GEN370 Since Jewish ethics find their source in God and are as infinite and eternal as God, they are to be practiced eternally. Not only may I, the person, not do anything unethical to another person or even to an inanimate object – for ethics come from God and are therefore eternal – but Jewish ethics are also subjective and reject the popular concept of “as long as I am not harming anyone what difference does it make what I do? Basically, however, ethical behavior is not governed by the object, the recipient, but rather by the subject, the doer. A person must act properly because proper behavior (ethics) is part of eternity. This reasoning gave rise to a great deal of seeming trivia or minutiae of Jewish halochoh whose underlying purpose is to stress some great moral concept. Thus, there is an halochoh regarding how one should treat the parts of his own body; One should favor the right half of the body over the left; he should shod his right foot before his left, wash his right hand before his left; and he should wash his head before the other pars of his body – and so on. All this because the right half of the body is to be honored more than the left and the head is to be honored before the lower extremities.  Are any parts of the body capable of understanding and appreciating this? And the answer is: Of course not! But the doer, the person, must act ethically not because of the recipient, the object, but because God is ethical always and infinite and man must emulate God and be ethical always whether the recipient appreciates the act or not. Ethics are for the doer, the person; they are subjective and not objective. God, too, is ethical to inanimate objects. For example, the Torah does not reveal the kind of fruit which Adam and Eve ate in the Garden of Eden, because as Rashi says, “The Holy One, blessed be He, does not wish to grieve any creature; that people should not shame it and say this is the one through which the world was afflicted.” The world is hardly ready for ethical practice on this high a plane, namely: to be ethical to inanimate objects. But to a Jew this presents a ready kal vochomer (a fortiori). If one must be ethical to trees and limbs, how much more so must one respect the honor due to a human being? BUILD 206-7