EXOD1027 See [[EXOD234]] Exodus 15:26 healer DORFLOV 232

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EXOD1026 See [[DEUT1670]] Deuteronomy 32:4 perfect DUTIES 139-41

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EXOD1025 Rabbinic thinkers employed the Hebrew term middot in describing types, temperaments, characteristics, and dispositions of people. The most famous of all the middot are the 13 Divine attributes of God, as expressed in Exodus 34:6–7. These include mercy, loving–kindness, and forgiveness. A person possessing good traits was called a baal middot, which was understood to mean one who possessed good qualities. [Author then presents numerous Jewish sources commenting upon various character traits, proper behavior and etiquette.]

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EXOD1029 See [[LEV1107]] Leviticus 26:3 If LEHRMAN 160

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EXOD1021 "Compassion is an extremely noble trait. It is one of the thirteen traits attributed to the Holy One, Blessed be He, as it is written: 'Compassionate and gracious.' [this verse]. All that one can do in cultivating this trait, he should exert himself to do. Just as one would want compassion in his time of need, so should one have compassion on others who are in need." Orchot Tzaddikim The moral precepts of Judaism demand that we be compassionate to every soul. Singled out repeatedly as especially needing our compassion are the poor, widows, orphans, and others in need. The Torah repeatedly hammers away at our obligation to help those who are vulnerable and needy. The tradition is so insistent that we be living vessels of compassion that the Talmud asserts that "anyone who is not compassionate with people is certainly not a descendent of our forefather Abraham." Beitzah 32b

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EXOD1032 We need to know how God does chesed in order to discover the signposts we are to follow in our lives. In the Torah, where thirteen attributes of God's compassion are listed [this verse], among them is "abundant in kindness." The medieval commentator Rashi explains that the phrase "abundant in kindness" tells us that God shows kindness to all those who are in need of sustenance, even those who are not deserving of this help. Here we find our model for chesed. When we act with sustaining generosity to others not because they deserve it but because we are being kind, beyond any calculation of what they have earned from us or what we can get in return, then we are doing kindness in emulation of God's way of loving-kindness. Don't worry about loving the poor; your job is to clothe them. If people you know are ailing in any way, don't just think or even pray for them-take your time to go visit them. Offer your comfort to the bereaved in a house of mourning. And burying the dead is the classic example of active loving-kindness par excellence; since a corpse has no capacity to reciprocate, caring for its needs is purely generous kindness.

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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”)

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EXOD1028 See [[EXOD1010]] Exodus 33:13 show SPERO 35

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EXOD1031 There is a tension built into morality itself which results from an implicit conflict between two moral principles: justice and mercy. Justice implies fairness based on the principle of desert. The wicked are to be punished, and the good are to be rewarded according to the notion of "measure for measure." The rights of all are to be upheld; the needs of all are to be met. Mercy, however, implies a readiness to forgive, a willingness to give up one's rights in love for another. Mercy implies a benevolence which longs to shower goods upon all, regardless of whether they deserve it or not. We shall see in a later chapter that this is one of the fundamental problems in the relationship between Halakhah and morality. More important for now, however, are the implications of this implicit conflict as they bear upon our concept of God. For both justice and mercy are among God's attributes [this verse]. The 103rd Psalm is a paeon to God's compassion ... Yet in Psalm 78, where we read again that God, "being full of compassion, forgiveth iniquity," we were also told that "many a time doth He turn His anger away, and doth not stir up all His wrath." The element of punishment and retribution is not forgotten.

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EXOD1033 What is the nature of the obligatoriness of morality? Why should a person be moral? We indicated earlier that God is the source of the moral commands in the Bible. How shall we understand this? Does it mean that a certain rule is to be deemed moral because God has ordained it, or does it mean the reverse, that God ordains certain rules because they embody moral principles? The latter would appear to be the case in as much as the Torah identifies the "ways" of God by appealing to well-known and apparently approved moral traits. When the "Glory of God" is revealed to Moses, only moral attributes are listed, such as "mercy, long–suffering, and kindness" [this verse]. This would suggest that morality is prior to our knowledge of God not only in an epistemological sense but in an axiological sense as well. But insofar as man can know the essence of God's being, if what he gets to know is a moral essence, then morality would appear to be, in some sense, divine. Morality, therefore becomes obligatory for man, not because of the arbitrary fiat of Divine legislation but because morality, whose value in obligatoriness man has always dimly perceived, is now identified with God, who is absolute value, the prototype of all morality. (Y. Kaufmann, The Religion of Israel, trans. M. Greenberg (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1960), p. 327) In a sense, God has no choice but to ordain moral rules. The moral God cannot command rules that are not moral. "You shall be holy, for I the Lord your God am holy." (Leviticus 19:2) Similarly, because He is moral, you should be moral. It is because of this logic that Abraham with complete confidence is able to confront God with a demand for justice: "Shall not the judge of all the earth do justly?" (Genesis 18:25) The ultimate purpose of man is to be moral but morality is divine. Hence, the ultimate purpose of man is to become like God, to seek fellowship with Him. One can start at the other end and come to the same conclusion. Man ought to seek self-fulfillment, but he is created in the image of God. Let him, therefore, strive to be merciful and righteous. It is in this unique concept of God as possessing a moral nature that there lies the key to our understanding of the grounds of the morality of Judaism.

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