EXOD1074 In all these ways [i.e., preceding discussion/list - AJL], then, Judaism can and does contribute to our moral knowledge and action. There are no guarantees in life--except for death and taxes, as the quip goes--and so religious people may falter and sometimes even misinterpret religion to justify immoral acts. But Judaism provides a multitude of ways to help us know how to act morally and to motivate us to do so. It thus increases the probability that Jews can be the holy people that G-d expects of us: “Indeed, all the earth is Mine, but you shall be to Me a Kingdom of priests and a holy nation” (Exodus 19:6).

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EXOD330 What makes a Jew? -- is a question that is often asked. The answer--two things: membership of the Jewish brotherhood, and the loyal fulfillment of those obligations which that membership imposes. Most of these ethical duties are enumerated in the 19th chapter of Leviticus, which commands the entire nation to be holy, just as the Decalogue addressed itself to each individual. Here is a brief summary of what this chapter and other pronouncements of the similar nature require of us. To abstain from all things which defile, physically or spiritually; to avoid forbidden food; to shun the heathenish modes of disfigurement over the dead; to bar intermarriage with those of other faiths. The Torah expects us to be learned and proud members of "a kingdom of priests and a holy nation" [this verse] in which holiness is not a mystical or an abstract idea but a directive and dynamic principle in daily life.

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EXOD325 Israel's unique status as God's chosen covenant partner theoretically provides a national"mission statement" that would motivate compliance with God's ethical demands. Acceptance of the Sinai covenant confers upon Israel the status of "a kingdom of priests and a holy nation" [this verse]. Just as a priest adopts a distinctive lifestyle dedicated to the service of God so he can minister to the needs of the laity, so Israel's mission is to serve that role for the nations. Israel's given status as a "holy people" provides the reason that they should observe the commandments (Exodus 22:30, Deuteronomy 7:6, 14:2, 21), while in Leviticus 19 Israel's potential holiness is used to inspire the people to appropriate behavior as "the entire community of the people of Israel" is commanded to "be holy for I the Lord your God am Holy" [Lev. 19:2]. In this case, Israel's status as a holy nation is not an assumption, but rather a goal, arrived at by performing a ritual assortment of ethical demands. (By Elaine Adler Goodfriend, “Ethical Theory and Practice in the Hebrew Bible)

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EXOD335 See [[EXOD118]] Exodus 7:16 let AMJV 198

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EXOD334 See [[EXOD40]] Exodus 2:12 struck DORFFDRAG 33-4

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EXOD336 Thus the Jewish and American understandings of the nature of community and of the status of the individual within the community have some important similarities. In the minds of many American Jews, these mask the significant differences between the two concepts. Indeed, many American Jews want to believe that their Jewish self and their American self fit neatly together, like hand in glove, with no contradictions or even tensions. As we have seen, though, American ideology depicts the community in a “thin” sense, by which membership is completely voluntary and may be revoked by the individual at anytime and by which the purpose of the community is predominantly pragmatic. In contrast, Judaism’s sense of community is “thick,” which means that its members are organically part of the communal corpus and cannot sever themselves from it and that the purpose of community, while partly pragmatic, is essentially theological, to be “a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.”

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EXOD332 Collective reward and punishment. The context or framework of the commandments assumes God will reward and punish on a collective, national basis. This is a consequence of the collective nature of God's covenant with Israel--that is, Israel as a nation agreed to accept its role as God's covenant partner and thereby become "a kingdom of priests and a holy nation" [this verse, Exodus 24:3,7]. Leviticus 26 and Deuteronomy 28 enumerate the blessings and curses that will come upon the people of Israel as a result of its observance or non-observance of God's laws. Rewards include sufficient rains and plenteous harvests, abundant fertility for their human and animal populations, immunity from foreign invaders, and God's continual and beneficent Presence. More detailed and numerous are the penalties for flouting the commandments: affliction by disease, agricultural infertility, lethal attacks by wild animals, invasions by foreign armies and the resultant food shortages, exile from the land of Israel, and divine rejection. The collective nature of the reward and punishment motivates individual Israelites not only to comply, but, further, to compel their fellow Israelites to observe God's laws and initiate prosecution against those who do not. Deuteronomy in particular repeats the admonition to show no toleration for evil-doers, ("show no pity" and "sweep out evil from your midst"), lest calamity engulf the nation as a whole (13:6, 17:7, 19:19, 21:21). [For author's discussion of "Individual reward and punishment," see [[EXOD684]] Exodus 22:23 your OXFORD 39] (By Elaine Adler Goodfriend, “Ethical Theory and Practice in the Hebrew Bible)

