All You Wanted To Know About Judaism's Ethics and Were Afraid to Ask

 Nadene Goldfoot                                            

                    Abraham and father Terah:  families  leaving Ur going Northwest towards Canaan

Judaism is essentially all about ethics. Ethics or moral philosophy is a branch of philosophy that "involves systematizing, defending, and recommending concepts of right and wrong behavior". The field of ethics, along with aesthetics, concerns matters of value, and thus comprises the branch of philosophy called axiology.

What was acceptable to people long long ago was not acceptable to our Jewish ancestors of long ago.  Some were sacrificing their children or others.  Others were killing anyone in their way of taking another's land or other possessions.

                                                  

 Abraham had an encounter and came up with the one G-d concept, differing from the rest of the world then, and his future family were to learn more of the ethics they were to follow. He left his big city of Ur on the Euphrates River for greener pastures where he could teach his children and grandchildren a better way to live.  Ur's history went back to 3800 BCE.  Abraham was born in about 1948 BCE in the 2nd millennium, about 3,969 years ago.  

                                                     

Moses (1391-1271 BCE)  is said to have been in communication with the one G-d who told him of just what was acceptable or not.  He wrote it all down, documenting all he learned.  On their trek during the Exodus from Egypt, Moses and the 600,000 freed slaves-descendants, ran into the Amaleks, who were always hostile to them.  They followed and attacked the Israelites in the desert  shortly after the exodus, killing the weak and weary.  

                                                       

Joshua and the Israelite army finally defeated them.  Consequently, the Israelites regarded the Amaleks as an eternal foe, even thinking that Haman , the Agagite, is regarded as a descendant of Agag, king of Amalek, being one of them.  They had very different ethics; or rather, had none at all.                                                     

 From biblical times onward, ethics have marked the principles and goal of Judaism.  The bible has an ethical purpose.  It's theological sections reject the ancient religious conceptions of a plethora of powers hostile to each other and to man, substituting the belief in a single G-d, sovereign creator of the entire universe, just, good, and above all, making known His will to man.

                                                    

The Divinely revealed Torah (5 books of Moses) of Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy,  expounds the path to be followed.  Man is free to obey or disobey the Law that Moses brought to us,, and by his choice can acquire ethical merit.  This is reinforced by the legislative parts of the bible which link the standards of individual and social life to the necessity of imitating G-d in His goodness and justice.

Purely legal, economic, or sociological injunctions are rare;  man is almost always appealed to on moral grounds--equity, truth, love, charity, etc.  The prophetical and historical books of the Bible link ethics with the core of religious life, and present history not as a mere succession of events but as a moral drama where G-d causes the ultimate triumph of Good. 

Jewish hellenistic literature remained faithful to this attitude, whether in its praise of the virtuous man as in the Wisdom literature, or in stressing the struggle of Good and Evil in history as in the Apocalypse , or in the 1st systematic sketch of Jewish  ethics by Philo.                      

The legislative preoccupations of the Talmud are never the last word in that "the essential is not learning but in doing" is an axiom of Avot, a tractate which is an anthology of moral dicta.  Ethics in the Talmud are not treated solely as abstract principles but as everyday experience:  the Talmudic sages in their lives exemplify ideals of ethical conduct.                  

Theoretical and practical ethics are developed by later writers;  they are systematized by Jewish philosophers, both medieval like Saadyah, Ibn Gabirol-whose Tikkun Middot ha-Nephesh expounds an autonomous ethic unconnected with religious dogmas and Maimonides, whose introduction to Avot (Ethics of our Fathers)  is a classic work of Jewish ethics, and modern ethics of Moritz Lazarus in his Die Eshik des Judentums . Avot found in the Mishnah contains the sayings and teachings of sages from the 3rd century BCE to the 3rd century CE.  It's read in Ashkenazi communities ever Sabbath afternoon during the summer, while the Sephardim recite it only at home on the Sabbaths between Passover and Shavuot.                                           

Parallel to these works, another trend of literature marks the medieval and modern development of Jewish ethics reflecting individual or collective experience, sometimes of a very unusual nature, viz the thought of the Kabbalah and other mystical currents which has had a considerable influence on ethical works.   Such examples are Bahya's Hovot ha-Levavot, the 13th century Sepher Hasidim;  and M.H. Luszatto's Mesillat Yesharim.  

