GEN1579 Attending to the physical and psychological needs of mourners is clearly a boon to them, but the tradition saw it also as a favor to the deceased. Burying the dead is even more obviously an act of love and care, because the deceased can never pay you back.   DORFFWITO 164

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EXOD224 The meaning of Tikkun Olam. Jews today speak of tikkun olam as a central Jewish precept, and concerned for literally “fixing the world” by making it a better place through activities often called “social action” is certainly at the heart of a Jewish perspective on life. That meaning of the term tikkun olam, however, is itself very new in Jewish history. The first occurrences of the phrase tikkun olam in the Jewish tradition appear in the literature of the classical Rabbis. They are the people whose work first appears in the Mishnah, Midrash Halakhah, and Tosefta, (the earliest compilations of the oral tradition, all edited around 200 C.E.) and then in the Talmud (edited around 500 C.E.) and the various books of the Midrash Aggadah, which were edited from the fifth to the twelfth centuries C.E. The Mishnah records that the Rabbis instituted a number of changes in Jewish law “for the sake of tikkun olum.” In these first usages, the term probably means, as the Reuben Alcalay and Evan-Shoshan dictionaries suggest as their first definitions, guarding the established order in the physical or social world (with derivatives t’kinah meaning “standardization” and t’kinut meaning “normalcy, regularity, orderliness, propriety”). In the twelfth century, Maimonides expanded on this idea considerably, claiming that the Rabbis created all of the rulings, customs and decrees--that is, the entire rabbinic legal tradition--in order “to strengthen the religion and order (fix) the world.” In this first meaning of the term, then, rabbis order the world by making Jewish law apply fairly and effectively to their contemporary circumstances. They thus structure the world with proper proportion and balance. The next time the phrase is used with a different meeting occurs in the second paragraph of the Alenu prayer, which was first used in Jewish liturgy in the fourteenth century. That paragraph is much less often sung than the first and therefore is much less well known, even though it is the core of the prayer’s meaning. The first paragraph says that we have a duty to praise God for making us Jews a distinctive nation and for creating and ruling the world. The second paragraph then states “Therefore we hope in You, Adonai, our God, soon to see the glory of Your might, sweeping idolatry away so that false gods will be utterly destroyed, to fix [perfect] the world by [to be] the Kingdom of the Almighty (letakken olam b’malkhut shaddai) so that all human beings will pray [call out] in Your Name, bringing all the earth’s wicked back to You, repentant. Then all who dwell on earth will acknowledge and know that to You every knee must bend in every tongue pledge loyalty. Before You, Adonai, our God, they will bow and prostrate themselves, and they will give honor to Your Name. All of them will accept the yoke of Your Sovereignty, and You will rule over them soon and forever; for sovereignty is Yours, and You will rule with honor always, and forever, as it is written in Your Torah [Exodus 15:18], “Adonai will rule forever and ever.” Furthermore, it is said [in the Prophets, specifically, Zachariah 14:9], “And Adonai will be acknowledged Sovereign over the whole Earth, on that day Adonai will be one and His Name one.” Notice several things about the concept as it appears in this paragraph. First, because God chose us, created the whole world, and rules it alone (that is, without the aid of any other god), we hope and pray that God will fix the world. This is definitely not the modern notion that we human beings are called to do that. Second, the fixing about which the prayer speaks is not what moderns call “social action.” It is rather theological--that Adonai will be recognized by all human beings (literally, “all creatures of flesh”) as the one and sole God. God's rule and therefore God's moral standards will become absolute and universal, forcing “all the evil [people] of the earth” to turn to God and, presumably, change their ways. A fixed world will thus involve universal recognition and acceptance of a clear and exclusive standard of behavior, with everyone fixing his or her attitudes and behavior to conform to that standard. But while this prayer envisions a moral renaissance as a corollary to universal recognition of one and only one God, it does not speak of a world rid of war, poverty, dissention, and disrespect--except, perhaps, implicitly. That is, everyone following God's rules and aspiring to God's ideals for human beings may well produce a world in which those limitations no longer exist. However, that kind of moral ideal is not the explicit message of the prayer. It is, rather, an expression of hope for a theological ideal, that of monotheism.

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EXOD1074 In all these ways [i.e., preceding discussion/list - AJL], then, Judaism can and does contribute to our moral knowledge and action. There are no guarantees in life--except for death and taxes, as the quip goes--and so religious people may falter and sometimes even misinterpret religion to justify immoral acts. But Judaism provides a multitude of ways to help us know how to act morally and to motivate us to do so. It thus increases the probability that Jews can be the holy people that G-d expects of us: “Indeed, all the earth is Mine, but you shall be to Me a Kingdom of priests and a holy nation” (Exodus 19:6).

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EXOD435 The Two Basic Filial Duties: Honor and Respect. Two of the Torah’s commandments establish the foundation for the Jewish concept of parent-child relationships--the duties to honor one's parents and to fear or respect them: “Honor your father and your mother, that your days may be long upon the land which the Lord your God is giving you. (Exodus 20:12). “You shall fear every man his mother and his father, and you shall keep My Sabbaths: I am the Lord your God (Leviticus 19:3). In typical rabbinic fashion, the Rabbis immediately try to define what each of these commandments entails and how they differ from each other. As a boy, I always thought that the commandment to honor my parents applied to me and my young friends and that it commanded us to obey our parents. That, however, is not how the Rabbis define it. Instead, they determine that it applies to adult children who have positive duties (that is, things they must do) to care for their elderly parents when they cannot care for themselves. As long as the parents have financial resources, the children may use them to carry out this obligation, but once the parents’ money runs out, the children must use their own resources to finance the services required by this commandment. The duty to respect (or fear) one's parents, on the other hand, involves negative duties to refrain from actions that would reduce the parents psychologically and socially to the level of their children. They may therefore not sit in either parent’s chair (assuming that the parent has a special one ) or contradict the parent in public. The latter duty, however, does not mean that the child must always agree with their parent or may not challenge the parent in private; this is rather a matter of preserving the honor of the parent in public forums.

