Rabbi Harold M. Schulweis Sermons

What does Friedreich Nietzsche have to contribute to the celebration of Passover? Nietzsche, the philosopher of proto-Fascist sentiments, is considered to be one of the great philosophical intelligences of the late 19th century. In preparing for Passover, I found it helpful to reread Nietzsche's Genealogy of Morals and Beyond Good and Evil. It clarified the revolutionary character of the Passover experience. To understand the heart of Moses, it helps to understand the mind of Pharaoh.

Nietzsche, who died in 1900, practiced philosophy with a hammer. He sought to undermine what he thought to be the hypocrisy of European morality. The moral ground of our western ethical system, Nietzsche argued, was rooted in Judaism. And the essence of Jewish ethics is "sklavenmoral" slave morality.

What is the origin of what we call "good" and "bad"? Where do guilt and conscience come from? According to Nietzsche there are two primary types of morality: "master" and "slave" morality. The first kind he calls "herren morale" – the morality of the master, the warrior, the king, the ruling class, the pharaoh. It portrays the morality that springs naturally from the mind and heart of the strong and is driven by the "will for power,” the will to dominate. What is good and what is bad is not determined by objective criteria but by people in power. Masters ascribe the "good" to that which is potent and the "bad" to that which is impotent.

A renowned philologist, Nietzsche offered etymology as evidence of the origins of moral values. Why, for example, is "noble" a term associated with good? We call good noble because it is judged so by the nobility. Nobility and aristocracy define for us what is good. They call "villainy" evil because, not coincidentally, the term derives from the Latin "vilain,” the village peasant. The German word for bad is "schlecht,” a term related to "schlicht" which means plebeian, someone who comes from the lower classes. The chief terms of our moral vocabulary originate in the accidents of class and social structure. The human psyche is expressed by the pleasure of domination. The "will to power" in the case of the aristocracy is the "will to overpower.”

The second kind of morality, "shklavenmoral,” is contrived by the weak, the poor, the frail. This culture of the slave is a "herd morality.” The slave, envious of the master, would secretly love to hold the rod, whip and chain and give orders and commands. Being powerless, the slave can only resort to trickery to sabotage the master. The slave bears ressentiment against the masters, and with subtlety turns the tables on them. With artful guile, the slave introduces unnatural notions such as pity or compassion or feeling or caring in order to subvert the natural, healthy, dominating instincts of the strong. How clever of the sparrow to convince the hawk that it is evil to devour sparrows. How clever of the lamb to convince the lion that it is evil to consume the lamb.

But in truth, no animal has conscience. Conscience is an invention of the human slave. Conscience is unnatural, the consequence of the slave's manipulation designed to immobilize the strong. The weak take their revenge against the masters by the subtle transvaluation of all values  – "Umwertung der aller werte.”

Nietzsche writes of the genius of the Jews and Judaism. Jews were born slaves and they succeeded in changing the meaning of good and bad. To the master,"good" means powerful and excellent, and "bad" means weakness. But to the slave, "good" means care, concern, compassion, love, pity and "bad" means humiliation, domination, repression. The natural way of the master is to live according to nature, "red in fang and claw.” The slave insists that human beings are to live according to God's nature, patient, compassionate, forgiving and loving.

Judaism, Nietzsche maintained, is responsible for the cultural revolution that stems from the anger of impotence. It comes from those "who are denied the real reaction, that of the deed and who compensate with an imaginary revenge" (Toward A Genealogy of Morals, 10). Master morality says yes to nature, slave morality says no. Who is right and who is wrong? Nietzsche answers "There are no moral phenomena, only interpretations of moral phenomena.” Morality is a subjective matter and depends upon strength, power and status. If you are strong and well positioned in society, your philosophy will favor Nietzsche and Machievelli, and before them, Callicles and Thrasymachus.

In his Genealogy of Morals, Nietzsche pays a begrudging compliment to Judaism and to Jews: "All the world's efforts against the aristocrats, the mighty, the holders of power are negligible by comparison with what has been accomplished against those classes by the Jews - that priestly nation which eventually realized that the one method of effecting satisfaction on its enemies and tyrants was by means of a radical transvaluation of values, which was at the same time of the cleverest revenge.” Only the Jews dared to suggest that which is counter to master morality:  "The wretched are alone the good; the poor, weak, the lowly are alone the good; suffering the needy, the sick, the loathsome are the only ones who are pious, the only ones who are blessed, for them alone is salvation. But you on the other hand, you aristocrats, you men of power, you are to all eternity the evil, the horrible, the covetous, the insatiable, the godless; eternally shall you also be unblessed, the cursed, the damned.”

