From the Rabbi’s Study
The Passover Revolution
If we believe something and everyone agrees with us, then it’s safe to say that we’ve got an obvious truth, right? No, actually, it’s not safe at all. For instance, for millennia people believed that there were many gods, and all that time it wasn’t obvious that there was only one. We take many ideas for granted now just because everyone believes in them. It staggers the imagination to consider how revolutionary these ideas must have been when they were first introduced.
Consider, for instance, the first principles of morality. We’re inclined to believe that all religions teach the same fundamentals, and that they differ only in detail and execution. Wrong! Morality seems to be different now top to bottom from what it was in ancient times.
Rabbi Harold Schulweis of California points this out in an article that appeared in Moment magazine in 1996, that introduced readers to some thoughts of the late-19th century German philosopher, Friedrich Nietzsche.
Nietzsche wrote that there were two kinds of morality: master morality (“herrenmoral”) and slave morality (“sklavenmoral”). Each morality was designed to advance the interests of its class.
Master morality sought to dominate, and to secure the power of the slavemaster. This morality said that what was right was whatever a master could do with impunity. When power dominates, then the strong gain in strength and the fortunate gain in privilege. Things get better and better for the ruling class. Society is strengthened, he said, when the weak are suppressed. If the strong were compelled to aid the weak, then their strength would be divided and compromised rather than enlarged, and the very possibility of greatness in any class would be undermined. The willingness to dominate is itself the mark of greatness, said Nietzsche, who praised the master morality for giving every advantage to those most willing and able to exercise power.
Master morality is subjective. The master decides what is right and wrong. The slave could try to decide that too, but it wouldn’t help him, because he lacks the power to effect his will. In the master morality, mastery is itself a virtue.
The slave morality, said Nietzsche, holds that slavery is a virtue, and that one should prefer to be among the oppressed rather than among the oppressors. (Interestingly, this is precisely the advice of Maimonides, the great Jewish sage.) Since slaves have no power to wield, they try to effect their will by imposing a universal morality that would bind the master. The slave would be under the same universal code, but he alone would have nothing to lose by it. Writes Rabbi Schulweis: “Envious of the master, the slave would love to hold the rod, whip, and chain and give orders and commands. But, powerless, the slave can only resort to trickery to sabotage the master. With artful guile, the slave subverts the natural, healthy, dominating instincts of the strong. How clever of the sparrow to convince the hawk that it is evil to devour sparrows.”
For the slave, then, conscience is a moral force. For the master, lack of conscience is. “To the master, ‘good’ means powerful, and ‘bad’ means weakness. But to the slave, ‘good’ means caring, compassion, and pity; ‘bad’ means humiliation, domination, and repression.”
Nietzsche wrote that it was the Jews, born of slavery, who subverted the natural order and undermined master morality throughout the world. Now everybody accepts the morality of compassion. It’s the slave’s revenge.
How mercilessly the Torah attacks “master morality.” The entire community is commanded to protect its very weakest: “the widow, the orphan, the poor, and the stranger in your midst” (Deuteronomy 16:11). And the attack is expanded by the rabbis. As Rabbi Schulweis summarizes the edicts of the Sages: “You may not make a servant do menial tasks, tell a servant to carry his master’s clothes after him to the bathhouse, or have him take off the master’s shoes. The servant must be treated as an equal. The master may not eat white bread while offering the slave black bread. The master may not drink old wine and offer the slave new wine or sleep on down feathers while placing the servant on straw. He may not reside in the city and his servant in the country or live in the country while the servant is in the city.… Therefore, the Sages themselves concluded, ‘He who buys a Hebrew bondman is as if he has bought a master for himself.’” As for the heathen slave, Maimonides writes, “One cannot speak to him cruelly. One cannot humiliate him or shame him, neither with your hand nor with your words. Because, while the Bible allowed slavery, it did not allow humiliation.”
When we left Egypt, we rejected the moral system that had until then been accepted universally. Even we ourselves under the whips of Egypt agreed to Pharaoh’s morality. We knew of no other; we just wanted our hands on those whips. But God would have none of it, and He chose as our leader the only man at the time who rejected the master system. Our own master, Moses, taught the morality of the slave, and through him God set up a moral code whose basics are accepted today by the entire civilized world. It has come to define civilization. Through the Exodus the ways of Egypt were confounded entirely, and both Pharaoh and his moral system are now overthrown (“Horse and rider has He dashed into the sea” [Exodus 15:1]).
Pesach, therefore, did not just free our people. It set on earth the very foundation of God’s rule. The victory of God’s morality over Pharaoh’s is so absolute that we don’t even notice it. The memory of Pharaoh’s world has been all but obliterated. Everyone now accepts the moral system introduced by this bedraggled band of slaves. It appears to us as simple common sense, like the unity of God. For after all, don’t all moral codes protect the weak and restrain the strong?
Yes, they do. But they didn’t used to. And they wouldn’t now, if not for the events that we celebrate on Pesach.
Quote: Nietzsche wrote that it was the Jews, born of slavery, who subverted the natural order and undermined master morality throughout the world. Now everybody accepts the morality of compassion. It’s the slave’s revenge.
