Torah and Rabbinic Compromises with Human Nature

Adler catalogs a series of concessions within Torah law and later rabbinic legislation to the realities of human nature: permission to eat meat after the Flood, the people’s insistence on meat in the wilderness, the law allowing a blood avenger to kill an accidental killer outside a city of refuge, the sacrificial system as an outlet for humanity’s violent impulses, regulated marriage to a captive woman taken in war, and the Torah’s silence on polygamy despite the Garden of Eden’s implicit ideal of monogamy. He extends the pattern into rabbinic law: the sale of hametz before Passover, the pruzbul that circumvents the Sabbatical cancellation of debts, and the relaxed one-witness standard allowing a woman to remarry after her husband’s presumed death. Across both bodies of law, Adler sees a consistent willingness to balance moral aspiration against practical human limits.