Nietzsche maintained that books of law and ethics are the works of the establishment, and reflect the interests of the strong and the powerful. The Bible appears as the notable exception. For the Bible is not written from the point of view of the oppressor but that of the oppressed. The biblical God is concerned with the disenfranchised submerged community. According to a Midrash, God says to the people, "Be good to My children and I will be good to you. And who are My children? The widow, the orphan, the poor, the stranger in thy midst.” Therein lies is the radical moral character of Judaism, and the world wide significance of the Exodus story. The Exodus is the root experience of Judaism. Against Nietzsche's adaptation of the Darwinian survival of the fittest, his insistence that all people are not equal, nor can ever be equal, Judaism in its genesis declared that every human being is created in the image of God. While in the book of Genesis we read of the many creatures that are created "each according to its kind,” when referring to human beings, there is no mention of men and women of different kinds. All human beings are of one kind, all created by the breath of God.

Passover is the celebration of morality beyond class or social status. Far from the revenge of the slave, it announces the emancipation of morality from any and all classes. There is one law for the strong and for the weak; one law for pharaoh and one law for Moses (Exodus 12:49; Leviticus 24:22; Numbers 15:16).

The implications of the character of the Passover revolution is clarified in the way the tradition relates itself to the slave, the most powerless of all human beings. In Greek and Roman law, the fugitive slave who was recaptured was branded with a red hot iron. In Greece, the slave was regarded as "an animated tool.” In the Bible (Deuteronomy 23:16) the master is told: "Thou shalt not deliver unto his master a slave that has escaped from his master unto thee, in the midst of thee in the place which he shall choose within one of thy gates, where it liketh him best thou shalt not wrong him.” That which was written in ancient times was still debated in our country in and throughout the late 19th century.

To understand the unique character of Judaism and its sharp contrast with Nietzschian morality, one has to follow what the rabbinical tradition did to crystallize Biblical law. The Bible tells us that the Jewish people were treated "with rigor” (Exodus 1:13)/  Following the codification of rabbinic law in his Mishna Torah, Moses Maimonides explains that Jewish law declares that if one owned a Hebrew slave, one is not to treat him with rigor. What is meant by "rigor"? Rigor is illustrated by giving work assignments to servants without fixed limits, to say, "Hoe under the vines until I arrive.” Rigor means assigning a servant to work that is unnecessary, to tell him to "dig up the place" where there is no need to do so, or to "warm or cool a glass of water for him even if he does not need it.”

The rabbis further expanded on the protection of the dignity of the servant-slave. You may not make a servant do menial tasks; tell a servant to carry his master's clothes after him to the bath house, 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 other is in the city. For is it not written, "he shall go out from thee and in dwell in the midst of thee in the place which he shall choose within one of thy gates where it liketh him best” (Deuteronomy 23:17)?  Therefore, the sages themselves concluded, "he who buys a Hebrew bondman is as if he has bought a master for himself.”

The section of Maimonides' Mishna Torah that deals with the proper relations with servants and slaves concludes with a remarkable paragraph. Though Pharaoh treated the children of Israel with rigor, and it is technically permitted to do so to a heathen slave, one must nevertheless treat the heathen slave with mercy and wisdom. "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." Maimonides ends this ruling with a quotation from the book of Job in which Job confesses his conscience before God. "If I did despise the cause of my manservant or my maidservant when they contended with me. Did not He that made me in the womb not make him? Did not One fashion us in the womb?" (Job 31:13 f)

Such sensibilities flow from the revolution of Passover, the utter rejection of "herren moral,” the repudiation of the humiliation of others, the elevation of all humanity and the insistence that to live as a free person is to live in imitation of God's ways of pity, compassion, mercy.

At times, a tradition may best be appreciated through reading its opposition. "It is the Jews who started the slave revolt in morals; a revolt with two millennia of history behind it, which we have lost sight of today simply because it has triumphed so completely" (Beyond Good And Evil).

That which Nietzsche bemoans as slave morals, "the desire for freedom, the instinct for happiness and the refinements of the feeling of liberty,” is our pride and the glory of civilization. Read Nietzsche, then open the Passover Haggadah and you will see the uniqueness of the Jewish heart and mind.

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