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Mark Washofsky

action(read: torture) in the name of morality. I do not claim that the text and the political value system it expresses are totally foreign to liberals. As I have noted, we are not averse to the notion of“duty” as a primary concept in the discourse of Jewish law. And if we believe in such a thing as“obligation,” if we are prepared to define a particular act or course of behavior as a mitzvah, then we cannot be wholly unsympathetic to the prospect that officers of the law might exert coercive power to induce an individual to perform that which law or morality requires of him or her. I do claim, though, that our own communal narrative— that is, our understanding of ourselves and of the nature of our political community — requires that we deny such a grant of power to the governments of our time. That narrative requires that we read this text metaphorically and not as a literal expression of our aspirations for the world in which we live. By a metaphorical reading, I mean that we might see in this text an expression of Judaism ’s uncompromising demand for righteous conduct and its concomitant denial that the individual possesses a“right” to deny God and to choose evil. Such a reading would preserve the power and significance of this text and others like it in the world of Jewish thought; it would not, however, commit us to the literal application of Rambam ’s ruling as a warrant for torture.

We liberals, moreover, have no monopoly on this sort of metaphorical reading. Our Orthodox co-religionists do it as well. As an example, let us consider a legal issue quite similar to the one we are discussing here. I have in mind the law concerning the recalcitrant husband, the man who refuses to issue a divorce to his wife even when the halakhah would require that he do so. Since the law requires that a document of divorce(get piturin) must be issued of the husband’s free will and consent,’” he is by that very fact empowered, through his refusal to grant that consent, to render his wife an agunah, that is, to deny her the right to remarry. Yet the halakhah also provides that on certain grounds a rabbinical court may both require that a husband issue a divorce and coerce him, with whips if need be, to obey its decree. Although this provision seems a logical absurdity— how, after all, can a person be coerced into doing something“of his own free will”?%— it is justified by the theory that this coercion is simply a means by which to subdue the husband’s evil impulse, which is preventing him from acting upon his natural desire to adhere to the Torah and to the instructions of the Sages.” This theory was clearly developed as a positive response to an evident injustice and a clear abuse by a husband of the powers granted to him by the law. If administered energetically, it would likely offer as