EXOD901 It has already been stated that the relation of nature to the Torah is like that of a servant to his master; for the forces of nature, in governing the world, operate in accordance with the Torah, as it says: “You will serve Hashem your God, and He will bless your bread and your water; and I will remove sickness from your midst” (Shemos 23:25 ); “He said, ‘If you listen carefully to Hashem your God and do that which is right in His eyes, obeying His commandments and keeping all His statutes, then I will not bring upon you all the sickness which I brought upon Egypt, for I am God your cap Healer’” (ibid. 15:26). There are many similar passages.

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EXOD902 See [[DEUT3]] Deuteronomy 1:11 bless ROSNER-BLEICH 61

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EXOD903 Do not make a covenant with the seven Canaanite nations or other idol worshippers. The Torah forbids any treaty or covenant with the seven Canaanite nations that dwelled in the Jewish homeland when the Jewish nation arrived there from Egypt. Do not make peace with them and do not allow them to continue to practice idol worship in the Jewish homeland. Key concept: Rid the world of idols and idol worship. The seven Canaanite nations were the world's most ardent worshippers of idols and were the prime founders of this evil. Therefore, the Torah commands us to search them out everywhere and eliminate them. The command also forbids us to make a covenant with any nation that worships idols. Regarding other idol worshipping nations, however, we are not commanded to make war against them and kill them if they do not attack us. Rather, such peoples are simply not allowed to dwell in our homeland as long as they worship idols. As to the seven Canaanite nations, we must search them out everywhere and wage constant war against them until no trace of them remains, unless they renounce idol worship--for as noted, these nations are the world's main idol worshippers and are the source of this evil.

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EXOD904 Do not allow idol worshippers to dwell in the Land of Israel. Key concept: So that we do not learn from their denial of the true God.

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EXOD905 See [[EXOD332]] Exodus 19:6 nation OXFORD 38

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EXOD906 See [[EXOD341]] Exodus 19:8 do AMJV 12

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EXOD907 See [[EXOD332]] Exodus 19:6 nation OXFORD 38

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EXOD908 [Irving Greenberg argues that] In our era, the third era of Jewish existence [the biblical era being the first; the rabbinic era the second], the Covenant was shattered in the Holocaust. Following Elie Wiesel and the Yiddish poet Jacob Gladstein, who wrote that "The Torah was given at Sinai and returned at Lublin" [the site of the death camp Majdanek], Greenberg recognized that the Holocaust had altered our perceptions of God and humanity. Greenberg argues that the authority of the covenant was broken in the Holocaust, but the Jewish people--released from its obligations--chose voluntarily to renew the covenant. "We are in the age of the renewal of the covenant. God was no longer in a position to command, but the Jewish people were so in love with the dream of redemption that they volunteered to carry on the mission." Our choice to remain Jews, Greenberg argues, is our response to the covenant with God and the restatement of the response to Sinai: "We will do and we will hear" [this verse]. The ethical task of Jewish existence is to re-create the divine image and the human image defiled during the Holocaust, to respond to death by creating life, and to continue the journey of the Jewish people in history--in short, to bring the redemption. Greenberg established several ethical imperatives that emerge from the Holocaust: the first to confront evil, for not to confront it is to repeat it. He applies this maxim both to the religious antagonism of Christianity to Judaism and to the denial of their complicity in the Holocaust by secular states and institutions--banking, insurance, and industry. Second, the Holocaust may not be used for triumphalism: "Those Jews who feel no guilt for the Holocaust are also tempted to moral apathy. Religious Jews who use the Holocaust to morally impugn every other religious group but their own are the ones who are tempted thereby into indifference at the Holocaust of others.... Israelis... are tempted to use Israeli strength indiscriminately." (Greenberg, Clouds of Fire, Pillar of Smoke" in Eva Fleishner, ed., Auschwitz Beginning of a New Era: Reflection on the Holocaust (New York: KTAV, 1977; repr. in part in Contemporary Jewish Theology: A Reader, Elliott N. Dorff and Louis E. Newman, eds. (New York: Oxford, 1999), pp. 396-416. (By Michael Berenbaum, "Ethical Implications of the Holocaust")

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EXOD909 By accepting a new lifestyle that gave them a moral set of laws to live by, they achieved cherut, true freedom. That is why the Mishnah says that in giving the two tablets of the Ten Commandments Exodus 32:16, the Hebrew word charut should be read freedom (cherut), and not "hewn out of stone," the simple meaning of charut. Avot 6:2. This play on words shows that there is an association between accepting the Jewish obligations, laws, and way of life and the Jewish concept of freedom.

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EXOD911 [M]any Jewish commentaries believe that it is the actions that help to formulate beliefs, and not vice versa. Maimonides Hilchot De'ot 1:7 asks how can a person train himself to internalize the proper Jewish values, ideas about God and Judaism, and he answers that through repeated actions and practice of reflecting these ideas and values, a person will come to internalize the beliefs. This order of action-mitzvot to be followed by the reasoning can be found in the Bible at the inception of the Jewish people's acceptance of the Torah from God. After the Ten Sayings (Commandments) were given, the people respond with the words "Naaseh Venishma," "we will do and then we will understand" [this verse]. Thus, the covenant of the Jewish people with God involves first the performance of mitzvot and then their understanding of the meaning of these commandments. Of course, both are significant and necessary to a Jew's full development, but the order must be performance first followed by understanding the reasons. This is also logical from a religious perspective. A person who says "I will not do any mitzvah until I understand it fully" is putting his or her judgment on a higher plane than God's judgment. One cannot truly believe in God and, at the same time, believe that man's ability is superior to His ability in judging right and wrong, in general, and what the proper specific path of action for that individual should be. A believing person must follow and perform God's commands first before understanding their meaning, since God knows what is better for man then man knows himself. Man naturally seeks to find meaning, but it should not be a condition to action. This is the intention of "we will do and then we will understand." This approach--action-mitzvot first, followed by a quest for understanding of meaning--is also a logical path in life. If a person decides to perform mitzvot only after he or she has found their true meaning, then it may take an entire lifetime of searching and maturation until he or she finally decides, late in life, that the Torah and its mitzvot have the validity and meaning searched for and should be performed in earnest. By that time, a person may have wasted his or her lifetime and will have lost years of potential action-mitzvot in that search. Therefore, Judaism encourages the Jew to continue to perform mitzvot even as he or she has doubts about life's meaning and the significance of individual commandments. Questioning while continuing to perform is a legitimate Jewish endeavor [See, Lamm, Faith and Doubt, New York: Ktav, 1971), pp. 24-27] and helps to give meaning to a person's entire life once the person has come to appreciate Torah and mitzvot.

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