- Aside from the obvious issue of getting eternal personal reward and not being a human animal
- Living up to the demands of the Torah elevates the entire world and brings it to its perfection
- Ethical dilemmas resolved
There are some basic principles of morality that are universally agreed upon. Secular ethicists don’t really know where they come from or why we have them, but you could say there is such a thing as moral intuition that is shared by everyone. So we may not need the Torah to determine what IS a moral value and what IS an immoral value in isolated cases. The real problem for the secular person is knowing how to balance two or more moral values when they are in conflict.
The classic case is telling “the brutal truth” which will be insulting and offensive, or lying to avoid insult. Truth-telling is a universal moral value which is clearly superior to lying IF THAT IS THE ONLY FACTOR INVOLVED. But what about lying in order to avoid giving pain to someone? That is also a moral value and it is coming into conflict with the value of truth telling.
So the Torah (and Halacha in general) gives us principles regarding how to chose between conflicting moral values in most situations. By following the Torah’s principles we can be confident that we are not compromising our moral integrity when we sacrifice one moral value for another.
- Comprehensive Ethical living—covering all the bases
When someone is unaware of certain facts, he may do the objectively wrong thing even though he is not to blame and has not compromised his own personal moral integrity. Doing the wrong thing is still something that should be avoided. Example of an adopted child unwittingly turning away his parents when they ask for aid.
Without the Torah telling us Who made the universe and therefore to Whom we owe a debt of gratitude, we would be doing the wrong things in life from an objective point of view because we could not give any credit where credit was due.
- The narrative sections of the Torah give us human role-models by which we can measure ourselves and strive for greatness. Being good and moral is level one. A secular person could be satisfied with just that. But striving for greatness beyond what is strictly ethical is a whole other dimension.
Avraham’s extreme chessed, Yitzchak’s extreme din, Rivka’s extreme chessed despite evil surroundings, Yaakov’s extreme honesty in working, Rachel’s extreme selflessness to give her husband to her sister, Yosef’s extreme resistance to temptation, Moshe’s extreme concern for justice, and extreme self-sacrifice for the Jewish people, Aharon’s extreme acceptance of personal tragedy, etc.
- The same narrative sections also provide human examples of evil which are held up for contempt—The Torah magnifies the sins of the great ones almost to the point of caricature in order to have this effect.
We can more easily internalize the correct values and attitudes and reject the incorrect ones if we see them illustrated clearly and not just be given a long list of rules.
- Without the Torah we wouldn’t know that God takes a serious interest in human affairs—personal and global. We see from the Torah that God has a plan and purpose for this world and has given us an indispensible role in achieving it. The history of the ancient world and the Jewish people is recorded in the Torah for this reason.
This is what making a covenant with Hashem means. The covenant with Noach, Avraham, the Avos, regarding the Land of Israel, regarding the Jews accepting the Torah. All the things that Hashem makes a covenant for means that His purpose of creation must be achieved through it and it will not happen without it. Zechus Avos may run out, but bris Avos can never be nullified now matter how low we go.
