Kosher Concubines

What I find most interesting about articles such as this one --
see http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_article.php?id=5086 --
is how such cases force us -- or should force us -- to re-investigate our values,  or perhaps more correctly, our value structures.

We are comfortable with Rambam's famous distinction between chukkim and mishpatim, the laws we understand and the laws we don't understand. Everything goes well, though, only as long as these two categories are miles apart, as long as the chukkim are not understandable and do not even enter into any aspect of our natural moral consciousness. What to do, though, with a law that challenges this natural moral consciousness -- especially when there are those who promote this position as the one to be adopted? What does it say about our natural moral consciousness? What does our natural moral consciousness say about the law?

My objective in presenting this article is not to initiate debate on the correctness or incorrectness of this psak. It clearly has halachic merit even as others may also disagree. I offer it, however, as a demonstration of the dialectic that is, in my opinion, at the centre of Torah.

Rabbi Ben Hecht