Why Does Judaism Need So Many Rules, and What Do They Have to Do with Ethics?

In the 19th and 20th centuries, Jewish philosophy began to take on a relatively new question: what is the purpose of the numerous commandments that God gave to Israel, and of the system of civil and ritual law known as halakhah? The question isn’t about the reasons for particular commandments, but for the commandments in general. More specifically, Jewish thinkers tried to determine whether halakhah should be considered as separate from ethics, intrinsically ethical, or something else entirely. Yonatan Brafman discusses the origins of this inquiry with J.J. Kimche, and the very different answers provided by two 20th-century figures: the Romanian-born rabbi Eliezer Berkovits and the eccentric and controversial Israeli public intellectual Yeshayahu Leibowitz. (Audio, 66 minutes.)