GEN988 Why did Jews of the past and why do I think that the Torah and subsequent Jewish law to our own day are not simply human creations but also the record of Jews’ response to God? In part because the Torah portrays it as such, leading our ancestors to believe that God is the source and authority of the law. In addition, as Simon Greenberg has pointed out Greenberg, ‘A Revealed Law,” (reprinted in Siegel, ed., Conservative Judaism and Jewish Law), several phenomena of the ongoing practice of Jewish law can only be adequately understood if we presume God’s involvement in some way. Specifically, the Jews’ “sense of overwhelming awe when they contemplated the grandeur and majesty of the Law” Greenberg, “A Revealed Law,” p. 41 (Siegel, p. 182) is certainly part of the religious feeling motivating those who observe it. Another element in the Jews’ commitment to Jewish law is their conviction that through it they perform a cosmic role in helping God complete creation. The strength of these perceptions of God’s role in creating Jewish law is especially evident in the numerous sacrifices that Jews have made to uphold it; only their belief that Jewish law expresses the will of God can explain their persistence in following it and their willingness even to die for it. Finally, Jews of the past and I myself attach divinity to Jewish law because, as God told Abraham, it helps define “the way of the Lord by doing what is just and right.” [this verse] – that is, it defines a path for life that is spiritually and morally rich, so rich that it is hard to believe that human beings in the ancient past would have been able to formulate it on their own. DORFFLGP 100-1