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By Fred Reiss, Ed.D
 WINCHESTER, California—God tells Noah that he will bring a world-wide flood to destroy all of humanity and Noah remains silent. When Abraham learns that God plans to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah, he pleads for the lives of its inhabitants by asking God if He will destroy the good people with the bad. Through classic argumentation, Abraham gets God to agree to save the city if there are at least five good people there. Is it possible that Abraham had a conscience, but Noah, the most righteous man in his generation, did not?
There is neither a biblical Hebrew word for conscience, nor a word for conscience in the Talmud. Possibly the closest pre-modern Hebrew expression for the construct “conscience” is the Hebrew expression, Yireh Ha-Shem, “the fear of God,” or Yireh Shamayim, “fear of heaven.” The Modern Hebrew word for conscience is matzpun, meaning hidden. Originating from the same root (tzadik-fey-nun) is the Hebrew word matzpān, meaning compass. Coincidently, this root also means north, and a compass always points in single direction— northward. It would seem that to the Modern Hebrew mind, the conscience is equivalent to a moral compass, always pointing in the right direction.
If nothing else, religion teaches some form of morality. Judaism in particular imposes morals through the Ten Commandments, the Holiness Code (Lev. 17-26), and tort law, to name just a few. One might conclude that one does not need a conscience if Jewish law is obeyed, since Jewish law points a person in the right direction. Yet, the Bible describes a wide range of behaviors from God-fearing people: Abraham
fought with God, Moses killed a man, Korah rebelled against Moses, and King David arranged to have Uriah killed in order to marry his wife, Bathsheba.
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Rabbi Harold M. Schulweis, author of Conscience, and spiritual leader of Valley Beth Shalom, in Encino, California, provides a powerful look at how conscience directs our behavior to obey or disobey God’s directives and the commands of governments. It is well known that when the Nazis put their “final solution to the Jewish question” into action, many people of good conscience secretly stepped forward to hide Jews or abet their escape. They are called the righteous gentiles.
Schulweis tells the stories of avowed anti-Semites who also saved Jews from the Nazis. Hela Horska, a devout Polish Catholic and overt anti-Semite openly accused the Jews of disloyalty. Yet, Hela turned her home into a way station that hid Jews during World War II. There is documentation that she saved at least fourteen Jews. Zophia Kossak-Szczuka, another Polish Catholic, and a member of a radical anti-Semitic Catholic organization, founded Zegota, the council for aiding Jews during the Holocaust years. Zegota is credited with saving between forty and fifty thousand Jewish adults and another two thousand five hundred Jewish children. The list goes on.
By bringing together biblical tales, post-biblical discussions, the thoughts of contemporary philosophers and theologians, and modern stories of conscience, Schulweis presents the reader with thoughtful material. So what is conscience, and what are the rules for obeying and disobeying? Do these same rules apply to God as they do for humanity? The answers are not so easy, and Schulweis concludes with a chapter on the development of the conscience and ethical character development. We may never know why people choose to obey or disobey contrary to authority. Perhaps the best we can do is to recognize the truth of Rabbi Simeon, who said in the Ethics of the Fathers, “Be not wicked in your own esteem.”
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