There are countless Jewish ways to respond to the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. These past several weeks, I have thought many times of Genesis 2:15, “Adonai Elohim took Adam and placed him in the Garden of Eden, to tend it and to keep it.” How terribly we have failed at fulfilling this first, most basic human responsibility!But beside our anger and anguish, our fear and sadness for the people of the Gulf region—the oil spill raises complex ethical and legal questions. How does Judaism address them? There were no oil spills in the days of the Bible or of the classical Jewish texts. As with any modern dilemma, we must mine our tradition for useful parallels.
For example, take this passage from the Mishnah, the compilation of Rabbinic law edited in Roman Palestine around 200 C.E.:
One may not set up an oven within a house unless there is a space of four cubits above it [to the ceiling]. If he sets it up in an upper room, the floor beneath it must be three handbreaths thick.... If it causes damage [by setting fire to the house and neighboring houses], he is liable to pay for the damage. But Rabbi Shimon says: The reason for all of these measurements is that [if they are observed], one is not liable to pay for any damage. (Bava Batra 2:2)A house fire was a major economic and public safety hazard in ancient cities, and so the Rabbis regulate the use of ovens indoors. But what if one follows all the regulations, and a fire still results? Here the Rabbis disagree. The unnamed consensus says the oven owner must pay for the damage. Rabbi Shimon argues that if the oven owner has taken all the precautions required by the Rabbis, he is free of liability, no matter what damage may result from an accidental fire.
Now as then, we rely on government regulation to keep us safe from the unintended consequences of others' actions. A large part of our anger at the oil spill is based on the sense that adequate regulations were not in place or worse, that they were subverted or ignored.
This mishnah teaches us that in Jewish law, regulation is legitimate and necessary to protect the public welfare.
As for Rabbi Shimon? The Talmud and later Jewish law side against him. Even when one complies with all regulations, one is liable to pay for any damage accidentally caused. Just as in our day, regulation is no substitute for personal and corporate responsibility.
For discussion: As you know, most of the law in the ancient Jewish sources has been set aside in Reform Judaism. Should we still try to learn ethics from those sources?
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If the ethical teachings are relevant and still reasonate with issues of our time, which it appears from your passage that they do, they can form the basis for discussion and thought. If they do not serve as a framework, we are disregarding the traditions upon which our present day observance is founded. We ultimately may disagree with the teachings (as have Rabbis and teachers throughout time), but they offer a starting point for discussion.
ReplyDeleteI think we should indeed still study and learn from these sources. But with regard to the specific post, what makes the ethcial viewpoint Jewish? Is it just because the source is a Jewish text or is there some inherently Jewish or uniquely Jewish aspect of the commentary? It would seem to me that any "ethical" commentary, Jewish or not, would respond in the same vein.
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ReplyDeleteIndeed, there are many different ways to understand what makes a text or an idea Jewish. In this case I would argue that an ethical idea does not have to be unique to Judaism in order to be Jewish. Care for the disadvantaged and the environment, for example, are Jewish values, even though they are also values of many other cultures and systems.
As for your question about whether any ethical system could come to a different conclusion in this case: I think it could. One could say that following the letter of the law is all that ethics requires, and if accidental damage results, society as a whole is responsible. Or one could say that the powerful have an ethical right to use resources however they see fit.
Those, of course, would not be Jewish ethics.