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    Scientific Advance and The Jewish Moral Conscience: Yitzchok Adlerstein

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    Yitzchok Adlerstein discusses the Jewish perspective on scientific advancement and the moral conscience. He argues that while scientific progress should be applauded, Judaism's role is to serve as a conscience and remind society that not all changes are acceptable. Specifically regarding cloning, Adlerstein says that while theoretical models may exist where it is not inherently problematic, halacha will ultimately determine permissibility. The Jewish position is that life's sanctity comes from God, not scientific mystery, and cloning's purpose must be examined carefully.

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    Scientific Advance and The Jewish Moral Conscience: Yitzchok Adlerstein

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    Yitzchok Adlerstein discusses the Jewish perspective on scientific advancement and the moral conscience. He argues that while scientific progress should be applauded, Judaism's role is to serve as a conscience and remind society that not all changes are acceptable. Specifically regarding cloning, Adlerstein says that while theoretical models may exist where it is not inherently problematic, halacha will ultimately determine permissibility. The Jewish position is that life's sanctity comes from God, not scientific mystery, and cloning's purpose must be examined carefully.

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    Yitzchok Adlerstein discusses the Jewish perspective on scientific advancement and the moral conscience. He argues that while scientific progress should be applauded, Judaism's role is to serve as a conscience and remind society that not all changes are acceptable. Specifically regarding cloning, Adlerstein says that while theoretical models may exist where it is not inherently problematic, halacha will ultimately determine permissibility. The Jewish position is that life's sanctity comes from God, not scientific mystery, and cloning's purpose must be examined carefully.

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    Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
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    227 views4 pages

    Scientific Advance and The Jewish Moral Conscience: Yitzchok Adlerstein

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    outdash2
    Yitzchok Adlerstein discusses the Jewish perspective on scientific advancement and the moral conscience. He argues that while scientific progress should be applauded, Judaism's role is to serve as a conscience and remind society that not all changes are acceptable. Specifically regarding cloning, Adlerstein says that while theoretical models may exist where it is not inherently problematic, halacha will ultimately determine permissibility. The Jewish position is that life's sanctity comes from God, not scientific mystery, and cloning's purpose must be examined carefully.

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    YITZCHOK ADLERSTEIN

    Scientific Advance and the


    Jewish Moral Conscience

    S ome four hundred years ago, critics of Rabbinic Judaism mocked the
    Talmud’s account of the creation of the mule. The gemara in Pesah.im
    54a seems to applaud Adam ha-Rishon for crossbreeding a horse and
    donkey on the first moz.a’ei shabbat. How could the Rabbis endorse a
    violation of the law against kil’ayim?
    Maharal pooh-poohed their objection. The point of the passage, he
    explained, was to instruct us about two different levels of Creation—or
    the difference between what must be and what can be.1
    Primary Creation produced the key players, the dramatis personae
    of the global drama. God cast these players Himself, and takes direct
    credit for their performances.
    There are also, however, some understudies. Part of secondary Cre-
    ation, their existence is made possible, albeit not necessary, by the
    processes and laws that spawn the primary ones. God did not create
    them directly, but allowed for their appearance.
    Man, says Maharal, shows the full reach and development of his
    God-given intelligence by probing the great wisdom that God designed
    as part of His world. When Man unlocks the rich potential left unex-
    pressed by primary creation, we should celebrate, not fret. Adam’s bold
    experiment was a dramatic success.
    What do we make, then, of the Torah’s forbidding us to hybridize?
    Elementary again, claims Maharal. What is good for the rest of the

    YITZCHOK ADLERSTEIN directs Project Next Step, an outreach effort of the Simon
    Wiesenthal Center, and holds the Sydney M. Irmas Chair in Jewish Law and Ethics at
    Loyola Law School. Rabbi Adlerstein is editor of the electronic journal Crosscurrents.

