GEN1012 Remaining different and still loving those who are different is at the heart of Judaism. Perhaps this concept was most demonstrated in the Bible by Abraham.  Abraham’s essential characteristic was Chesed-kindness.  There was one group of people whose essential characteristic was the opposite of Abraham’s, as they were mean-spirited, insensitive, and actually nasty.   Yet, when God wants to kill these Sodomites for their abominable behavior, it is the kind-hearted Abraham who fights his natural tendencies to root out such evil people, lacking any kindness, from the world. Rather, Abraham asks God to let the city’s inhabitants live.   Why? Although these people represented everything that Abraham abhorred, they were still human beings and deserved “tolerance,” even though they were so different and abhorrent to Abraham.   This is the ultimate Jewish tolerance of non-Jews.   AMJV 353

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GEN1014 We should pray for the welfare of others regardless of their shortcomings. … Abraham preached the doctrine of hospitality to wayfarers, whereas these cities persecuted wayfarers and outlawed any display of kindness toward them.  Even though the people of Sodom negated all of his teachings, Abraham nonetheless pleased with God on their behalf.  He, the truly God fearing man Genesis 22:13, dared to bargain stubbornly with God for the Sodomites.  We stand amazed at the vigor and tenacity of his entreaties for the sake of these wicked and undeserving men.  (Rabbi Avigdor Miller in Behold a People, p. 46; see Michtav MaiEliyahu, vol. 2, p. 181).   PLYN 76-77

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GEN1013 The Torah makes it clear that its greatest heroes were concerned with all suffering, not just that of their own people. [This verse]. Later, when Moses sees the Midianite male shepherds mistreating Midianite female shepherds trying to water their flock, he stands up for the women and secures their rights.  Exodus 2:16-17.  It is fitting, therefore, that Jews have played such a prominent role in leading the campaign to stop the genocide in Darfur.   TELVOL 2:287-8

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GEN1016 The sages Genesis Rabbah 49:9 suggested that Abraham was referring to [immoral conduct that brings dishonor to God’s law as a code of justice and compassion] when he challenged God on His plan to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah if this meant punishing the righteous as well as the wicked: “Far be it from You [chalila Lekha] to do such a thing” [this verse]. God and the people of God must be associated with justice. Failure to do so constitutes a chillul Hashem. SACKS 196

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GEN1015 The Rabbis understood Abraham as wanting to preserve God’s “good Name” in the world.  Thus Abraham protested to God that if He destroyed the innocent along with the guilty in Sodom [this verse], people would believe that God treated evil and good people alike, and was therefore unjust.   TELVOL 1:459

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GEN1017 In Western legal systems, justice is an instrumental good, a commodity important for social peace and welfare. That motivation to achieve justice appears in Jewish texts as well, but Jewish sources add another important motive. God demands justice and makes the existence of the world depend on it because God Himself is just. In fact, He is the ultimate judge who “shows no favor and takes no bride, but upholds the cause of the fatherless and the widow, and befriends the stranger, providing him with food and clothing.” Deuteronomy 10:17-18 … It is precisely because God is just that Abraham can call Him to account for His plan to destroy Sodom, regardless of the innocent people in it, with words that ring through the ages: [this verse]. DORFFDRAG 122

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GEN1026 See [[GEN1000]] Genesis 18:19 way AGUS 32-34

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GEN1021 Along with the religious injunction to love God and to obey Him, we find in Judaism occasional expressions of the humanist thesis, that the human conscience is the safe source of the ethical imperative. As rational men, we possess the capacity to judge whether actions are right or wrong, apart from the teachings of Divine Revelation. In fact, Abraham dares to take God to account: “Can it be that the judge of earth will not do justice?” [this verse]. Jeremiah sounds this note with even deeper resonance: “Righteous art thou, O Lord, when I complain to thee; yet I would plead my case before Thee. Why is the way of the wicked prosperous?” Jeremiah 12:1  The entire drama of job revolves around this axis—Job cannot and will not surrender the light of his conscience on the altar of the conventional faith that God rewards the righteous and punishes the wicked, and somehow Job is right, while his ”pious” friends are wrong. That the demands of conscience are self-evident and self-validating is the belief that runs like a golden thread through the writings of the classical prophets. It is justice that God wants (Amos), or love (Hosea), or faith (Isaiah), not sacrifices or blind acts of obedience. Micah sums it all up in the saying that God desires us “to do justly, to love mercy and to walk humbly with the Lord. Micah 6:6   This emphasis is conjoined with the daring critique of popular religion in Israel. The Will of God, the prophets insist, cannot be but consistent with our human awareness of right and wrong. Their basic axioms may be as follows: “It is the good that God wills, not the opposite--whatsoever God wills is good.”AGUS 11

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GEN1019 … those who argue that challenging God is sacrilegious and heretical betray an ignorance of holy writ.  Let them learn how the outstanding figures of the Bible reacted to injustice and suffering…they objected to God and interceded on the suffering party’s behalf.   Never once did they capitulate and bow their heads in pious obedience. … That the most righteous man on the earth could defend the most wicked and entreat God for clemency is a remarkable example that we should all take to heart.  If you are a biological or spiritual descendant of Abraham, then you cannot stand idly by and watch our neighbor suffer.   That would be a betrayal of everything Abraham stood for.   BOTEACH 206-7

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GEN1022 Despite their differences on some moral matters, Americans expect their law to be moral because they themselves want it to be, even if they, their legislators, and their judges sometimes badly misconstrue what that means – as in the Dred Scott decision of the Supreme Court. In Jewish tradition, the morality of the law is rooted not in a given community’s desire that the law be moral, but in God, who is Himself understood to be moral and to demand morality of us.  There are, of course, problems with that assumption, not only as a result of the Holocaust but because of Job and the many like him who have suffered without apparent justification. Indeed, the Bible itself raises questions about God’s morality, beginning with Abraham’s ringing question [this verse]. That challenge, though, makes sense only if Abraham could presume that God is, in fact, just, and, despite some evidence to the contrary, that is the prevailing view in the Bible and in rabbinic literature.  Moses declares: “The Rock! – His deeds are without blemish, for all His ways are just, a faithful God, with no injustice, righteous and upright is He” Deuteronomy 32:4 Therefore, a sense of morality pervades the Jewish legal system to a greater degree than one expects in a set of laws instituted by human beings. DORFFLGP 17

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