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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EXOD915 See [[EXOD341]] Exodus 19:8 do AMJV 12

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EXOD920 While men who lead an intellectual life may proceed from thought to deed, the generality of men learn by doing. The visible symbol and the concrete act are the most potent means of leading to communion with God. [Menahot 43b] There is profound truth in the order of words in Israel's acceptance of the covenant: Na'aseh v'nishma, "we shall do and hear" [this verse].

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EXOD912 According to the terms of the covenant, the Jews are obligated to be loyal to God and to love Him, expressing that love primarily through obedience to God's commandments. These commandments demand that Jews live out God's will in the thick of life, not just in a cloistered environment like a synagogue or monastery, and that they teach them to their children and “Recite them when you stay at home and when you are away, when you lie down and when you get up.” (Deuteronomy 6:7, which is part of the Shema, one of the two central prayers in daily and holiday Jewish liturgy.) They are, in other words, to pervade each Jew’s life. In return for such love and loyalty, God is to reward the Jews with continued existence through progeny as numerous as the stars in the heaven, ownership of the Land of Israel, material well-being, and -- probably the most important of all -- the continued, special relationship with God. On the one hand, failing to abide by the covenant will, the Bible assures us, produce the reverse: physical debilitations, loss of the Promised Land, and detachment from God. In respect for the promises He made in the covenant, however, God will not abandon the people forever, even if they sin grievously, but will rather forgive them and return them to the Promised Land and to the blessings of progeny and well- being. God will do this also because God by nature is not only just but loving and merciful. God’s patience, though, is also a function of His own interest in preserving the covenant, for the People Israel were to be God’s great experiment with humankind, God's “Chosen People” to be “a light of the nations,” a model for all other peoples of what God really wants in His human creatures. [This theme is expressed in several forms. The People Israel is to be “My treasured possession among all the peoples” and “a kingdom of priests and a holy nation” (Exodus 19:5-6); “a people consecrated to the Lord your God: of all the peoples of the earth the Lord your God chose you to be His treasured people” (Deuteronomy 7:6); “the Lord's portion” and “His own allotment” (Deuteronomy 32:9); and “My chosen one, in whom I delight,” who “shall teach the true way to the nations” and thus be “a light of nations” (Isaiah 42:1, 49:6). See also the Messianic visions cited later in this chapter.] Consequently, God has a vested interest in having Israel as a Chosen People: Apparently convinced that He cannot demand model behavior from everybody, God and nevertheless wants a group of people who can exemplify what living a godly way of life is all about. God’s need for a model people forces Israel’s hand. They agreed to the covenant amid thunder and lightning at Mount Sinai, hardly an opportunity for free, coolly reasoned, informed consent! (Exodus 19-24, especially 24:7) and Deuteronomy 5 (note 5:24). The Rabbis later tell two stories about this process. According to one, God went to all the other peoples of the world and offered them His covenant, and they each refused when they found out some of its demands. Finally, as a last resort, God went to the measly People Israel, and they agreed to it without ever hearing its terms! (See Sifrei Devarim par. 343 and Numbers Rabbah 14:10). That is consent, but certainly not informed consent. The other story picks up on the biblical description of the awesome setting of Mount Sinai and says that God actually held a mountain over their heads, and said, “Either accept the covenant, or this will be your burial place!” B. Shabbat 88a and B. Avodah Zarah 2b. On that account, Israel’s consent to be God’s covenanted people was both uninformed and coerced. Similarly, another rabbinic source has God saying this: “For I am the Lord your God who brought you up out of the land of Egypt to be your God: you shall therefore be holy, for I am holy,”... when it says “to be your God, it means even against your will. Sifra, “Shemini”12:4 on Leviticus 11:45, 57b. Clearly, then, it was not Israel’s calm, voluntary choice that brought them into the special relationship, but rather the love and fear of God.

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