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GENESIS — 24:67 loved

GEN1196 Nowhere are the ethical ideals of married love more tenderly expressed than in Judaism. In our religion, it means ideals and spiritual experiences shared; it signifies the struggle to work out together the will of God in everyday life and the effort to make the home a place of friendliness, refreshment and peace. In the happy home, God becomes more real to all who dwell there and to those who visit it. This aim is suggested by the other word for marriage, Nissuin, which means an uplifting of the soul and an ennoblement of human desires. There is a verse in the Bible which contains both a warning and a definition of the true marriage of souls. [this verse] The words “and he loved her” come after the words “and she became his wife.”   Logic would have reversed the order. What lesson does the verse convey? To teach that love after marriage is the sequel and the effect of a perfect partnership in which joys, anxieties and responsibilities are shared jointly and unstintingly. Cynics say that marriage is wonderful at the start but soon romance fades away and then all is not “happily ever after”.   A dull monotonous round in “double harness” takes the place of what seemed, “once upon a time”, such a thrilling state of existence. Some marriages are like that; but they need not be. “When husband and wife”, says the writer of ‘The Threshold of Marriage’, “are purposed to work for happiness, to learn by mistakes in their understanding of one another, then marriage becomes more interesting and more joyful each year. Here is an illustration. You light your sitting-room fire. At first, the wood and paper flare up, and the flames flicker and dance. Yet it is only when the fire settles down to the steady glow that it really does its job and provides the comfort and the satisfaction you look for. So it is with marriage. The later years of mature love and deeper experience may have lost some of the sparkle of ‘first love’; but what they have gained is precious beyond compare.” It is in the relationship of the partners after marriage that our ethical teachings are seen at their best. The husband is to honour his wife more than himself and to supply her with all the comforts of life she needs; of course, in measure of his means. If he does so, he will be a happy man; for blessings come to a home on account of a good and virtuous woman. Here are some of these blessings: she rears his children; she it is who makes it possible for him to pursue his studies undisturbed by attending to his physical wants; she alone can fill the house with happiness and holiness.   More than one religious historian of our people has borne witness that the wonderful and mysterious preservation of the Jews is due to the Jewish woman. This is her glory not alone in the history of her own people but in the history of the world.   LEHRMAN 250-1

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GENESIS — 27:22 hands

GEN1249 Anybody can coin beautiful phrases; but in everyday, practical life the question is: “What influence does such eloquence exert on life and conduct?” The Rabbis had a logical approach, and they differentiated between grain and chaff, between flower and fruit. “Not the teaching s the thing, but the action thereofAvot 1:17, they taught. Learning, for which the Jew had a passion that set his heart and mind aglow, was important only because it led to action. Kiddushin 40b, Baba Kamma 17a Everywhere, the stress is that the deed must be the inseparable companion of the spoken word. Once a promise has been given, it must not be broken lightly. … Above all, they protested against individuals and nations that preached love but practised hate, that were true to the description which Isaac gave of Jacob: “The voice is the voice of Jacob; but the hands? They, surely seem those of Esau?” [this verse] Rabbinic teaching aims at universal peace and at the establishment of the Messianic era on earth. Only when this era has dawned, but not before, will many of the commandments have outlived their utility. Niddah 61b This practical touch of the Rabbis cn best be seen LEHRMAN 60-1

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GENESIS — 28:12 stairway

GEN1264 The fact that Judaism endows man with the power to discern between that which is right and that which is wrong—regarding him as a being blessed with the will to choose one and avoid the other—must be borne in mind when we consider the ethical doctrines of antiquity.  The conscious effort to improve our natures, expressed in philosophic vocabulary as meliorism, best expresses the nature of Jewish Ethics.   In this, our teachings come nearest to the views expressed by Immanuel Kant, who, perhaps more than any other thinker, has left his stamp upon modern ethical thought.   His main stress was that all sense of conscious purpose must be altogether eliminated from the equation of moral conduct.   This insistence is expressed by our sages in one word—lishmah—which means that good deeds must be done not for some temporal or material reward, but should be determined only by the fact that their practice is an earnest of our obedience to the will of God, as well as of our love for our fellow-beings.  The moral and the divine “ought” is the categorical imperative.   Judaism fills this categorical imperative with positive conduct by holding before man a divine network of six hundred and thirteen commandments, which may best be described as precision tools for the carving of noble characters.  The fulfillment of these precepts is made possible by climbing the many rungs on the ladder of perfection, from the apex of which the Messianic Kingdom will loom into sight. Jewish Ethics are the realization of Jacob’s dream [this verse].   LEHRMAN 19-20

