Making Sense of a Religion of Commandments in an Age of Unlimited Freedom

March 25 2024

In the West today, most people, regardless of religious attitudes, desire the freedom to choose their moral path and the obligations that come with it. Reform Judaism, in the roughly two centuries since it emerged, has always been aware of the tension between the ideas of human autonomy and of divine command. Yet, Rabbi Leon Morris argues, there is a need to “recalibrate” that understanding:

Personal choice needs to shift from being Reform’s central principle to being a starting point. Of course, the ultimate authority in religious life lies with the self. But what do we do with that? If we understand idolatry as the worship of one aspect to the exclusion of the whole, we have arrived at a moment where we in the Reform movement have turned personal autonomy into an idol. We have isolated one aspect of contemporary Jewish life from all the other values that need to live alongside of it.

To find a path forward, Morris turns to a talmudic exegesis of a verse in the book Exodus, which describes the word of God as having been “engraved upon the tablets” that were given to Moses. The rabbis play on the similarity between the words harut (engraved) and herut freedom. Morris comments:

What at first glance seems to be the polar opposite of freedom—the law literally written in stone—is, in fact, the very basis of freedom. The mitzvot also allow us to transcend our mortality by committing our lives to a system that will outlive us, and to a God who is eternal. Commandment and freedom are not polarities. Rather, freedom expresses itself most fully through the opportunity to hear and live the commandments. . . . Such dialectic tension will create an impetus for deep thought, for serious and engaging study, and for creating environments that use liberalism as a way into deeper Jewish engagement rather than out of it.

Read more at CCAR Journal

More about: Freedom, Jewish Thought, Reform Judaism

Egypt Is Trapped by the Gaza Dilemma It Helped to Create

Feb. 14 2025

Recent satellite imagery has shown a buildup of Egyptian tanks near the Israeli border, in violation of Egypt-Israel agreements going back to the 1970s. It’s possible Cairo wants to prevent Palestinians from entering the Sinai from Gaza, or perhaps it wants to send a message to the U.S. that it will take all measures necessary to keep that from happening. But there is also a chance, however small, that it could be preparing for something more dangerous. David Wurmser examines President Abdel Fatah el-Sisi’s predicament:

Egypt’s abysmal behavior in allowing its common border with Gaza to be used for the dangerous smuggling of weapons, money, and materiel to Hamas built the problem that exploded on October 7. Hamas could arm only to the level that Egypt enabled it. Once exposed, rather than help Israel fix the problem it enabled, Egypt manufactured tensions with Israel to divert attention from its own culpability.

Now that the Trump administration is threatening to remove the population of Gaza, President Sisi is reaping the consequences of a problem he and his predecessors helped to sow. That, writes Wurmser, leaves him with a dilemma:

On one hand, Egypt fears for its regime’s survival if it accepts Trump’s plan. It would position Cairo as a participant in a second disaster, or nakba. It knows from its own history; King Farouk was overthrown in 1952 in part for his failure to prevent the first nakba in 1948. Any leader who fails to stop a second nakba, let alone participates in it, risks losing legitimacy and being seen as weak. The perception of buckling on the Palestine issue also resulted in the Egyptian president Anwar Sadat’s assassination in 1981. President Sisi risks being seen by his own population as too weak to stand up to Israel or the United States, as not upholding his manliness.

In a worst-case scenario, Wurmser argues, Sisi might decide that he’d rather fight a disastrous war with Israel and blow up his relationship with Washington than display that kind of weakness.

Read more at The Editors

More about: Egypt, Gaza War 2023