EXOD217 We must be compassionate and merciful. Abba Shaul commented on this verse: "Emulate Him. Just as God is compassionate and merciful, so too you should be compassionate and merciful." Shabbos 133b

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EXOD218 The true Jew not only obeys the letter of the law; he is anxious for the opportunity to do even more than the strict law demands of him. [The phrase coined by the Talmud is 'Simchah shel Mitzvah,' see Shabb. 31b; Ber. 33b]. "Fear of God" is the beginning of knowledge; the end of religious teaching is to love God and serve our fellow-man. It means to be conscious that we owe Him a debt of gratitude which we can never adequately repay. One of the ways in which we can express our gratitude is to find pleasure in the performance of the duties devolving upon us, as well as to be possessed of an implicit trust that all that happens to us is, in the long run, for the best. Filled with this belief, we can safely entrust ourselves to Him everywhere and all times, confident in His guidance, glorying in His salvation. Real faith, though it inspires resignation, does not mean a heartless indifference, a kind of "could not care less" attitude. It must be dynamic and ready to inspire heroism and self-sacrifice. "The Lord is a man of battle" [this verse]; so must a faith that is worthwhile be militant for its convictions. Especially courageous must faith be against evil inclinations, against the Yetser Ha'ra, placed in us in accordance with the Divine scheme of things as an essential constituent in human nature without which the march of civilization, chequered as it is, would be impossible.

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EXOD220 Whoever makes a multitude meritorious, no sin shall come through him; but whoever brings a multitude to sin will not be given the means to achieve repentance. Pirkei Avot, Perek V, mishnah 21. "R. Simeon says: How do we know that if one misleads another into sin, it is worse than if he killed him? If someone killed this man, he would remove him only from this world, but the man would receive a share in the world-to-come. The one who misleads him into sin kills him off in both this realm of existence and the world-to-come." Moral corruption, dry rot in the soul, is a destructive ill that lasts beyond physical death. Obviously the "Mephistopheles" behind it can never make amends on this earth. "Two nations (R. Simeon continues) met the Israelites with the sword: the Egyptians and Edomites. Of Egypt we read, [this verse]. Of the Edomites, And Edom said to him [Moses], You shall not pass through me, lest I come out with the sword against you. (Numbers 20:18). And two nations met the Israelites with transgression: the people of Emon and Moab"--for as the Midrash recounts, they prepared a vast number of young women at Shittim to entice the Israelites into immorality and idol-worship, and as a result, 24,000 Israelites died at Heaven's hand. (Numbers 25:1-3,9) "About those who came with the sword (R. Simeon concludes) it is written, 'You shall not abhor an Edomite, for he is your brother; you shall not abhor an Egyptian, because you were an alien sojourner in his land. The children of the third generation that are born to them may enter the assembly of the Lord.' But as for those who came bringing transgression--No Ammonite or Moabite shall enter the assembly of the Lord... for ever." (Deuteronomy 23:8-9, 4) If people threaten or attack us physically, we can come to terms with them, live with them, and ultimately accept them. But those who would cajole us into filthy sin and depravity, seek to infect us with the rightness at their core. We want no part of them, ever.

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EXOD221 Some Jewish thinkers emphasize the general sense of yirat ha-El as sufficient reason for avoiding sin. "Antigonus of Sokho used to say: Be like servants who serve the master without the expectation of receiving a reward, and let the fear of God simply bring you to it" (Avot 1.3). R. Joshua b. Levi interprets the verse from Psalms: "Happy is the one who fears God" (112:1) to mean: "Happy is the one who can master the evil inclination, as God meant for human beings to do" (Avodah Zara 19a). As the fourteenth century Rabbi of Toledo, Judah Asheri said: Keep your mind open to whatever may remind you of the fear of Heaven; be not diverted by the jibes of others, nor by your own lust" (Hebrew Ethical Wills). The fifteenth century philosopher Joseph Albo tells us:"The fear of God is not the fear of a human being. If one is in fear of an [earthly] ruler, one is in constant terror and dread, which shortens one's life, whereas fearing God prolongs it.... He who is happy is he who fears God, for this fear does not lead to timidity but to might, so that his seed shall be mighty on earth" (Sefer Haikkarim [The book of principles]). In the sixteenth century Italian sage Ovadia Sforno teachers: "Anyone who knows how greatly God ought to be praised will fear God because of this, rather than because of any punishment God may visit on us" (commentary on [this verse], in Mikraot Gedolot).

