GEN204 See [[GEN42]] Genesis 1:25 good AMJV 96

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GEN201 As the ethics of a religion that strives after sanctification of life rather than its suppression, Jewish Ethics does not set itself up in invariable opposition to nature. Much that is natural and material is good. Indeed, according to the Genesis account, the whole of creation was appraised by the Creator as very good [this verse]. Nature’s laws are viewed as divinely implanted. The laws that control heaven and earth, sun, moon and stars, the sea and the deep operate also in the lives of men.  The laws of the Torah have their counterpart in the laws of nature.  Such, for example, is the law of retribution. Genesis Rabbah I:1. Leviticus Rabbah, Behukkotai, ch. 35:1ff; Tanhuma, Genesis I,1.   At the same time, the rabbis recognized that the moral laws cannot always be identified with the laws of nature. A man steals a measure of wheat and sows in his field. From the standpoint of the moral law, the wheat should not grow, but nature pursues its own course in total oblivion of the legitimate or illegitimate ways in which the grain was secured. Avodah Zarah 54b Furthermore nature has to be curbed before it serves the purposes of man. It is cruel, destructive and wasteful of life. The typhoon and the earthquake, the tiger and the python are parts of nature as well as man. The laws governing them obviously cannot apply to human beings. Human life itself is torn between conflicting tendencies. Savage instincts are no less real than good impulses. Cannibalism, murder and bestiality are matched by self-sacrifice, charity and humanity. Egotism, avarice and lechery exist by the side of altruism, generosity and self-discipline. Tendencies of destruction thwart the dependencies of construction. The passions, while neither good nor evil in themselves, may be employed as instruments of either godly or satanic ends. In other words, morality is the creation of man and represents the flower of his reason, conscience and religious spirit.  While for analytical purposes ethics is content with the study of the springs of human behavior and their expression, for practical ends of directing the lives of men, it is more exacting. Not what is being done, but what ought to be done constitutes its measure of value. Whereas science speaks in the indicative mood, religion uses the imperative. Its characteristic expressions take the form of commands and prohibitions, thou shalts and thou shalt nots. COHON 108

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GEN208 This refers to death, which embraces all living things and serves the word’s welfare.  Genesis Rabbah 9:2.  So too, the Wise Man said: “I praised the dead, who have already died, more than the living, who still live” Ecclesiastes 4:2.  DUTIES 177

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GEN207 This is a reference to death.  Death can also be good – by subduing the spirit of man, bringing the dread of God into his heart, and preventing one from turning this world into his primary one.  There are some people who, as a result of their preoccupation with worldly affairs, do not free themselves for the designated times needed for comprehending their end, as the pasuk [this verse] states Job 4:21, “Their excess journeys [from them], and they die bereft of wisdom.”  This means+H201 “Their excess” – their money – “journeys” from them when they travel [from this world], for they derive no benefit from it. On the contrary, it has deprived them of much good, since it causes them to “die bereft of wisdom” – for they were not wise enough to comprehend their end, to mend their souls, and to prepare provisions for the way, as the pasuk states Deuteronomy 32:29 “ Were they wise, they would understand this; they would comprehend their end.”  GATES 145-7

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GEN206 The concern with health is, in the final analysis, a concern with how one lives the life divinely entrusted into one’s care.  HTBAJ 114

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GEN209 Through the performance of sacred deeds, the body, which is good by nature, become holy by action.  For many of the Jewish mystics, this is especially evident in sexual behavior … Physical desire is a prerequisite for spiritual attainment, for creating life as a work of art.  One who is devoid of passion disenfranchises oneself from both the physical and spiritual life. … for the Jewish mystics the procreative act is the paradigm for the ultimate religious experience: communion with God.  HTBAJ 156

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GEN203 In order to feel self-esteem, we must appreciate our accomplishments.  On six occasions in the opening chapter of Genesis, the Bible informs us that God was proud of what He had created.  For example, “God saw all that He had made, and found it very good.”  Genesis 1:4, 10, 12, 18, 21, 31 The text’s unusual repetition of this phrase makes it clear that God took pleasure in seeing that His work was good.  In contrast, there are many people who seem to feel guilty about, or who are reluctant to take pleasure in, their accomplishments; instead they minimize them so as to make them seem insignificant.  Like God, however, we should be pleased to take pleasure in our accomplishments and good works, and be even more pleased knowing that we have reason to believe that those good works are pleasing to God.  TELVOL 1:240

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GEN205 The chief rabbi of Palestine, Abraham Isaac Kook, was a seminal figure in the movement for a meat-free diet.  While Rabbi Kook himself was not a vegetarian, he clearly believed the world, in its move toward messianic redemption, would and should evolve in this direction: “It is quite impossible to imagine that the Lord of all works, Who has compassion for all His creatures, Blessed be He, would enact an eternal law in his ‘very good’ [human beings] creation, so that the human race can survive only by shedding blood, even if only the blood of animals.”  TELVOL 2:335

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GEN210 God made many wondrous things during the seven days of creation, but none so precious as the Sabbath.  Of all the precious moments that dot the Jewish temporal landscape, none is a rich as the Seventh Day.  Of far greater significance than the duration of creation is the fact that it was crowned by the Sabbath [this verse], bringing rest and refreshment to the toiling world.  The concept of a day of rest, sanctified by the divine example, is one of the greatest spiritual and social contributions to civilization made by the religion of Israel.  BOTEACH 157

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GEN211 Among the spiritual disabilities that plague so many people today, one of the most common is busyness.  Over commitment of our time leaves little space for the simple experience of being, and awe (and, as we have learned, it child, faith) is much harder to find when we are moving at a speed of seventy miles an hour and our mind is taken up with all the items on the long and ever-replenished list that we can’t possible complete, today or ever. … Awe can come only when there is space in which to welcome it. … Shabbat is the corrective for me.  It isn’t just a day in the week on which I simply rest and recharge in order to reenter the fray, it’s the reminder of what I so easily forget the other six days, and which I hope to remember so that some echo and trace of the spaciousness of the seventh can filter into the six as well.  In my life, I am in danger of getting lost, deflected, and confused in the complex web of demands, responsibilities, and desires I carry with me.  Shabbat is when and how I check the map.  MORINIS 230-231

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