In the afterglow of ‘freedom day’, Boris Johnson wants us all to think in terms of personal responsibility, rather than formal rules. Yet from a traditional Jewish perspective, the two have never been mutually exclusive. Rules are essential, Judaism says. Leave it up to individual conscience alone and the result is anarchy. Laws, which we call halacha, engender the commitment necessary for taking personal responsibility. There is no better illustration of this than the experience of recent months.
Law in its purest form represents a set of non-negotiable mandatory instructions. Yet, supposedly, contemporary society finds the entire notion of rules and regulations governing everyday life difficult to accept. In a liberal democracy, the concept of personal freedom, or what Sir Isaiah Berlin called ‘negative freedom’, the right to freedom from interference by others, reigns supreme. We cherish the freedom to choose our path in life and make personal decisions for our own future however we see fit. The idea that extensive rules governing the minutiae of our lives should be seen as normal is outrageous.
The debate over the relaxation of Covid regulations over recent months has thrown these societal assumptions on their head. Millions of people around the country reacted with concern and worry at each stage of unlocking, particularly when approaching stage four of the government’s roadmap. Even those who are ostensibly at very low risk from Covid remain concerned about the freedom to do things as simple as entering a crowded bar or sitting next to someone unmasked on the Tube. Why?
The most logical explanation is that society has come to realise that if there is a certain fear of harm, a system of law designed to protect against coming to that harm is the best way of dealing with it. The loss of personal free choice is outweighed, in these circumstances, by the benefits gained through keeping the rules, whether to ourselves, those closest to us, or society at large. Personal freedom remains an important, essential value. It is simply outweighed in these circumstances by a more important value — the need for rules to protect us from harm.
Transfer this into the spiritual realm and it becomes much easier to understand basic principles of Judaism. Judaism is a system of Divine law. Take, for instance, the second-century polemical work, Against Apion, written by the Roman Jewish historian, Flavius Josephus, as a defence of Judaism against contemporary criticism by proponents of Greek philosophy. The author asserted: “The greatest part of mankind are so far from living according to their own laws, that they hardly know them.” With Jews, by contrast, “if anybody do but ask any one of them about our laws, he will more readily tell them all than he will tell his own name”. The reason for this, argued Josephus, is simply “the consequence of our having learned them immediately as soon as ever we became sensible of anything, and of our having them, as it were, engraven on our souls.”
As evidenced by the purpose of this very work, however, almost since its inception Judaism has suffered accusations of being overly legalistic, focused on the rules themselves, rather than the supposed self-evident moral sensibility which should naturally underlie every human action.
A particular source of ire and, sadly, often contempt, has been the relentless focus on detail. Does it really matter if things are tied in one particular way, foods are cooked in a certain way or consumed at a certain moment in time?
The detailed legislative system around Covid, however, and the intriguing societal concerns regarding the relaxation of the system, goes some way towards understanding why Judaism is the way it is. Personal freedom is an important value. But the risk of spiritual harm and moral corruption resulting from unbridled freedom outweighs the benefits of that personal freedom. Like the rules around Covid, the minutiae of halacha exist as a regulatory framework, essential in order to prevent people from spiritual harm. Just as with Covid regulations, they invade the most personal of spaces and govern even the most private of social interactions. Yet, also in the same vein as the Covid experience, they are designed to engender and inspire us to take personal responsibility, rather than lose our moral compass on the way towards satisfying our ever-expanding self-interests in life. Achieving that moral freedom in life is surely one that makes all the sacrifices worthwhile.
Rabbi Dr Yoni Birnbaum is rabbi of Kehillas Toras Chaim synagogue