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EXOD338 While the Tanakh assumes that all nations are expected to follow a God-based universal standard of ethical behavior, Israel's uniqueness is based on its exclusive relationship with God, its status as a "kingdom of priests" [this verse]. Israel's mission is to be a "light to the nations" (Isa 49:6), and both Isaiah and Micah envision that other nations will view Zion as the source of divine instruction, which eventually will lead to universal peace (Isa 2:2-5, Mic 4:1-3; Zech 8:21-22, 14:9). (By Elaine Adler Goodfriend, “Ethical Theory and Practice in the Hebrew Bible)

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EXOD331 [Continued from [[EXOD872]] Exodus 23:9 oppress SACKS xxx]. This is what Judaism's dual covenant represents. On the one hand we are human, and we share a set of basic obligations to one another by virtue of that fact. We are all in the image and likeness of God. We are all bound by the basic rules of justice and fairness. Every life is sacred. Violence and murder are assaults against the human condition. This is what Abraham meant when he explained to Avimelekh, king of Gerar, why he said that Sarah was his sister, not his wife: "I said to myself, 'there is surely no fear of God in this place, and they will kill me because of my wife'" (Gen. 20:11). Fear of God-identified as Elokim rather than Hashem -- is assumed in Genesis to be a basic, shared set of principles as to what morality requires, even between strangers. On the other hand, the covenant of Sinai is not addressed to humanity as a whole. It is addressed specifically to the Israelites in their role as "a kingdom of priests and a holy nation" [this verse]. This is more demanding than the Noah covenant, both because the Israelites are expected to be exemplars and role models of the holy life, and because there are strong ties of kinship between them. They share a past, a set of memories, and a fate. They are like an extended family. Much of the social legislation, for example in Leviticus 25, uses the language of kinship: "When your brother becomes poor ....." There have been ages in which the primary group has been the tribe. The result was war. There have also been attempts to abolish groups altogether in favor of the universal. The classic example was the European Enlightenment. However, group identity returned in the 19th-century, in the form of the nation-state and race. The result of European nation-states was two world wars. The worship of race brought about the Holocaust. We cannot escape identity, and hence the tension between inter-group and out-group. The only solution known to me that addresses this issue clearly and in a principled way is that of the Torah with its two covenants, one respecting our duties to humanity as a whole, the other our duties to our fellow members of the community of fate and faith. This unusual duality represents the two great features of the moral life: the universality of justice and the particularity of love. [On this, see Jonathan Sacks, Not in God's Name (New York: Schocken, 2015), and Avishai Margalit, The Ethics of Memory (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002)].

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EXOD333 Kindness is the equivalent of care, which is the opposite of harm. Justice and righteousness are specific forms of fairness. In other words, the prophetic virtues are close to those that prevail today in the liberal democracies of the West. That is a measure of the impact of the Hebrew Bible on the West ... The point is that kindness and fairness are about relationships between individuals. Until Sinai, the Israelites were just individuals, albeit part of the same extended family that had undergone Exodus and exile together. After the Revelation at Mount Sinai the Israelites were a covenanted people. They had a sovereign: God. They had a written constitution: the Torah. They had agreed to become "a kingdom of priests and a holy nation" [this verse]. Yet at the Golden Calf they showed that they had not yet understood what it is to be a nation. They were a mob. The Torah says, "Moses saw that the people were running wild and that Aaron had let them get out of control and so become a laughing stock to their enemies" (Exodus 32:25). That was the crisis to which the Sanctuary and the priesthood were the answer. They turned Jews into a nation.

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