Judaism offers ethical ideas unique to the tradition in addition to aspects of the general theories of ethics outlined above.
Jewish ethical thought does not align with consequentialist theories. Whether through identifying virtues or enumerating duties, it distinguishes right from wrong in absolute terms. Tradition does not encourage weighing the relative harm or benefit of doing the right and the good.
Judaism does present a form of virtue ethics. It proposes a set of virtues every Jew should cultivate. Those who live by them build a moral society, what the Torah calls holiness. Above all, Jewish tradition emphasizes the value of human life. It avers that humans carry within them the image of the Divine (Gen. 1:26) and instructs us always to choose life (Deut. 30:19). It prefers truth over falsehood (Exod. 23:7). It repeatedly urges kindness toward the stranger (Deut. 19:10) and others like the widow and orphan who lack social standing (Exod. 22:23). It also urges us to “seek peace and pursue it” (Ps. 34:15). Some thinkers use these virtues, among others, as the foundation of arguments about how to respond authentically as Jews to the ethical dilemmas we face.
Some traditional sources do express ideas similar to those found in care-based ethical systems. The Talmud (Shevuot 39a) expresses the thought that each Jew should take responsibility to care for every fellow Jew this way: “All Israel are responsible for one another.” It uses a Hebrew word, areivin, whose meaning includes the sense of “collateral,” implying that each Jew should be available to settle a debt or solve a problem for every other Jew. Some contemporary Jewish writers we will encounter in this book, aware of modern philosophers’ insights into care-based ethics, adapt these theories to Jewish contexts.
At first glance, Jewish tradition looks like a contract-based system, since it begins with the covenant between God and Israel that imposes ethical duties, among others, on members of the covenant. However, contract theories rely on agreements among equal parties—certainly not how Jews characterize the relationship between human beings and the Divine.
We can more logically describe Judaism as a duty-based tradition. The Jewish people’s unique covenant with God spells out responsibilities both God and Israel must uphold: God promises protection and other blessings in return for obedience to God’s instructions, the commandments (in Hebrew, mitzvot). In this regard, Judaism also falls into the category of ethical systems in which humans know the right way to behave because a higher authority has revealed it to them. Within this construct, obedience to God’s law as detailed in the Torah and other Jewish literature enables us to live moral lives. Divine revelation contains all the guidance we need. As with any duty-based system of ethics, arguments may still arise about what specific duty matters most in a given situation, or how to interpret a given commandment.
To the extent that Judaism proffers a duty ethics rooted in the Torah’s commandments, its morality emerges through law. That characteristic distinguishes it from many other moral traditions, including religious ones. Through law, Jewish values find concrete expression. Through the give and take of legal debate, moral ideals find practical application in the complex realities of human life. For this reason, many of the texts in this book are legal texts.
The Jewish ethics presented in this textbook emerge from close reading of the texts that articulate the values of Jewish tradition. For centuries, Jewish thinkers analyzed ethical dilemmas by searching sacred texts for relevant material. Legal texts suggested precedents that served as analogies for new problems; other sources taught values and ideals that ethicists needed to bear in mind to make choices in line with Jewish tradition. For the most part, this book shares the assumption that the work of Jewish ethics begins in the sources that contain the thoughts and decisions of millennia of Jewish thinkers.