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 on CCAR Journal: https://www.ccarnet.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/Freeing-Ourselves-from-Kants-Dichotomy_Leon-Morris.pdf