EXOD905 See [[EXOD332]] Exodus 19:6 nation OXFORD 38

SHOW FULL EXCERPT

EXOD907 See [[EXOD332]] Exodus 19:6 nation OXFORD 38

SHOW FULL EXCERPT

EXOD908 [Irving Greenberg argues that] In our era, the third era of Jewish existence [the biblical era being the first; the rabbinic era the second], the Covenant was shattered in the Holocaust. Following Elie Wiesel and the Yiddish poet Jacob Gladstein, who wrote that "The Torah was given at Sinai and returned at Lublin" [the site of the death camp Majdanek], Greenberg recognized that the Holocaust had altered our perceptions of God and humanity. Greenberg argues that the authority of the covenant was broken in the Holocaust, but the Jewish people--released from its obligations--chose voluntarily to renew the covenant. "We are in the age of the renewal of the covenant. God was no longer in a position to command, but the Jewish people were so in love with the dream of redemption that they volunteered to carry on the mission." Our choice to remain Jews, Greenberg argues, is our response to the covenant with God and the restatement of the response to Sinai: "We will do and we will hear" [this verse]. The ethical task of Jewish existence is to re-create the divine image and the human image defiled during the Holocaust, to respond to death by creating life, and to continue the journey of the Jewish people in history--in short, to bring the redemption. Greenberg established several ethical imperatives that emerge from the Holocaust: the first to confront evil, for not to confront it is to repeat it. He applies this maxim both to the religious antagonism of Christianity to Judaism and to the denial of their complicity in the Holocaust by secular states and institutions--banking, insurance, and industry. Second, the Holocaust may not be used for triumphalism: "Those Jews who feel no guilt for the Holocaust are also tempted to moral apathy. Religious Jews who use the Holocaust to morally impugn every other religious group but their own are the ones who are tempted thereby into indifference at the Holocaust of others.... Israelis... are tempted to use Israeli strength indiscriminately." (Greenberg, Clouds of Fire, Pillar of Smoke" in Eva Fleishner, ed., Auschwitz Beginning of a New Era: Reflection on the Holocaust (New York: KTAV, 1977; repr. in part in Contemporary Jewish Theology: A Reader, Elliott N. Dorff and Louis E. Newman, eds. (New York: Oxford, 1999), pp. 396-416. (By Michael Berenbaum, "Ethical Implications of the Holocaust")

SHOW FULL EXCERPT

EXOD922 See [[EXOD332]] Exodus 19:6 nation OXFORD 38

SHOW FULL EXCERPT

EXOD924 See [[EXOD332]] Exodus 19:6 nation OXFORD 38

SHOW FULL EXCERPT

EXOD966 See [[LEV1062]] Leviticus 25:36 interest OXFORD 46

SHOW FULL EXCERPT

EXOD1024 In Hilkhot De'ot 1-3, Maimonides expounds the Aristotelian virtues (e.g., temperance, generosity, bravery), legislating them under the rubric of the commandment, "Thou shalt walk in His ways" (Deut 28:9). The general ethical commandment of Hilkhot De'ot is thus a commandment of imitatio Dei. Now, since only one who knows God's ways can walk in them, it is clear that the general ethical commandment of Hilkhot De'ot is predicated not on the ethics of rules, but on that based on Reason. In Hilkhot Yesode ha-Torah we are commanded to study the sciences in order to fulfill the commandments relating to the knowledge of God; and in Hilkhot De'ot we are commanded to act morally as a result of that knowledge. The Law, as codified by Maimonides, is not content with an ethics based on habit, but commands an ethics based on Reason. The commandment to walk in God's ways is also a charge to do acts of hesed, since God's ways are those of hesed [this verse]. (By Warren Zev Harvey, “Ethical Theories among Medieval Jewish Philosophers”)

SHOW FULL EXCERPT

LEV16 The offerings at the Mishkan in the Wilderness and at the shrines in Shiloh and Jerusalem are mostly grain, fruit, and meat, the foods that spring from the soil of the land of Israel. Even pancakes--"fine flour mixed with oil and spices, then turned to smoke upon the Altar"--are a path to God. This practice taught that the relationship adam and adamah was the expression of relationship with God. So it is not surprising that biblically, and then in rabbinic tradition, elaboration of proper and improper foods, what was and what was not kosher to eat, took on immense importance in defining a sacred life. Animals described by their relationship to earth, sea, and air embodied into intimate human relationship those three primal aspects of God's process of creation. Separating mammalian foods of life ( milk) and death (meat) became a marker of sacred imitation of God Who gave life or decreed death. Although rabbinic Judaism focused on the sacred uses of the mouth to chant words of prayer and passages of Torah and midrash much more than eating as a way of connecting with God, choosing what to you eat never lost its sacred power in rabbinic practice. Not until modernity became a central theme of much of Jewish life did "secular" Jews and "Reform" Jews put aside eating as a sacred connection with the Earth and God. (By Arthur Waskow, "Jewish Environmental Ethics: Intertwining Adam with Adamah")

SHOW FULL EXCERPT

LEV38 … Judaism's approach to criminal law is a system that demonstrates the value of a structure that has absolute prohibitions (e.g., The Ten Commandments), affirmative obligations (e.g., the duty of a witness to testify) [this verse, Numbers 5:5-8], and interpretive commentary (including, Midrash Halakhah, Mishnah, Talmud, and later rabbinic teachings in codes and legal rulings). In itself, the structure has been replicated in many criminal justice systems with the adoption of criminal codes, interpretations by the judges, and regulations guiding application of the code. These transform criminal sentences from the arbitrary decisions of judges to the rule of law.

SHOW FULL EXCERPT

LEV167 See [[GEN140]] Genesis 1:28 fertile OXFORD 314

SHOW FULL EXCERPT