GEN214 Th[e] never-ceasing emphasis on moral perfection is the core of Judaism. This practical sense of our faith looks askance at metaphysical discussions of God and the Universe. Its counsel of perfection is “To know Him in all thy ways”, Proverbs 3:6, to obey His commandments and become God like in the process. Life is given to man by God, and it is his task to shape it after the divine pattern revealed on Sinai. To choose life and to shape it – this is the demand of Judaism. All that we have – body and sul, wealth and want, pain and pleasure, life and death – must become stepping-stones on the road to holiness and perfection; so many rungs on the ladder placed on earth on which to climb heaven wards. The meaning of the words “which God created to do” [this verse] is: He created the world; but it our task to make it and ourselves perfect.  The all-embracing nature of Jewish Ethics takes every aspect of life into its wide net – science and art, industry and commerce, literature and law. They teach that the Messianic age will dawn only when all the forces of material, intellectual and social life have been harnessed into the service of humanity, when all the prophetic ideals and the visions of the seers of humanity, spread large across Holy Writ, have been realized. Zion’s heights of human perfection will have been attained when holiness sis combined with duty, and when all service is performed from disinterested motives. This is Jewish teaching in excelsis, in its most exalted form. LEHRMAN 29-30