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The Jewish religious and spiritual tradition has been largely concerned with regulating behavior through a wide-ranging legal system. Nevertheless, it has developed — alongside the literature of halakhah(Jewish law) and intertwined with it — a parallel literary tradition concerned with the practice and, to a lesser degree, the theory of ethics.
- Gemilut Hasadim 101
Jewish communities often pride themselves on tending to the...
- Jewish Business Ethics 101
Jewish tradition does not mandate any particular way of...
- Gemilut Hasadim 101
Jun 30, 2014 · Introduction. Jewish ethics investigates both theoretical and practical questions of what Jews can and should do in the world. It involves weaving together theology, philosophy, and law—the classic triumvirate for religious ethics—as well as lore, history, science, and sociology, among other facets of human knowledge and experience.
How does God decide what's right and what's wrong? Can one be a "good person" without being religious? What gives us the right to kill animals? What's the difference between a cult and a religion?
To a Jew, seeking justice is a way of seeking G‑d. On the morning of Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the Jewish calendar, Jews read from the prophet Isaiah what G‑d requires of them: “to loosen all the bonds that bind men unfairly, to let the oppressed go free, to break every yoke.
- Tzvi Freeman
- The Centrality of Modern Israel
- Hebrew: The Irreplaceable Language of Jewish Expression
- Devotion to The Ideal of Klal Yisrael
- The Defining Role of Torah in The Reshaping of Judaism
- The Study of Torah
- The Governance of Jewish Life by Halakha
- Belief in God
The centrality of modern Israel heads our list of core values. For Conservative Jews, as for their ancestors, Israel is not only the birthplace of the Jewish people, but also its final destiny. Sacred texts, historical experience and liturgical memory have conspired to make it for them, in the words of Ezekiel, "the most desirable of all lands (20:...
Hebrew as the irreplaceable language of Jewish expression is the second core value of Conservative Judaism. Its existence is coterminous with that of the Jewish people and the many layers of the language mirror the cultures in which Jews perpetuated Judaism. It was never merely a vehicle of communication, but part of the fabric and texture of Judai...
The third core value is an undiminished devotion to the ideal of klal yisrael, the unfractured totality of Jewish existence and the ultimate significance of every single Jew. In the consciousness of Conservative Jews, there yet resonates the affirmation of haverim kol yisrael (all Israel is still joined in fellowship) - despite all the dispersion, ...
The fourth core value is the defining role of Torah in the reshaping of Judaism after the loss of political sovereignty in 63 B.C.E. and the Second Temple in 70 C.E. to the Romans. In their stead, the Rabbis fashioned the Torah into a portable homeland, the synagogue into a national theater for religious drama and study into a form of worship. Cons...
Accordingly, the study of Torah, in both the narrow and extended sense, is the fifth core value of Conservative Judaism. As a canon without closure, the Hebrew Bible became the unfailing stimulus for midrash, the medium of an IThou relationship with the text and with God. Each generation and every community appropriated the Torah afresh through th...
The sixth core value is the governance of Jewish life by halakha, which expresses the fundamental thrust of Judaism to concretize ethics and theology into daily practice. The native language of Judaism has always been the medium of deeds. Conservative Jews are rabbinic and not biblical Jews. They avow the sanctity of the Oral Torah erected by Rabbi...
I come, at last, to the seventh and most basic core value of Conservative Judaism: its belief in God. It is this value which plants the religious nationalism and national religion that are inseparable from Judaism in the universal soil of monotheism. Remove God, the object of Israel's millennial quest, and the rest will soon unravel. But this is pr...
Judaism: Table of Contents | The Written Law | The Oral Law. In Jewish practice, Torah study often takes on a ritualized role similar to that of prayer. A specific place — the beit midrash, or "house of study" — is a designated room set aside in many Jewish communal buildings.
Instead, Judaism's principles of faith remains debated by the rabbis based on their understanding of the sacred writings, laws, and traditions, which collectively shape its theological and ethical framework. The most accepted version in extent is the opinion of Maimonides.