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EXOD516 Mishpat comes from the root meaning shofet, “judge,” and thus mishpat originally meant the decision of a judge, or a precedent. It has that meaning, for example, in the very first verse of Exodus 21, the opening of the weekly portion called Mishpatim, for as biblical scholars have pointed out, the norms contained in that section of the Bible probably originated as judicial precedents. From this origin, the word mishpat expanded to mean law generally, especially in the plural form, and so the new American translation of the Bible published by the Jewish Publication Society translates mishpatim as “rules.” For example, “See, I [Moses] have imparted to you laws (hukkim) and rules (mishpatim), as the Lord my God has commanded me...” (Deuteronomy 4:5). (The term is also used this away and translated as “rules” in Deuteronomy 4:8 and 14; Ezekiel 20:25; Malachi 3:22). Finally, already in the Bible the word mishpat expands yet further to mean justice. For example, “The Rock!--His deeds are perfect, Yea, all His ways are just (mishpat) (Deuteronomy 32:4).

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EXOD556 See [[LEV644]] Leviticus 19:18 love DORFFWITO 26-7

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EXOD557 The Rabbis were keenly aware, however, that the curriculum of teaching Judaism should not consist of text knowledge and skills alone; it must crucially engage in character education as well. That obviously includes teaching children values such as respect for people and property, honesty, responsibility, and the like. It also includes negative demands, such as avoiding assault and battery, stealing, and so on. One graphic example of moral education affects parents and children. Since striking a parent or even cursing a parent are, according to the Torah, capital offenses (Exodus 23 (sic 21):15, 17), the Rabbis instructed parents not to strike their grown children lest their children curse them or strike them back, making their parents, in turn, liable for leading the children to sin (“placing a [moral and legal] stumbling block before the blind”). Along these lines, a nineteenth-century moralist applied this to both children and parents. “If a man cannot honor his parents as they should be honored, then... it is best that he no longer share his father's board, provided his father agrees to this. It is also best that a man [who gets angry]--if he can-- send his children from his table, lest he be guilty of placing a stumbling block before them [by provoking them to speak dishonorably to him and thus violating Leviticus 19:14] … and thus there shall be peace in your home (Rabbi Eliezer Pappo, Pele Yo’etz, Part 1, Kaph, pp. 170-172).” Because parents were often not very well educated themselves, the Rabbis were concerned that parents or grandparents might not be able to teach their children, even if they wanted to do so. That would mean that they would not only fail to fulfill a commandment of the Torah, but also deprive their children of their heritage. Therefore, although the duty to educate one's children in Judaism falls primarily on their parents, they may delegate it to a Jewish school. In fact, Jews were among the first to establish schools, dating from the second century.

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EXOD565 See [[EXOD557]] Exodus 21:15 strikes DORFFWITO 214-5

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EXOD572 According to the Talmud, the last words of the following passage gave us permission to attempt to heal: “When men quarrel and one strikes the other with stone or fist, and he does not die but has to take to his bed, if he then gets up and walks outdoors on his staff, the assailant shall go unpunished, except that he must pay for his idleness [time lost] and he must surely heal him (ve-rapo yerapeh) Exodus 21:18-19. “And he must surely heal him”: From this verse we derive the permission [of human beings] to heal (Babylonian Talmud, Bava Kamma 85a). On the basis of “love your neighbor as yourself” (Leviticus 19:18), the Rabbis (Sanhedrin 84b and Rashi there, s.v. ve’ahavta) conclude that this permission even extends to treatments that require inflicting a wound, for they presume that we would all prefer to suffer from a temporary wound to get well and must therefore have permission to treat other people likewise. This, incidentally, also sets up the basis for judging therapies in terms of the balance of their risks and benefits, for in each case--and especially if the patient is unconscious or mentally incompetent--we must think of what we would want done and do the same out of love of our neighbor. On the basis of an extra letter in the Hebrew text of Deuteronomy 22:2 [והשבתו-AJL] the Talmud (Bava Kamma 81b) declares that the Torah imposes an obligation to restore another person’s body as well as his or her property and hence to come to the aid of someone in a life-threatening situation. That duty also stems from Leviticus 19:16, which the Talmud (Sanhedrin 73a) uses to ground our obligation to do what we personally can to save lives and also to hire those who are more qualified to heal others. “If you see your fellow’s ox or sheep gone astray, do not ignore it; you must take it back to your fellow. If your fellow does not live near you or you do not know who he is, you shall bring it home and it shall remain with you until your fellow claims it; then you shall give it back to him (ve-hashevato lo). Deuteronomy 22:1-2. On what biblical basis can it be derived that it is obligatory to restore the body of a fellow human being [when ill or in danger, just as it is obligatory to restore his or her property]? Because the Torah says: “And you shall restore it to him” (Deuteronomy 22:2). [“To him] is superfluous, for to whom else would you return it? The Rabbis, assuming that nothing in the Torah is superfluous, therefore use that extra letter in the Hebrew word indicating [to him” to assert that] the Torah imposes a duty on us to restore lost property to its owner and a person's body to him or her (avedat gufo, the loss of one's body) when it is lost through illness or danger [see Rashi on the Sanhedrin passage, s.v. talmud lomar ve’hashevato lo.] Babylonian Talmud, Sanhedrin 73a; see also Bava Kamma 81b.

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EXOD654 See [[EXOD827]] Exodus 23:6 rights DORFFWITO 238-41

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