Judaism is in trouble. More and more of the unacceptable is being done and said in its name. This causes not only infinite damage to Judaism’s great message but also a terrible desecration of God’s name. What’s worse is that is being displayed in front of millions of non-Jews, many of whom are repelled when they witness terrible scenes in which Jews attack each other in the name of Judaism. Media outlets around the world portray religious Jews in most distressing ways. While it cannot be denied that anti-Semitism plays a role and tends to blow the picture out of proportion, it is an unfortunate fact that much of it is based on truth. Jews and non-Jews alike are dumbfounded when they read that leading rabbis make the most shocking comments about them, demonstrating gross arrogance and discrimination. Even worse, many publicized rabbinical decisions also seem to lack all moral integrity.
Twenty years ago, Yigal Amir assassinated Prime Minister Yitzchak Rabin in the name of Halacha (Jewish law), claiming that the prime minister was a rodef(someone who is attempting or planning to murder) because he put all citizens of the State of Israel in mortal danger once he participated in the 1993 Oslo accords. Amir therefore believed that the prime minister deserved the death penalty according to Jewish Law. In 1994, Baruch Goldstein killed 29 Arabs in a mosque in Chevron because he believed that Judaism obligated him to wreak havoc in order to ensure that Arabs would stop their terrorist attacks, which had by then killed thousands of Jews. Several years ago, the book Torat HaMelech was published. Its authors, learned rabbis, argued that it was permissible to kill non-Jews, even without proper trial, once they have become a serious potential security threat to Jews. And so on.
One wonders how it is possible for such ideas to be expressed, or carried out, in the name of Judaism and Jewish law. Anyone who has the slightest knowledge of Judaism is fully aware that nothing within genuine Jewish law could condone, or even suggest such outlandish ideas and immoral acts.
Why does this happen?
Throughout the years, several rabbinical authorities made major, dangerous mistakes by reducing Judaism to solely a matter of law, a kind of Pan-Halacha. They sincerely believed that Judaism consisted only of rigid rules. In this way, they are paradoxically similar to Spinoza, who was of this opinion and therefore rejected Judaism, calling it obsessive, a type of behaviorism, and an extreme form of legalism (Tractatus Theologico-Politicus III, IV and XIII, for example). That Spinoza made this claim is one thing, but the fact that these learned rabbis agreed with him is more than a sorry state of affairs. It is an unforgivable blunder. Nothing is further removed from the truth than turning Judaism into a legal religious system without spirit, poetry and musical vibrations. This is proven by the nearly infinite amount of religious Jewish literature that deals with non-halachic matters.
The main reason for this terrible mistake is that these rabbis failed to study the basic moral values of Judaism as they appear in the book of Bereishit(Genesis). As is well known, with the exception of a few cases, this book does not contain laws; it is mainly narrative. To appreciate this, one needs to consider the following.
In this first biblical book, we encounter Avraham, Yitzchak and Yaakov as the foremost players. They are considered the first Jews in history. But this makes little sense. How could they have been Jews if the Torah was only given hundreds of years later to Moshe at Mount Sinai? Would it not have been logical to have given the Torah to Avraham, Yitzchak, Yaakov, and their wives long before Moshe? Only upon receiving the Torah would they have been real Jews! So why was it withheld from them? (Chazal [See Mishnah Kiddushin 4:14] state that they did observe the commandments. For a discussion, see Talmudic Encyclopedia, vol. 1, pp. 36-37.)