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EXOD222 Doing chesed hastens redemption. The Chofetz Chayim cites the Pesikta which explains that "You have led in Your chesed" refers to the merit of the chesed which the Jewish people practiced toward one another. "You have guided them in Your strength" refers to the study of the traditions handed down from the forefathers. This is in accordance with the statement in Tana D'vai Eliyahu (ch. 23) that when the Jewish people were in Egypt, they gathered together and made a pact that they would do chesed for each other; they would keep the covenant of Abraham, Yizchok, and Yaakov; they would serve their Father alone, and they would not forsake the language of their father Yaakov. At that time the Jewish people were enslaved, and searched for a means to be saved from Pharaoh's decrees. They therefore resolved to do chesed to one another, and hoped that because of this merit God would bestow chesed upon them and redeem them from persecution. As we have seen from the Pesikta above, the merit of their chesed had the necessary effect. The Chofetz Chayim added that this is a lesson for all generations. By doing chesed, we help bring about redemption. (Ahavas Chesed, ch. 5).

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EXOD223 Bar Kappara expounded: Greater is the "Creation" of the righteous [i.e., what is created by them] than the creation of heaven and earth. For in respect to the latter it is written (Isaiah 48:13): "My hand [singular], too, has founded the earth," whereas in relation to the "creation" of the righteous [i.e., the sanctuary] it is written: "the sanctuary, O Lord, which Your hands [plural] have established" (Kethuvoth 5a)

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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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EXOD225 See [[EXOD93]] Exodus 4:27 met SINAI3 165-7

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EXOD226 It is particularly when one is in need, when one's well-being is threatened, that the expressions of love on the part of a neighbor count for most. The ethics of love demand that care be taken of the defenseless and the weak. We receive constant reminders to care for the widow and the fatherless, especially when our fortunes go well with us, for then we are most likely to forget the needs of those less fortunate. The burden of their loss must be made to weigh easier for them to shoulder. As for the poor in general, not only are they to be supported but they should not be made to feel the stigma of charity. [cf. Ps. xli. 2. See Yer. Shek. v.4; Lev. R. xxxv]. The stranger, too, must be made to feel that he has full share of our consideration: "And a stranger shalt thou not oppress: for ye know the heart of a stranger, seeing ye were strangers in the land of Egypt." [Exodus xxiii.9]. In thirty-six places does the Torah urge consideration for the stranger. Hence says a Rabbi: "to divert the right of a stranger is to divert the right of God". [B. Metz 59b]. Another teacher considers the crime of robbing a stranger to be worse than that of robbing a Jew. [B. Kama 113a] Kiddush Ha'shem, like Imitatio Dei, is only observed when one displays kindness to all. Of Rabbi Johanan b. Zakkai it is told that he would be the first to greet a non-Jew. Other rabbis are also described as the possessors of similar courtesy. It was a saying of the Rabbis [Gittin 59b] that since the paths of the Torah lead to peace, we should do acts of grace even unto those not of our faith in order to establish peace and goodwill among all men. God says: "Both the Gentiles and the Israelites are My handiwork. How can I, then, let the former perish on account of the latter?" [Sanhed 39b; Meg. 10b]. For this reason did He stop the Song of the Sea with the protest: "My handiwork is drowning in the sea--and you dare to sing a song?" [e.g., this verse].

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EXOD227 Another disadvantage of money and wealth is that it often keeps Jews from getting to or for living in Israel. This phenomenon, which has kept millions of Jews from leaving the Diaspora and settling in the State of Israel after 1948, is not new. There are three allusions to this idea in the Torah. When Jacob crossed over the Yabok River on the night before meeting his brother Esau, Genesis 32:35, Rashi says that the reason he went back was to get some jars that he did not want to leave behind. According to many commentaries, this river was the border between Israel and the Diaspora. Thus, for monetary reasons, Jacob left Israel and, consequently, met up with the angel that made him fight for his life. Later on in the Torah, when the Jews finally defeated the Egyptians after the miracle of the Red Sea, it says [this verse] that Moses brought the Jews into the wilderness on a march that was supposed to lead them, within a short time, to the land of Israel. But the word for "he brought" is vayasa, and not the usual form of verb, vayisa, implying that Moses had to force the Jews to travel. Noting this change of usage, Rashi, based on the Mechilta, says that the people did indeed refuse to travel, insisting on staying to retrieve all the gold and silver of the Egyptians that washed up on the beach. Thus, Moses had to force them to travel and abandon these riches. This is another example how the possibility of gold and silver held back Jews from traveling towards the land of Israel. Perhaps the most clear example of this is the story of the two and one-half tribes (Reuven, Gad, and one half of Menasheh), Numbers, chap. 32, who requested not to enter and live in Israel proper in order to have ample grazing room for their cattle, which was the measure of wealth in that desert society. After lengthy negotiations, they were granted the request on certain conditions. Once again, the wealth of Jews prevented them from entering the land of Israel. Historically, these were also the first tribes that were defeated in conquest and disappeared forever.

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