{"id":60683,"date":"2014-12-06T18:14:10","date_gmt":"2014-12-07T02:14:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=60683"},"modified":"2014-12-06T18:14:10","modified_gmt":"2014-12-07T02:14:10","slug":"whatever-happened-to-right-and-wrong","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=60683","title":{"rendered":"Whatever Happened To Right And Wrong?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><A HREF=\"http:\/\/www.jewishpress.com\/indepth\/opinions\/whatever-happened-to-right-and-wrong\/2014\/12\/04\/\">Elliot Resnick writes<\/a>:<\/p>\n<p>In recent decades it has become increasingly popular in Orthodox circles to answer every question by appealing to halacha. Must I inform a cashier that she has undercharged me \u2013 what does halacha say? May I attend a homosexual wedding \u2013 what does halacha say? Must I return a lost item to a non-Jew \u2013 what does halacha say?<\/p>\n<p>In other words, what matters in the minds of growing numbers of Orthodox Jews is \u201cpermitted\u201d and \u201cprohibited.\u201d Right and wrong barely enter the discussion. Indeed, many believe that permitted equals right and prohibited equals wrong.<\/p>\n<p>Yet no less an authority than the Gemara (Bava Metzia 30b) states that Yerushalayim was destroyed(!) because Jews rendered their judgments based on halacha, ignoring the Torah\u2019s exhortation (Devarim 6:18) to go beyond the letter of the law. As Rav Yoshe Ber Soloveitchik famously said, \u201cHalacha is the floor, not the ceiling.\u201d In other words, halacha represents the bare minimum a Jew must do. Indeed, according to the Ramban, the specific dos and don\u2019ts of the Torah leave enough room for a Jew to lead a degenerate life. He can curse to his heart\u2019s desire and gorge himself like a pig and truthfully claim that the Torah neverexplicitly prohibits these acts.<\/p>\n<p>That\u2019s why, the Ramban writes, the Torah contains a general admonition to \u201cbe holy\u201d (Vayikra 19:2). To be holy means to take into account an entire realm of behavior not necessarily covered by the Torah\u2019s detailed mitzvos or the specific injunctions of halacha. It means taking seriously such mandates as \u201cyou shall walk in God\u2019s ways\u201d and \u201cyou shall cleave unto God.\u201d It means studying in depth what some have called the \u201cfifth book of the Shulchan Aruch\u201d \u2013 those unwritten rules and behaviors that a true student of Torah ought to perceive between the lines of the explicit.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Elliot Resnick writes: In recent decades it has become increasingly popular in Orthodox circles to answer every question by appealing to halacha. Must I inform a cashier that she has undercharged me \u2013 what does halacha say? May I attend &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=60683\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[59],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-60683","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ethics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60683","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=60683"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60683\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":60684,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60683\/revisions\/60684"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=60683"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=60683"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=60683"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}