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DEUTERONOMY — 24:11 outside

DEUT1358 Among things that the Torah requires of Jews so that they might become a holy people, it states that a lender may not intrude on a borrower's home to collect on a loan and people may not be talebearers within the community. (Deuteronomy 25:10-14, Leviticus 19:16). Thus a holy people must protect a person's home, reputation, and communication by forbidding both intrusion and disclosure.

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DEUTERONOMY — 25:12 genitals

DEUT1448 Sexual abuse is also the source of much embarrassment. The Torah makes this exceedingly clear (this and next verses). Fight the special justification the woman had for shaming her husband's assailant, the Torah demands drastic steps in retribution for the degradation she caused--although the Rabbis transformed this to a monetary payment that she had to pay. (Sifre on Deuteronomy 25:12; compare M. Bava Kamma 8:1 and B. Bava Kamma 83a, 86a-b, 28a, etc.). (Incidentally, note that, as the Torah recognized, feelings of shame and embarrassment are experienced by men who are sexually abused just as much as they are by women.) The Talmud, when determining the payment to be exact it for the shame involved whenever one person assaults another, uses this case as the paradigm for what embarrassment means. We are humiliated when we are sexually abused – even just touched in our private parts against our will--four we feel that our sense of self has been invaded, that our honor has been compromised in the most fundamental way possible.

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DEUTERONOMY — 25:13 not with us

DEUT1453 God's role as covenant partner and as Israel's Lover probably has the greatest effect on creating moral character within us. We should abide by God's commandments, in part, because we were at Sinai, we promised to obey them there, and we should keep our promises. Thus, as the Haggadah of Passover reminds us, "In each and every generation a person is obliged to view himself as if he himself went out of Egypt" on the trek to Sinai, where God made the covenant with all generations to come: "It is not with you alone that I created this Covenant and this oath [of obedience], but with those who are standing with us this day before the Lord, our God, and with those who are not with us today.… Secret things belong to the Lord, our God, but that which has been revealed is for us and our children forever to carry out the words of this Torah." (This verse, Deuteronomy 29:28). Ultimately, though, God serves to shape moral character by entering into a loving relationship with us. That is, not only is the covenant a legal document, with provisions for those who abide by it and those who do not, but also the covenant announces formal recognition of a relationship that has existed for a long while and that is intended to last, much as a covenant of marriage does. Relationships, especially intense ones like marriage, create mutual obligations that are fulfilled by the partners sometimes grudgingly but often lovingly, with no thought of a quid pro quo return. For God, as for a human marital partner (God is depicted as Israel's marital partner a number of times in the Bible, whether fondly, as in Jeremiah 2:2, or angrily when Israel proves to be an unfaithful lover, as in Hosea 2), we should do what the norms of morality require, and then we should go beyond the letter of the law (lifnim m'shurat ha-din) to do favors for our beloved. In moral terms, we then become the kind of people who seek to do both the right and the good, not out of hope for award but simply because that is the kind of people we are and the kind of relationships we have.

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