    184 The Torah u-Madda Journal (9/2000)


    Yitzchok Adlerstein 185

    world is not necessarily good for the Jews. Let the rest of the world keep
    making mules. More power to them. The Torah has a different agenda.
    Maharal exposes a tension that illuminates much of our reaction to
    galloping biotechnology. We can—and must—applaud the expansion of
    human wisdom. We must also recognize that God expects Kelal Yisrael
    to be guardians of a sense of reserve regarding overly invasive changes in
    the natural order. In a word, part of our mission is to remind the world
    that not everything is up for grabs. The apparent randomness and plas-
    ticity of the empirical world is often undergirded by Divinely-decreed
    fixity, much of which is in our ultimate interest to preserve. (R. Samson
    Raphael Hirsch saw this principle of le-mineihu—“according to its
    species,” that is, the deliberate design of all organisms according to their
    distinct roles—as a great idée fixe of the Torah.) As the world flexes its
    creative muscles, we must be available to be its conscience—if only by
    preserving and valuing a different ethic.
    To be sure, the slippery slope towards devaluing human life is
    already well greased. I do not believe it a coincidence that the first great
    master of the secrets of DNA, Sir Francis Crick, proposed decades ago
    that life be defined as age seventy-two hours, in order to allow medical
    savants to decide whether each neonate was “worthwhile” to maintain.
    A negative assessment could then allow physicians to take whatever
    course of action was deemed necessary or expedient, without assuming
    the burden of terminating a “life.” Also not by coincidence, Crick, rec-
    ognizing that his proposal was somewhat radical, advocated as a modest
    first step banning the teaching of religion to children. Ha-mevin yavin.
    We will not be presumptuous in assuming that part of our divine avo-
    dah is to protect society from the Cricks of the world.
    On the other hand, we must be quick to point out that the sanctity
    of life has nothing to do with its mystery. Human life is precious
    because God said it is, because He paired its existence with a neshamah
    elyonah—and not because we can’t figure out where it came from. We
    must strenuously reject the popular notion that the “artificial” manipu-
    lation of genomes “leaves no room” for God to grant a soul to the
    cloned or manipulated being. Such a position is the product of religion
    at its worst, where God is invented or invited in to compensate for what
    we cannot comprehend. It is the opposite of the position of strength
    that Torah Judaism advocates, in which we appreciate God through
    greater understanding, not through greater ignorance.
    It is a truism within our system of miz.vot that the more pedestrian
    something appears, the more likely it is to be elevated through multiple
    186 The Torah u-Madda Journal

    commandments. Witness the plethora of Torah dicta surrounding eat-


    ing, something whose inner significance is rarely pondered by cows. We
    are poor competitors to the reproductive success of rabbits, and yet our
    attempts at procreation are the subject of one of the first three questions
    addressed to us on our individual Judgment Day (Shabbat 31a). Some-
    how, the urge to propagate has a noble, as well as an ignoble, side to it.
    There are good and bad reasons for bringing offspring into the
    world. They can be lovingly created, as part of a commitment of two
    people to bring more servants of God into the world. Or they can be
    produced recklessly, without any thought or responsibility at all.
    There are also ugly reasons. In the opening rounds of the cloning
    controversy, a new level has been added to the Temple of Self. Especially
    in my state, California, where the mind-body dilemma has long been
    decided persuasively in favor of the latter, many have looked to the
    emerging technology as a way of achieving immortality. Leave a bit of
    chromosomal material around, and have the scientists start you all over
    again! As if humans could be reduced to their phenotypes alone! It is
    our responsibility to remind the world at large that the essence of what a
    human being is has little, if anything, to do with his or her body.
    At the same time, I don’t believe that the idea of creating life entire-
    ly in vitro need necessarily be treif. While it is inviting to think that the
    importance the Torah attaches to reproduction inheres in the bonds of
    spousal bonding and familial ties, there may be other models. I invoke
    Maharal (again!), in his explanation of the Judgment Day passage. The
    reason he attaches to reproduction lacks all of the usual and expected
    arguments about giving and family. Having children, he argues, is (or
    can be) an exercise in moving from particular to general, thereby escap-
    ing the limits and boundaries associated with the former. It is another
    way in which Man chooses to identify more closely with his spiritual
    side (which also knows no boundaries and limits) than with the physi-
    cal. Getting a little boost from cloning technology may not diminish the
    value of extending one’s life beyond its natural borders.
    Theoretical models come and go, however. The imprimatur of
    Divine Will comes in the form of miz.vah. A religious couple deliberating
    about their reproductive options, it would seem to me, should be able to
    reduce the issue to a single question: Are we motivated by our own ego
    needs, or by a Divine calling? The touchstone with which we answer that
    question is whether Ha-Kadosh Barukh Hu calls it a miz.vah or not.
    So the bottom line, really, is halakhic. We can cheer from the side-
    lines as the theoreticians expand human knowledge. Whether we
    Yitzchok Adlerstein 187

    become clinicians depends on what the posekim say. To be sure, the


    debate has just begun. One of the most prominent voices, though, R.
    Yosef Shalom Elyashiv, shlita, has opined that the miz.vah of procreation
    cannot be fulfilled through cloning.2 If this view becomes halakhic con-
    sensus, much of the work will have been done for us with regard to this
    dimension of the topic.
    I leave it to greater minds to decide when we should cross the divide
    between conscience-raising and legal sanction. It may indeed be wise
    (although, I’m afraid, probably futile) to support public policy decisions
    that limit activities that are likely to further erode the respect that the
    common man has for life. We are, as a people, no stranger to the notions
    of censorship and imposed restriction, and it should be part of our duty
    to assure the greater community that communal self-discipline (includ-
    ing by governmental agencies, at least in theory) is not unthinkable.
    Ironically, while large complexes like sheep bodies can be cloned,
    the still, small voice of conscience cannot. Moral sensitivity is bred one
    small step at a time. It is a more daunting task, but one that is familiar
    to us as Jews.

    Notes

    1. Be’er ha-Golah (Jerusalem, 5731), 37.


    2. As reported to me by Dr. Abraham Abraham, Director of Internal Medicine,
    Shaare Zedek Hospital, Jerusalem.

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