The polarity that Judaism established is between man and God, with the love of neighbor as a corollary of the love of God. “Thou shalt love him as thyself, I am the Lord thy God.”7
The love of God presents to man the vision of an infinite task. To love God is not to wallow in sentimentality, but “to make His Name beloved in the world.” 8 It is, therefore, to be loyal to an ideal kingdom that can never be fully realized in this mundane world. This loyalty serves as a check upon the web of political loyalties, in which we are involved.
In this view, the state is ideally not an all-consuming Leviathan; nor is it simply the supreme focus of loyalties; rather it is the social context within which we are to fulfill our obligations to our neighbors and to the Kingdom of God. Thus, religious humanism rejects all concepts of the state, which are based either upon the analogy of a biological organism or that of a machine. The ideal is to have a minimum of force and maximum of persuasion—a society of individual’s responding voluntarily to calls of duty and compassion. The individual is the enduring focus of all values, while the community of which he is a part continues to change. At one time, it was the clan, then the tribe, then the nation.
To the Greeks of old, the Polis was the center and circumference of all laws and all duties. It is difficult for us today to realize that states and nations too are transitory phenomena, like the Polis in the classical world. An Atlantic community may arise in our day, superseding the nation-states. The ideal society is always in the future. We must recognize the tension between the empirical state, within which we belong and by the laws of which we are bound, and that vision of humanity which looms as a potential reality on the horizon.
NATURAL LAW AND THE LIFE OF THE FAMILY
What role does the Law of the Torah play today in the life of the non-Orthodox Jew? It no longer controls his daily life, and the rituals which it prescribes are observed spottily and sporadically by most people. In the absence of universally recognized synods and councils, a tacit consensus allows some sections of the Law to become inoperative and obsolete, except for the ultra-Orthodox. Yet, even today the Law, insofar as it is studied or followed, serves as a symbolic reminder of the duty of obedience to the positive law of the community and of reverence for the moral-spiritual Law of God. In Judaism, the law of the land is sacred, if it is enacted on the basis of equality for all citizens—“The law of the government is law.”9 At the same time, we are called upon to be more than law-abiding and to go “beyond the line of the law,” in the quest of that “which is good and right in the eyes of the Lord.” The Absolute Law of right and mercy is not merely a distant ideal; it is a living reality, as firmly fixed in the nature of things as are the physical laws of the universe.
Do we then reaffirm the ancient doctrine of “natural law”?—Yes and no. Yes, insofar as the nature of the spirit in itself is concerned; no, insofar as our total comprehension of these laws is concerned. It is significant that the “Seven Precepts of Noah,” reflecting the universal imperatives of God, were never spelled out in detail.
All the expressions of the human spirit are structured in terms of laws—descriptive and narrative. These are most exact in the domain of knowledge, especially of inanimate matter. Our categories become less accurate in the sciences of life. In the realm of esthetics, we cannot speak of rigid laws, only of norms of design and harmony. There is also a general consensus, if not universal agreement, in some areas of ethical conduct.
Yet, these norms and categories do not encompass the depths of the human situation, which is constantly changing. Even in the case of physical matter, we encounter fresh riddles the moment one or another mystery is solved. The laws that summarize our knowledge are being steadily and subtly transformed by the growth of our understanding. We know that the essence of reality eludes our grasp, even while we employ methods of research which presuppose the iron inexorability of the laws of nature.
We think of God as the source of personality as well as the creator of the cosmos. The affirmation of Divine unity in the “Shema” affirms precisely this mysterious identity of Person and Law in the Divine Being. Every person is a blend of character and freedom, a reliable structure of patterns of feelings, coupled with an unpredictable spontaneity. In the Supreme Being, that we encounter in the glow of love as in the regularities of our existence, spontaneity and invariant law coexist in a mysterious unity.
So, the Will of God is revealed for us in the texture of moral-spiritual laws, as well as in the free and creative flow of empathy, the love of God and man. The two forms of revelation, love and law, must be balanced against each other, with love losing some of its infinite freedom, and the law advancing in its slow and shambling manner toward the new perspectives opened up by the eyes of love.
In the domain of sex and love, we recognize the mystery of Divine creation. We affirm the validity of the command not to abuse God’s greatest gift to us. Our fundamental conviction is that sex belongs preeminently to the whole of our personality; hence, without love and the fullness of self-giving implied in love, it is a travesty and a mockery of our own inmost being. In love, we accord supreme value to the mysterious essence of the person who is the object of our affection. But love is also free and unpredictable; proverbially “blind,” it can be easily abused and delusive. Hence, sex must be fitted within a context defined by law, which safeguards its mystique, its sanctity, fostering the feelings of mutual reverence in the two person’s concerned. Also, since the community is affected by the consequence of sex, no two people can do what they please without affecting society as a whole. The discoveries of modern psychoanalysis have brought fresh evidence to support the belief that the sexual instinct affects the whole of our mental makeup. So, sex cannot be left to the momentary impulse of the individual’s concerned, as exponents of the “new morality” may assert. Too much of the individual and too much of society are involved for any feelings of the moment to be decisive.
But, while the regulation of love belongs within the moral law of God as well as the positive law of the community, the exact specifications of such laws cannot be fixed with finality for all time. Allowance must be made for the changing patterns of social life as well as for the ebb and flow of human sentiments. We find in Scripture a deep awareness of the horror of sexual sins and deviations, but we cannot maintain that the penalties for adultery and sodomy, prescribed in the Bible, are valid today. Yet these are certainly sins; so too, are all extramarital relations—they furtively taint man’s highest expressions with fraud and self-deceit.
In the case of birth-control, we do not concur that “natural law” prohibits the use of contraceptive devices. Here is an example of the failure of man’s imagination to keep pace with the growing complexities of our global problems. We repudiate the notion that the sole function of the sexual act is to produce children. As we interpret the account of man’s creation, the woman was designed to be man’s companion. While it is a Divine injunction “to be fruitful and to multiply,” this command is properly fulfilled, according to the Talmud, when a family possesses two children, according to some, and four children, according to others.
In the Talmud and the Codes, birth-control practices are limited to only a few special cases, those in which the life of the mother might be endangered by pregnancy, or when a community suffers from famine. However, Conservative and Reform Jews have held that a supreme reverence for human life dictates the proper spacing of children. It requires that emphasis be placed on the quality of the mother’s life and on the right atmosphere for the rearing of children. The mere multiplication of human beings is not an end in itself. Society, then, has a positive obligation to further the promotion of birth-control knowledge and the dissemination of whatever aids are available.10
As to abortion, both Philo and Josephus express the sense of horror felt by Jews at such a flagrant attempt “to destroy God’s structure and His Work.”