EXOD827 As indicated in chapter one, a majority of contemporary Jews responding to polls assert that in their view social justice is the core commitment of the Jewish tradition. Such responses were not, as noted there, far off the mark. The demand for justice is indeed a persistent part of Jewish sources from the Bible to our own day, and it is a significant element in Jewish visions for the future. This includes both procedural justice and substantive justice. Procedural justice demands that people be treated fairly in court and in society generally, with distinctions drawn among persons only for reasons having to do with their own actions or skills. So for example, a just society is one in which people are not judged guilty or innocent, or fit for a job, according to the color of their skin or how much money they currently have. … [Exodus 23:6-8; see also Deuteronomy 16:18-20, Leviticus 19:15-16; see also Deuteronomy 1:16-17; Deuteronomy 24:16]. Maimonides makes some of the Torah’s procedural concerns more specific: 1. It is a positive commandment for the judge to judge fairly, as Scripture says, “Judge your neighbor fairly” (Leviticus 19:15). What is fair judgment? It is equalizing the two litigants in every respect. One should not let one litigant speak as long as he wants and tell the other to be brief; and one should not be friendly to one litigant, speaking to him softly, while frowning upon the other and speaking to him harshly. 2. If one of the litigants is richly dressed and the other poorly dressed, the judge must say to the former, “Either dress him like yourself before you come to trial against him, or dress like him such that you are equal; then the two of you may stand in judgment.” 3. One litigant should not sit and the other stand, but rather both should stand. If the court wanted to permit both to be seated, it may do so. However, one must not sit on a seat higher than the other; they must be seated side-by-side. ... Although some of this may seem obvious to us now, note that much of it took quite a long time to become adopted in Anglo-American law. The guarantee that parents and children not be held liable for each other's offenses, although articulated in Deuteronomy 24:16, which scholars date to the end of the seventh century B. C. E., was not part of British law until about 1830; until then, descendants would suffer for their ancestors’ treason, a process known as “attaint.” The Founding Fathers of the United States therefore had to ban that explicitly in Article 3, Section 3 of the United States Constitution in 1789. More pervasively, the kind of fairness envisioned in the Torah and by Maimonides was not common practice in the United States until very recently, for poor people and blacks were commonly treated unfairly just because they were poor or black. It is still the case in the United states, in fact, that blacks are much more likely to be executed for killing whites than whites are for killing blacks. Furthermore, American law does not insist on the formal requirements that Maimonides articulates to make both litigants look alike in social status. Thus, the Jewish vision of an ideal world should prompt us to work toward refining the American sense of procedural justice. If that is true for the United States, which in our day has a relatively refined sense of procedural justice in comparison to its own past and to so many other nations of the past and present, the Jewish vision of procedural justice in the ideal society is even farther from reality in most other countries in the world--in Asia, Africa, South America, and Arab lands. Thus biblical and rabbinic standards of procedural justice still have a lot to teach contemporary humanity. Substantive, in contrast to procedural, justice demands that society be structured so that people have basic food, clothing, and shelter--and, in our own day, health care and access to transportation. Western concepts of substantive justice are rooted in the Torah. Contrary to Mesopotamian, Egyptian, Persian, Greek, Roman, and most other cultures of the ancient world, the Torah demands that such basic care be supplied not only for citizens but also for strangers.... (Exodus 22:20-26; Deuteronomy 24:17-18). The biblical prophets are perhaps best known for their scathing criticism of people--Jews as well as other nations--who fail to care for the downtrodden and destitute.

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EXOD1037 See [[DEUT47]] Deuteronomy 11:22 ways DORFFWITO 18-9

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LEV235 See [[LEV490]] Leviticus 19:16 idly-by DORFFWITO 152

