DEUT309 While the laws of halakhah are obligatory only for Jews, our approach maintains that these legal rules express and enunciate eternal and universal ethical principles. This idea was given very eloquent expression by the great medieval authority Nachmanides (Rabbi Moses ben Nachman). In his great commentary on the Torah, Nachmanides discusses the commandment "And you shall do what is straight and right". [This verse]. Here the Torah is commanding us to act in an ethical way, yet the commandment begs the question of how we know what course of action is the ethical one. Nachmanides explains that we are able to deduce general ethical principles from the specific mandates of the many laws of interpersonal behavior, principles that apply even in instances that may be beyond the scope of the law. ... ethical behavior, the good and the straight, is neither independent of fulfillment of the commandments nor synonymous with them; it is an extension and extrapolation of the ethical examples embodied in them.