GEN722 [One of the features of the ethic of Torah that makes it transformative and uniquely sustainable over time …] is the principle set out in the Noahide covenant-the covenant God made with Noah after the Flood, and through him with all of humanity: [this verse]. Life is sacred. We are each in God’s image, His only image since making images is otherwise absolutely forbidden. Therefore murder is more than the crime. It is an act of sacrilege, a dishonouring of God Himself.  In general, the Torah is the protest against the use of violence to attain human ends. The human drama can be summed up as follows: God is free. God creates order. God gives man freedom. Man then creates chaos. Hence the question to which the Torah, the Hebrew Bible, and Judaism as a whole, are directed: can freedom and order coexist? The answer is the moral life as the Torah envisages it. The alternative to morality is violence. Violence is the attempt to satisfy my desires at the cost of yours. I want X; you have X; you stand in the way of my having X; therefore if I am to have what I desire, I must force you to relinquish X.  Violence is the imposition, by force, of my will on the world. Thus is born the rule of might. As the Athenians said to the Melians, “You know as well as we do that right, as the world goes, is only in question between equals in power, while the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.” Thucydides,“The Melian Dialogue,” 5.84-116. Or as Thrasymachus says in Plato’s Republic, justice is whatever serves the interests of the stronger party. This is what Nietzsche saw as the fundamental principle of human existence: the will to power. Judaism is a sustained protest against this way of life. Even God Himself, creator of the universe, rules by right, not might. That is the meaning of the story of the Exodus and why it is central to the Torah. The supreme power intervenes in history to liberate the supremely powerless. The reason God sent plagues against Egypt, the most powerful empire of the ancient world, was to show Egypt that those who rule by power are defeated by power.  The reason God chose a tiny and otherwise inconsequential nation to be the bearers of His covenant was, at least in part, to show the power of the powerless when they have right, not might, on their side.  The alternative to power is law: law freely accepted and freely obeyed. Only by observing the rule of law -- law that applies equally to the rich and poor, the powerful and powerless -- do we escape the tragic cycle of freedom that begets conflict that leads to chaos, resulting in the use of force that generates tyranny, the freedom of the few and the enslavement of the many. God reveals Himself in the form of law, because law is the constitution of liberty.  SACKS xxiv-v

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GEN725 Although a man inciting murder escapes the death sentence at the hands of a human court [since he himself did not actually commit the murder], there are legal mechanisms in Judaism by which to deal with such a person.  It is within the purview of the Jewish king [Maimonides, Hilchot Rotze’ach 2:4] to take such a person and kill him, if he so desires, and even the Jewish court, in a one-time action, may put this murder inciter to death if they feel it is necessary.  However, even if the king or court do not kill this person under this special allowance, the court is obligated to beat this murder inciter “to within an inch of his life,” just short of death, jail him for life, and generally make his life as miserable as possible, in order to deter anyone else from causing or inciting similar crimes and sins.  Ibid 2:5.  AMEMEI 119

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GEN723 (Continued [[EXOD549]] from Exodus 21:14 neighbor SPERO 126-30). [I]n connection with Exodus 21:14, the Talmud was astonished to think that the Torah would exclude the non-Jew from the law which condemns to death a man who deliberately murders his neighbor. After all, even before the Sinai legislation, the Torah had proclaimed [this verse]. But here again the rabbis explained that without a doubt he who deliberately kills any human being has violated the sixth commandment and would be duly punished by heaven. In restricting this particular law the rabbis were responding to the general hermeneutical principle that whenever the text permits, interpretations tending to limit the area in which the death penalty might apply are to be favored. [The Talmud (Sanhedrin 81b) relates how the rabbis had stringent requirements for witnesses and for warning (hazharah) in cases involving capital punishment which were designed to obviate the death penalty. They believed that since the judicial process, with its reliance on witnesses, did not yield certain knowledge, it was preferable to leave the matter to the justice of heaven when a person’s life was at stake]. SPERO 130-1

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GEN724 A Noachide woman who kills incurs the death penalty as well as a man.  And though it is written: “at the hand of a man,” it is afterwards written: “One who spills the blood of a man” – anyone who spills it. Sanhedrin 57b. TEMIMAH-GEN 47

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GEN726 The wording of the verse is very strange.  The verse states “He who sheds the blood of man that is within a man, his blood shall be shed as well, because man was created in God’s image.”  In analyzing the literal meaning of the words “man that is within a man” the Talmud concludes that this refers to a fetus, since this is literally a man within another human – i.e. the mother.  Sanhedrin 40b.  Therefore, according to this passage, any abortion is equal to murder, and the fetus is considered to be a human being.  In Jewish law, Maimonides rules this way for a non-Jew, and therefore a non-Jew who performs an abortion is considered a murderer.  Maimonides, Laws of Kings 1:4.  AMJV 86

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GEN727 It was taught: “Ben Assai said: ‘If one does not fulfill the mitzvah of begetting children, it is as if he spills blood and diminishes God’s image, as it is written: ‘One who spills the blood of a man in a man, his blood shall be spilled, for in the image of God He made man,’ after which it is written: ‘And you, be fruitful and multiple” Yevamot 63b. TEMIMAH-GEN 48

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GEN728 See [[GEN702]] Genesis 9:6 blood BANAL 151

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GEN729 A rationale for the exemption of women from the obligation of procreation is given by the great Gaon of this century, Rabbi Meir Simhah ha-Kohen of Dvinsk, in his Biblical commentary. Meshekh Hokhmah to this verse. He writes: “It is not amiss to assume that the reason why women are exempt from the obligation of procreation is grounded in the reasonableness of the judgments of the Lord and His ways. The Torah did not impose upon Israel burdens too difficult for a person to bear … Women whose lives are jeopardized by conception and birth were not enjoined …  [See also Genesis 1:28  multiply ROSNER 64] ROSNER 65

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GEN730 According to some commentaries, the Hebrew word for covenant, brit, is derived from the Hebrew word briah, creation.  What does this mean and what is its significance?  A new creation today is formed with two separate entities combined to form something else.  This is the essence of every covenant, brit.  The first mention of brit in the Torah is the rainbow following the flood that destroyed the world and saved Noah. [this verse].  The symbol of this brit is incomplete, a rainbow of half a circle.  Why only half?  Because each part to a brit is incomplete by itself, the rainbow symbolizing God’s half of the covenant.  It is only in combination, when a new object, a new creation is forged, that both parties to a brit become complete.   AMEMEI 159

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GEN731 What ethical failure led to the Flood? Vaguely, the Torah specifies only hamas—ruination, perhaps connected with “heat.” Humanity at large, not a central institution or person, was to blame. The Rabbis usually asserted that the universe is built on “measure for measure”: God’s rewards and punishments fit our actions. So the Rabbis asked, “Since the purging of the earth came through water, what was being wrongly done through water?” And they answered that before the Flood, all the species were mixing the water of their semen with each other. This water washed away all biological boundaries, confounding the clarity of God’s creation; so God sent a Flood of water to wash away all boundaries. Rosh Hashanah 12a: Rav Hisda said: “With hot liquid they sinned, and with hot liquid they were punished. With hot liquid they sinned –namely, with sexual transgressions.” Today we know that few species can mix together and propagate in this way. But we have also invented “genetic recombination,” by which indeed the genes of one species can be introduced inside the DNA of another. Should we take the fantasy of the Rabbis as a warning to explore this new technology with the greatest care, if at all, lest we bring upon ourselves a global disaster? (By Arthur Waskow, "Jewish Environmental Ethics: Intertwining Adam with Adamah") OXFORD 411

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