                                                         

In the 19th century, under the influence of Israel Salanter, the MUSAR Movement developed, bringing back ethical notions into the over-intellectualized atmosphere of the yeshivot.  The Musar movement is a Jewish ethical, educational and cultural movement that developed in 19th century Lithuania, particularly among Orthodox Lithuanian Jews. It arose among non-Hasidic Orthodox Lithuanian Jews as a response to the social changes brought about by the Enlightenment, and the corresponding Haskalah movement among many European Jews. In this period of history anti-Semitism, the assimilation of many Jews into Christianity, and the impoverished living conditions of many Jews in the Pale of Settlement caused severe tension and disappointment. Many of the institutions of Lithuanian Jewry were beginning to break up. Religious Jews feared that their way of life was slipping away from them, observance of traditional Jewish law and custom was on the decline, and even those who remained loyal to the tradition were losing their emotional connection to its inner meaning and ethical core.  

Salanter also wrote "An Essay on the Topic of Reinforcing Those who Learn our Holy Torah," published by his students in a collection of essays titled Etz Pri. This essay is important for its exploration of the concept of the subconscious, well before the concept was popularized by Sigmund Freud. In Salanter's essay, the concept of conscious ("outerness" [chitzoniut]) and subconscious ("innerness" [penimiut]) processes and the role they play in the psychological, emotional and moral functioning of man is developed. Salanter explains that it is critical for a person to recognize what his subconscious motivations [negiot] are and to work on understanding them. He also teaches that the time for a person to work on mastering subconscious impulses was during times of emotional quiet, when a person is more in control of his thoughts and feelings. Salanter stresses that when a person is in the middle of an acute emotional response to an event, he is not necessarily in control of his thoughts and faculties and will not have access to the calming perspectives necessary to allow his conscious mind to intercede.  Scholar Hillel Goldberg and others have described Salanter as a "psychologist" as well as a  moralist.   

                                      

One who guards his mouth and his tongue guards his soul from troubles. The lover of pleasure will be a man who lacks;  the lover of wine and oil will not grow rich.  One who  shuts his ear to the cry of the pauper, he too will call out and not be answered.   

Despite the close connections between religion and ethics, in the history of Jewish thought, the content of Jewish ethics is neither uniform nor simple.  Two main tendencies can be distinguished.  One identifies ethics with the Middle Way in accordance with the ideal outlined in the Book of Proverbs by King Solomon and some of the Psalms by King David.  This conforms to the main trends of Judaism in the Hellenistic Period and in Palestine during the rabbinical epoch;  it condemns excess in either direction, that is avarice or extravagance, debauchery or abstinence.                                  

                               Sample of Dead Sea Scrolls Discovered

The 2nd tendency exemplified in the Books of Job and Ecclesiastes, criticizes the Middle Way, which the Mishnah calls "the way of Sodom" (Avot 5:13); this was personified in the actions of certain rabbis who gave their entire fortunes to the poor like Rabbi Yeshevav,, practiced celibacy like Ben Azzai, passed long periods in prayer like Rabbi Hanina ben Dosa, and even lived according to monastic ideas like the Essenes, as told in the Manual of Discipline discovered in the Dead Sea Scrolls.  Asceticism characterizes the work of Bahya, Moses Hayyim Luzzato, the Sepher Hasidim, and much of the thought inspired by mysticism.  

                                                

Isn't man born with the knowledge of how to behave among other people?  Evidently not, or we wouldn't have all the killings that go on in the world, or robbery, violence of all sorts.  You can't depend on your children just born knowing.  It's not instinctive.  Some things are to us, but then, put in a spot, anything might happen without some conditioning, some education. 

Resource:

Tanakh, Stone Edition

The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia-ethics