Drawing on the work of the anthropologist Richard Schweder as well as on rabbinic sources, Moshe Koppel divides the various regulations Judaism imposes on its adherents into three groups, which, respectively, enforce fairness, loyalty, and restraint. Correlatively, violations of these rules are harm, disrespect, and degradation. Although all societies have taboos in each of these categories, today’s liberal cosmopolitans put a disproportionate value on fairness, while Jewish tradition tends to regard them as close to equal. Koppel illustrates his point by referring to two archetypal figures from his own life—a religiously observant Holocaust survivor named “Shimen” and a Jewish graduate student named “Heidi”:

Shimen . . . wouldn’t say kiddush over a stolen bottle of wine. He knows that under certain circumstances one can violate a prohibition in order to observe a positive commandment, but it would never occur to him that this principle would include violation of duties to other people. . . . So, Shimen does not regard the fairness foundation and the loyalty and restraint foundations as being exactly equal.

Likewise, Heidi shares Shimen’s revulsion at disrespect and degradation. She shares Shimen’s instinctive sense that incest [a violation of restraint], for example, is wrong. Similarly, she agrees that speaking ill of one’s deceased father [a violation of loyalty], even if nobody is harmed by such speech, is wrong. She is as revolted by cannibalism, [another violation of restraint], as any conservative would be, even if the deceased has died naturally and willed his body for that purpose.

So Heidi is not completely insensitive to the loyalty and restraint foundations [of morality]. . . . [But] in Heidi’s culture, fairness is given much greater importance than loyalty and restraint. . . . When two different moral foundations rub up against each other, fairness always wins. Thus, if homosexual acts are regarded as dissolute, as they were in Heidi’s culture until recently, while restrictions on such acts are now seen as causing undue harm to homosexuals, the outcome is clear. The very idea of dissoluteness sounds archaic to Heidi. Similarly, if intermarriage is regarded as a betrayal of tribal loyalty, as it was in Heidi’s culture until recently, while restrictions on intermarriage are now seen as intolerant, the resolution is again obvious. The very idea of tribal loyalty sounds bizarre to Heidi.

Yesterday, the Iranian foreign minister flew to Geneva to meet with European diplomats. President Trump, meanwhile, indicated that cease-fire negotiations might soon begin with Iran, which would presumably involve Tehran agreeing to make concessions regarding its nuclear program, while Washington pressures Israel to halt its military activities. According to Israeli media, Iran already began putting out feelers to the U.S. earlier this week. Aviram Bellaishe considers the purpose of these overtures:

The regime’s request to return to negotiations stems from the principle of deception and delay that has guided it for decades. Iran wants to extricate itself from a situation of total destruction of its nuclear facilities. It understands that to save the nuclear program, it must stop at a point that would allow it to return to it in the shortest possible time. So long as the negotiation process leads to halting strikes on its military capabilities and preventing the destruction of the nuclear program, and enables the transfer of enriched uranium to a safe location, it can simultaneously create the two tracks in which it specializes—a false facade of negotiations alongside a hidden nuclear race.