GEN1022 Despite their differences on some moral matters, Americans expect their law to be moral because they themselves want it to be, even if they, their legislators, and their judges sometimes badly misconstrue what that means – as in the Dred Scott decision of the Supreme Court. In Jewish tradition, the morality of the law is rooted not in a given community’s desire that the law be moral, but in God, who is Himself understood to be moral and to demand morality of us.  There are, of course, problems with that assumption, not only as a result of the Holocaust but because of Job and the many like him who have suffered without apparent justification. Indeed, the Bible itself raises questions about God’s morality, beginning with Abraham’s ringing question [this verse]. That challenge, though, makes sense only if Abraham could presume that God is, in fact, just, and, despite some evidence to the contrary, that is the prevailing view in the Bible and in rabbinic literature.  Moses declares: “The Rock! – His deeds are without blemish, for all His ways are just, a faithful God, with no injustice, righteous and upright is He” Deuteronomy 32:4 Therefore, a sense of morality pervades the Jewish legal system to a greater degree than one expects in a set of laws instituted by human beings. DORFFLGP 17

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