialectic. The Mosaic law is to be obeyed but the Abrahamic feeling is to ethically corner it. The law is the bedrock action that is formulated with ethical varients. Other factors are taken into account. The law necessitates a wider range of variables that rectifies the semantic textual definition. It fills the law with spirit and prowess. The halakhist takes into account his Abrahamic legacy. He obeys Mosaic law and incorporates the Abrahamic ethic. Meta-halakhic concepts like ‘kaved habriyot’ are Abrahamic. They supply an ethical dimension that embellishes the limited phraseology. Moses as a descendent of Abraham has the legacy encoded in the legal enterprise. Mosaic law itself opens itself up to the possibility of ethical manoeuvring. It is not just the outsider looking in to protest but the flexible function internally. The halakhist has organic tools at his disposal gifted to him by his forefather. 

The great irony is that the law-ethic dichotomy is also presented in the inverse. Abraham is the model of kindness but is also the model of obedience. Abraham heeds God’s call to leave his homeland and is silent when God commands him to sacrifice Isaac. His is the ultimate servant. God tells him to do the unthinkable and he relents. Though there is no formal law or legal teaching, his actions represent the observance. The command is law and later on is codified that one shall not sacrifice his kin. Moses is the model protester and protector. Moses denies God’s offer to lead the people in a lengthy exchange. He pushes God to choose someone else. He also defends the Israelites from God’s wrath at Sinai. He protests God’s destruction after the golden calf incident. In the other vein, the first three Moses stories are about saving others. First he protects the slave from the Egyptian master, then he stops two Jews from fighting culminating in protecting Jethro’s daughters from the male shepherds’ harassment. Moses’ kindness is God’s linchpin of a leader’s qualities. Both characters exhibit legal and ethical characteristics. We highlight one or the other to demonstrate a dialectic when both are candidates of each other.

It is this point that is ironic in Shadal’s polemic against Maimonides. Maimonides carries the synthesised account of law and ethic. His magnum opus Mishneh Torah, a halakhic code, is filled with ethical elements. Many of the laws are ethically charged and he has an entire section—the second of the entire series—on proper model behaviour. People are complex. We construct archetypes to fill a certain paradigm. Yet, characters do fit more with a certain model. Abraham was not a lawgiver, he was a law follower. Moses was a protector, not a preacher. Aaron was Moses’ counterpart. Aaron is even noted as a follower of Abraham. It is not that Moses did not exhibit these traits but it was not his primal cause or purpose. Moses taught the law, Aaron the principles. Maimonides tried to synthesise both in his codex. Maimonides was more a lawgiver than a preacher but he did supply an important ethic for the nation. These archetypes demonstrate the primary mission. It does not negate their other qualities, it simply bolsters their best ones.