Posts Tagged ‘religion’
Coronavirus in Jewish Law and Thought
- The sages say “turn it [the Torah] over and turn it over for you will find everything in it”.
- So what are the key Jewish messages in relation to the present state of the outbreak of coronavirus?
- There is a Biblical requirement to look after one’s health. That involves, in particular, not deliberately exposing oneself to unnecessary danger.
- There is also a rabbinic dictum that those involved in doing meritorious actions do not come to harm as a result.
- And there is another rabbinic concept based on a verse in the Psalms (God guards the simple) that those who do things through habit without really thinking whether or not they are good or bad for them, can look for a degree of divine protection.
- Rabbi Moshe Feinstein applied the latter principle to those who were already addicted to smoking when the dangers began to be publicly known apparent in the mid-20th century; and he used it to excuse their continuing in the habit of smoking, even after he was clear that it was halachically prohibited to begin smoking because of the biblical injunction to guard one’s health.
- Rabbi Moshe Sternbuch has written that the principle of divine protection for the simple-minded could reasonably be applied when Rabbi Feinstein originally wrote about smoking, but that he would no longer have applied it now, given that it is no longer a question of an unknown degree of risk but a known and definite damage to oneself every time one smokes a cigarette.
- (Yes, it is true that there are still people who look like orthodox Jews and who smoke cigarettes: the answer to the conundrum is that they are not orthodox Jews, any more than are those who dress like orthodox Jews and fiddle their taxes or cheat on housing benefit by having their father-in-law buy a house through a limited company so they can sign that they are not related to their landlord.)
- So, where we are at the moment with the coronavirus spread in the UK, it is entirely reasonable to carry on life as normal and in the knowledge that Jewish law and thought requires reasonable precautions, but neither requires nor supports paranoia.
- So we go about our ordinary business but without exposing ourselves unnecessarily to obvious dangers, such as travelling without particular need into areas in the world where there are hotspots of the virus.
- Obviously that adds up to common sense: but isn’t it nice to know that God agrees?
- Two thoughts to add.
- First, there is a halachic principle requiring obedience to the law of the land. So if the law of the land requires self-isolation, for example, for people travelling back from a particular country, whether or not one thinks that is sensible or necessary as a matter of health and hygiene, we follow the law of the land as both a secular requirement and a religious obligation.
- Secondly, trying to look for positives in the present experience, traditional Jewish values place enormous emphasis on kindness to others, which was the foundation of the religion that Abraham discovered: and any public health outbreak creates multiple opportunities for kindness in looking after each other; so the present experience is a spiritual opportunity as well as a time of anxiety.
Crises and Conscience – Preparing for Choices
1. A number of survivors from the Costa Concordia either woke up, or should have woken up, with slightly troubled consciences this morning.
2. According to survivors, attempts to prioritise women, children and the infirm in boarding the lifeboats were obstructed by able-bodied men insisting on remaining with their families.
3. Those who succeeded in forcing their way into life-boats may never know whether, or to what extent, they were responsible for others’ trauma, injuries or even possibly death.
4. Perhaps they won’t think about it or care; or perhaps they will justify their actions to themselves.
5. And it is, of course, easier for me to hope and imagine that I would have behaved better in the same circumstances, than to be sure of it; as the Ethics of the Fathers (Pirkei Avot) say, don’t judge someone until you stand in his or her place (which is of course impossible).
6. But thinking about all this does remind me of what I believe to be a central purpose of religion; to learn how to control myself in trivial ways and at unimportant moments so that I will be able to display self-control in significant ways and at times of crisis.
7. The Chofetz Chaim said that no choice in life is difficult to make – but it is often very difficult to know when I am making a choice, or what choice I am making. To analyse my own behaviour, and the options open to me, carefully and critically at a time of crisis requires a habit of self-examination and self-discipline.
8. People who behave like animals at the best of times are unlikely suddenly to discover human decency at the worst of times.
9. People who, through religion or in other ways, aim during “normal” times to rise above the purely animal instincts and to direct their behaviour through self-control and thought for others, have at least a chance of being able to behave decently under pressure.
10. If I push through a bus-queue today, I am more likely to push through a life-boat queue tomorrow; if I think about decency while waiting for the bus, I increase my chances of behaving decently while waiting for a life-boat.
11. That may not affect my success in life – many people who behave like the worst kind of animal appear to achieve the best kind of material success; but I believe that it will affect my chances of nurturing inside me something that is not too closely bound to the purely material world to live on after my physical death.
Happy Big Bang Day
1. It is very exciting that scientists have managed today to begin a challenging and long-awaited experiment into the nature of matter. Here are a few random thoughts generated in my mind by this morning’s launch of the protons.
2. First, it is worth saying again that there is no conflict between religious belief and scientific experiment. Indeed, the reverse is the case. The psalmist urges us to consider the magnitude and wonder of God’s work of creation, something that we can do more and more effectively the more science reveals to us about it. The Chofetz Chayim explains that the more we appreciate the nature of the creation, the more we can perceive the magnitude of its intended purpose. The founder of our religion, Abraham, came to his revolutionary belief in a single God by examining the nature of the universe, albeit that he had only his own senses to use to conduct the examination.
3. Secondly, there appears to be a possibility that when this morning’s experiment is continued to the collision phase the resultant explosion will destroy the world. Mildly troubling, but much less so to a religious person than to a secular scientist. The rabbis advise us to live each day and each moment as if it were our last – because it always may be. Easier said than done, of course: but at any rate the addition of one more possible reason why my life may end at any moment adds little or nothing to the importance of aiming to be ready at all times to give an account of my life.
4. Thirdly, the experiment demonstrates both the futility and the value of science. Scientists hoping to be given the meaning of life by colliding a couple of protons are likely to be disappointed: nothing that science has yet achieved (evolutionary theories included) has been successful in discovering, nor is there reason to expect that it will be successful about discovering, anything about the “why” of the world as distinct from the “how”. A search for the “why” by flailing about in the universe perpetrating random acts of molecular violence is likely to be futile. But application of increased knowledge of the “how” (evolutionary theories included) to advance our understanding of how we can develop and improve the world, in a partnership with God, to the welfare and benefit of everyone in it, is always of the utmost value from a religious perspective.
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