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LEV247 The duty to ransom Jewish captives is perhaps the most graphic illustration of this thick sense of community. It is as if the body has been dismembered, and it cannot rest until the last member has been reattached. Jewish law gives priority to the legal requirement to ransom captives over everything else, a vivid illustration and a direct implication of Judaism’s extensive community. “Redeeming captives takes precedence over sustaining the poor and clothing them, and there is no commandment more important than redeeming captives. Therefore, for everything commanded for which the community collected money they may change its usage for the sake of redeeming captives. Even if they collected it for the sake of building a synagogue, and even if they bought the wood and stones and designated them for building the synagogue, such that it is forbidden to sell them for another commanded purpose, it is nevertheless permitted to sell them for the sake of redeeming captives. But if they built it already, they should not sell it... Every moment that one delays redeeming captives where it is possible to do so quickly, one is like a person who sheds blood (Shulchan Arukh, Yoreh De’ah 252:1, 3).” Following mishnaic and talmudic sources, the Shulchan Arukh (Yoreh De’ah 252:8) maintains that the community should redeem a woman before a man because even though both are in danger of torture or even death, the woman is also at risk for being raped by her male captors. On the other hand, if the captors are known to rape men as well, we must redeem men first because the Rabbis, who were all men, thought that as bad as rape of a woman is, rape of a man through forced anal sexual penetration was worse because it did not even follow the form of what in other circumstances is loving, consensual sex. (The Rabbis and--at least until recently--the rest of the Jewish tradition condemned anal penetration of one male by another as an “abomination,” following Leviticus 18:22.) This rule, with this exception, indicates that the one who is at greatest risk, and who therefore needs our help most, gets it. (Continued at [[LEV1070]] Leviticus 25:36 you DORFFWITO 135).

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LEV270 ... Jewish tradition provides a rationale for helping the poor that speaks to our own character: we would want to be the kind of people who aid those in need. Whereas non-Jews might help others for similar reasons of self-image and self-respect, the Torah put these considerations in theological terms: we should aspire to be not only decent and even noble human beings, but also Godlike. We should strive to be holy like God, and part of the way to do that is to provide for the poor as the following selections made clear. [Leviticus 19:1-2, 9-10; Deuteronomy 13:5; Babylonian Talmud, Sotah 14a.]