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GENESIS — 28:12 stairway

GEN1265 The great problem for the Jew wherever he lives, but especially in the State of Israel, is to restore life to its pristine glory, by being a gate of opportunity and a school of character formation. A greater truth has not been vouchsafed to mankind than the vision Jacob beheld in his dream when, a fugitive from a brother’s wrath, sleeping under the starry sky of an Eastern night, with stones as his pillow and the ground as his bed, he saw a ladder standing on the earth, its topmost rung reaching heaven wards and from which the Voice of God was heard [this verse]. Jewish Ethics are ladders on which man can rise from rung to rung, outsoaring the shadows of his own imperfections, enabled to bask in his momentous potentialities towards progress and the achievement of immortality. In short, its complete ascent helps man to become a real “son of God”.  LEHRMAN 30-1

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GENESIS — 30:1 die

GEN1307 The enemy of a happy marriage is the childless one. This may not always be due to the selfish indulgence of parents. When Abraham cried: “O Lord God, what wilt Thou give me, seeing I go hence childless?Genesis 15:2 he echoed the yearning of every Jewish parent. Similarly, when Rachel pleased with Jacob [this verse], hers was the cri de coeur of every mother pining for the “fruit of her womb”. Father and other are the most tender words in the language; because of this, they describe God’s relationship to us. “As a father hath mercy on his children, so will I have mercy on you”, says God. As one whom his mother comforteth, so will I comfort youIsaiah 66:13 are the words used in a house of mourning.   It is the bearing of children that makes the home like a Temple of God and the table its altar. A family is the natural fulfillment of marriage. However devoted to each other husband and wife may be, there is a place in their natures which only children can fill. Children cement the structure of family life more solidly together.  LEHRMAN 248

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GENESIS — 32:5 stayed

GEN1358 As an example of his Hibbat Ha’Aretz [i.e., love of the land – AJL], his comment on [this verse] may be quoted. Drawing attention to the Hebrew word for “sojourned” (Garti), which means “I have been a stranger, the Hatam Sopher [Moses Schreiber, 1763-1839] adds 537 : The patriarch (Jacob), symbol of Israel throughout the ages, stresses that while staying with Laban in another country, far from his own Canaan, it was only possible for him to sojourn there, to feel like a stranger, not able to settle down in undisturbed tranquility. Peace of mind can only come to the Jew who, no longer hated and baited, hunted and haunted, no longer driven from one land and not allowed to enter another, is allowed to strike roots once again in Eretz Israel, the land of our fathers which we must help to become again the land of our children.”   LEHRMAN 126-7

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GENESIS — 32:32 Penuel

GEN1395 “What happened to their ancestors,” says a Midrash, “will also happen to their descendants.”  Just as Jacob, at Peniel, wrested a blessing from his unknown assailant after prevailing over him, [this verse], so did his descendants emerge from their chequered history ennobled and hopeful, without the iron of cruelty having entered their own attitude towards life.   Tirelessly, did Jewish ethical precepts inculcate gentleness and humility, a love of peace and a passion for justice, so that the temporary resentment on the part of the Jew towards those who hated and baited him gave way to a co-operative relationship at the slightest display of tolerance towards him.   He was obedient to his codes of honour, because these bore the impress of divinity on their surface and in their content, and because these were regarded as the direct communications of a heavenly Father to His children on earth. To be disobedient to them, would be interpreted as an insult to Him who had declared that the sole purpose of human existence is to hallow every aspect of life.   It is this sanctification of life, this consciousness that goodness in thought and deed links man with heaven and is worthy of sacrifice, great and small, that made the ideal Jewish ethical life the summum bonum, the target, of Judaism.  The ideal Jew became “a partner with God in the work of Creation,” Shabbat 9b, by implementing his beliefs in the world of action.   LEHRMAN 12-13

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GENESIS — 37:3 tunic

GEN1445 To be happy, children of one family must not be treated differently from one another. The story of what happened to Joseph serves as a warning. Because his father made for him “a coat of many colours”, [this verse], was he sold into Egypt and Israel made to serve bondage to the cruel Pharaohs. Shabbat 10b A father should not terrorize his child; and lest the child be taught to deceive, the parent is urged to keep all the promises he makes at home. Gittin 6b What is said by the parents in the presence of children should be carefully weighted and guarded, for children repeat in the street what they have heard in the home. Gittin 56b LEHRMAN 246

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