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Mark Washofsky

power in the hands of our political leaders. There may have been a time when the employment of a virtually unlimited range of coercive measures served the interests of justice; today, as I have indicated, the phenomenon is tightly associated in our minds with the most degraded and contemptible regimes on earth. None of this necessarily means that Maimonides was“wrong” in his interpretation of the halakhah and its Talmudic sources. It does mean, though, that the text, if it is to possess any sort of meaning, must be understood metaphorically, as a symbolic expression of the Torah’s absolute demand upon us. But we Jews today do not understand that text, as our ancestors may have done, as a literal warrant for our governments to utilize physical abuse and even torture to compel individuals to toe the moral line. The difference between then and now lies not so much in the words of our halakhic texts but in the narratives with which we convey them, explain them, and provide them with their final justification.

Professor Warhaftig, of course, is entitled to disagree. He may wish to argue for the literal interpretation of Maimonides ’ ruling in order that it might serve to justify the use of torture against suspected terrorists. At the same time, however, he must concede that the text in its literal sense cannot be restricted to cases of terror and of pikuach nefesh. Indeed, Rambam ’s ruling authorizes the power of judicial coercion over all areas of the law and as a means of inducing proper conduct in any matter that the governing authorities think important. To apply this text literally, in other words, is to extend its reach to the entire range of human social behavior. Would Professor Warhaftig take the halakhah to such a point? Would he, in the name of Jewish law, grant to his government the power to bring coercive physical pressure upon any “wrongdoer”— tax evaders, deadbeat parents, habitual violators of traffic laws, individuals who do not contribute their fare share to tzedakah— to toe the moral line as defined by the dominant groups in the society? I do not think that he would want to live in that kind of repressive society.| believe that, were it up to him, he would limit the power of torture to cases where life is truly in danger. Yet the text upon which he relies makes no such limitation. Ultimately, I think that Professor Warhaftig would want us to read Rambam ’s ruling literally, yes, but only to a certain point. To justify such a novel strategy for interpreting the text, he would have to rely upon some theory of interpretation that is based upon our fundamental values, upon our notion of ourselves as an organized society. That theory would be a narrative, the sort of story that we tell about ourselves that instructs us as to the way we read and understand