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LEV294 Limits on the Filial Duties of Honor and Respect. The filial duties that Jewish law prescribes are extensive and demanding, but they do have limits. Children should not fulfill a parent's command that violates God's laws, undermines the child's welfare, or is unreasonable. Furthermore, although it is certainly desirable that children love their parents, Jewish law does not require that. God's Commandments. The tie between honoring parents and honoring God has direct implications for determining the hierarchy of our duties to honor our parents and honor God. For the Rabbis, the order was very clear: because all Jews, including one’s parents, are duty bound to obey God, God's commands take precedence over those of one’s parents when they conflict. “Because one might think that one is obliged to obey one's father or mother who desires that one violate a commandment, the Torah therefore says immediately following the commandment to fear or revere one’s parents in Leviticus 19:3], “and you shall keep My Sabbaths,” [meaning that] you are all required to honor Me (Sifra Leviticus, Kedoshim 1:10). It was taught: One might think that the honor of father and mother supersedes the Sabbath, [but that is not so:] the Torah says, “You shall fear every man his mother and his father, and you shall keep My Sabbaths; I am the Lord your God,” [meaning” that all of you are obligated to honor Me (Babylonian Talmud, Yevamot 5b).” Clearly, this aspect of Jewish law should not be an excuse for children to dishonor their parents in a kind of religious “one-upmanship.” If the children decide to become more religiously involved and observant than their parents, they must do so in a way that continues to show their parents honor in attitude, word, and deed. If the children are teenagers, they need to work out with their parents exactly how the new patterns of observance that they want to adopt can fit into the family structure. Sometimes, for example, the parents may be convinced to make the home kosher or refrain from some of their customary family activities on the Sabbath and instead do things appropriate to the Sabbath as they grow in their Judaism along with their children. In other families, the parents and children have to negotiate a way in which each can “live and let live” in his or her own, distinct way while living under the same roof. The critical thing is not the ultimate agreement; rather, it is that the conversations in which these negotiations take place remain calm and mutually respectful and that all family members continue to interact with each other in the same manner. Another increasingly common issue that falls under this category occurs when parents have made it clear that upon their death they want to be cremated. It is bad enough if only one adult child is involved in this decision, because then if the child has the parent buried, he or she must bear the burden of acting against the express wishes of the parent after the parent has died and cannot protest or even argue. On the other hand, if the child acquiesces to the parent’s wishes, he or she must suffer the guilt of violating Jewish law. The situation is yet worse when there are two or more children involved, one or more of whom want to bury Mom or Dad according to traditional Jewish rites, despite the parent’s instructions to the contrary, and one or more of whom want to carry out the parent’s wishes, whether or not they agree with Mom or Dad. Jewish tradition is clear: neither the parent nor the children have the right to violate Jewish law, and so the children should bury, and not cremate, the parent. Putting that decision into practice, however, is often not nearly as simple as that, and the adult children would be well advised to get the help of their rabbi in working this out so that they can have reasonable relationships with each other after this is over. Such an approach is even more important when the requirements of Jewish law are not clear. This happens often when adult children face the decision of whether to remove life support systems from Mom or Dad when there is no reasonable hope for recovery. Although Jewish law is clear in its prohibition of cremation, rabbis differ on what Jewish law does and does not demand with regard to end-of-life care, especially the status of artificial nutrition and hydration. On one end of the spectrum, some, but certainly not all, Orthodox rabbis demand that absolutely everything be done to keep a body alive, even if that means the person will never regain consciousness and will have to be on machines forever. On the other end of the spectrum, some Reform rabbis maintain that here, as always, individual family members should seek the advice of their rabbi but in the end should make their decisions however they think is best. In the middle are multiple positions that rabbis of all movements have taken on these issues. Some, for example, see artificial nutrition and hydration as food and liquids and therefore require that they be administered under all circumstances, while others maintain that artificial nutrition and hydration are medicine and therefore may be withheld or withdrawn. All Jewish authorities would say that patients must be kept as comfortable as possible, for, unlike some forms of Christianity, Judaism does not regard pain as a good. Furthermore, each movement in Judaism has produced its distinctive form of advanced directive, so that a person can indicate which medical treatments he or she would choose at the end of life, as framed by the choices open to him or her according to his or her movement’s approach to Jewish law. In addition, books on these general issues of medical ethics and, in particular, on how adult children should understand their duty to feed their parents at the end of life have been published from the viewpoint of all movements in Judaism [lengthy bibliography in footnote omitted--AJL]. Adult children would also be well advised to consult with their rabbi in such circumstances to determine exactly what their approach to Judaism requires of them. In some, one must take into account that the Jewish tradition demands honor and respect for parents, even while one is not supposed to follow their directions to violate the other commandments. When Jewish law is clear on a given issue and their parents want the child to do something else, one must find a way to honor parents even if disobeying them in the name of Jewish law, and this may even mean compromising one’s standards of observance in the name of such honor. After all, religion should be an instrument for strengthening families, not dividing them. When Jewish law is not clear on a given issue, or when it permits several different options, the parent’s wishes should play a stronger role in how the children honor them. In the end, then, Jews must find a way to uphold both of these Jewish duties--to abide by Jewish law, on the one hand, and honor parents, on the other, recognizing full well that that may be difficult for some families on at least some issues and that to do this may require us to be more creative inflexible than we might otherwise be.

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LEV296 See [[EXOD435]] Exodus 20:12 honor DORFFWITO 186-7

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LEV318 See [[LEV270]] Leviticus 19:2 holy DORFFWITO 117-8

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LEV330 See [[EXOD1075]] Exodus 23:1 false DORFFWITO 74-5

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LEV398 The Rabbis then ask an important question: in commanding us to love our neighbor, why must we be reminded that God is Adonai, our Lord? Four verses earlier, that command not to curse the death or put a stumbling block before the blind ends with the clause, “and you shall fear your God” (Leviticus 19:14). On that verse and several others, the Rabbis maintain that even though it is often difficult for other human beings to discern a person's real motive in doing something, God and infallibly discerns our motives, and so for all commandments involving something that is in our hearts (masur la’lev) God will unfailingly know our intentions and judges accordingly. (Sifra, Kedoshim 3:14 (on Leviticus 19:14). Based on those rabbinic comments, Rashi (1035-1104, France) undoubtedly the most famous medieval commentator on the Torah, summarizes this tenet thus: “Because a person cannot know whether he intends to do a good thing or a bad one [in giving advice to someone who iss blind about such matters], and he can pretend [to other human beings] that he intended to do a good thing, therefore the Torah says, “and you shall fear your God,” who knows your thoughts. Similarly, with regard to all other matters that are in the doer’s heart, and others cannot know [the person's intentions], the Torah says, “and you shall fear your God” (Rashi on Leviticus 19:14).

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