Jewish Ethical Values

Byron L Sherwin, Seymour J. Cohen

Description

With insightful commentary, passion and expertise, Rabbis Sherwin and Cohen guide us through selections from classic Jewish ethical literature, offering clear explanations of the historic context of each writing and thoughtful applications of their wisdom on the problems we grapple with today.

Sujets

• Philosophie et théologie
• Cábala
• Jewish literature
• Jewish ethics
• Jewish philosophy
• Kabbalah
• Judaism
• Religion
• Kabbale

Informations

• Publié par: Turner Publishing Company
• Date de parution: 10 août 2015
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781580238458
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Thank you for purchasing this Jewish Lights eBook!
Sign up for our e-newsletter to receive special offers and information on the latest new books and other great eBooks from Jewish Lights.

Sign Up Here
or visit us online to sign up at www.jewishlights.com .
Looking for an inspirational speaker for an upcoming event, Shabbaton or retreat?
Jewish Lights authors are available to speak and teach on a variety of topics that educate and inspire. For more information about our authors who are available to speak to your group, visit www.jewishlights.com/page/category/JLSB . To book an event, contact the Jewish Lights Speakers Bureau at [e-mail] or call us at [phone].
For Naomi Greenberg Cohen and Judith Schwartz Sherwin, loving partners and devoted friends





Preface
Introduction: Life as Art Form-An Invitation to Jewish Ethical Values and Literature
Part I
God
1.How to Believe in God
2.How to Thank God
3.How to Love God
4.How to Study the Torah
5.How to Repent
Part II
The Self
6.How to Deal with the Ego
7.How to Be Wise
8.How to Be Healthy
9.How to Employ Wealth
10.How to Die
Part III
The Self and Others
11.How to Behave Sexually
12.How to Treat One’s Parents
13.How to Parent
14.How to Speak about Another
15.How to Be Philanthropic
Notes
References
Credits
List of Searchable Terms
About the Authors
Copyright
Also Available
About Jewish Lights Publishing
Sign Up for Email Updates
Send Us Your Feedback





This book has two goals: to introduce the major works and genre of Jewish ethical literature and to present some of that literature’s fundamental concerns. While the texts cited and the ideas discussed in the following pages are of historical and conceptual interest, they were neither composed, nor were they formulated, for the intellectually curious. Rather, their intention is to offer a road map for the individual committed to the creation of the supreme art form—one’s own life.
As this work has two goals, it also has two authors/editors: Byron L. Sherwin and Seymour J. Cohen. The conceptual organization of this volume was conceived by Seymour J. Cohen, who over many years engaged in the translation of classical works of Jewish ethical literature into English. Cohen’s intention has been to provide the English reader access to the treasure-trove of Jewish ethical literature (i.e., to its most significant works and to its most compelling ideas). Besides giving form and direction to this volume, Cohen also contributed to chapters 3, 9, 11, and 14. The balance of this work has been written and edited by me, except, of course, the excerpts from classical Jewish ethical literature that accompany each chapter. These excerpts were carefully chosen to introduce the reader to the breadth, depth, and variety of literary genre that characterize Jewish ethical literature. Additional discussion regarding the structure of this book is found at the end of the introduction.
One of the prominent teachings of Jewish ethics is the obligation of gratitude. Seymour Cohen and I would be remiss were we not to express gratitude to a number of individuals and organizations.
Profound thanks are due to the late David S. Malkov for helping to fund some of the research and writing costs related to the preparation of this work for publication. Deep thanks are also due to Rosaline Cohn and to the Cohn Scholars Fund of Spertus College of Judaica for their financial support for research-related costs.
My proficient and conscientious secretary, Pam Spitzner, and Seymour Cohen’s steadfast and thorough secretary, Ingrid Hernandez, worked diligently and felicitously to prepare this manuscript for publication. Our families, especially our wives, Naomi Cohen and Judith Sherwin, deserve our immense gratitude for their forbearance and for their encouragement in the composition of this work. Seymour Cohen and I acknowledge and are grateful for permission to reprint excerpts from previously published materials.
I would be remiss were I not also to express my profound gratitude to my partner in this work, Seymour J. Cohen. Since my arrival in Chicago in 1970, he has been a faithful friend, colleague, and advisor. He introduced me to my wife, Judith, and he has continuously been preoccupied with our well-being. During times of despair and professional difficulties, he has been a source of encouragement and help.
Finally, some technical points require elucidation. In a number of excerpted works, I have taken the liberty of altering the English style to make it more consonant with contemporary English usage. To avoid confusion, citations in excerpted texts from biblical and rabbinic sources have been standardized. Similarly, transliterations from those texts have also been standardized. The form of transliteration used is my own and should be of help both to the Hebrew and the non-Hebrew reader. A bibliography is provided at the end of the book to record works cited in its pages.
Byron L. Sherwin
Chicago, Illinois

The works that comprise Jewish ethical literature are self-help manuals in the art form of life. Their primary goal is not to inform but to transform their readers. Their agenda addresses the most ultimate and the most intimate problems of human experience. They deal with the nature and expression of basic human emotions such as joy and love, anger and envy. They circumscribe and prescribe fundamental humane values such as humility and compassion. They address visceral human drives such as acquisitiveness and lust. They discuss and analyze social issues such as interpersonal communication and the employment of wealth. They confront perennially omnipresent human problems such as how to maintain integrity and how to retain dignity. They struggle to discern the purpose and meaning of human existence and to draw road maps toward their attainment. No human emotion, no human conflict, no moral problem eludes their grasp.
Rather than demonstrating how to accumulate wealth for oneself, Jewish ethical literature deals with how wealth may be employed for the benefit of others. Rather than offering strategies on how to manipulate others to do one’s will, it focuses on how best to live a life correlative with the divine will. Rather than teaching one how to deliver a speech, it is preoccupied with how to speak without harming others by one’s speech. Rather than offering ways of improving sexual technique, it formulates ways of enhancing love.
While old, the texts that comprise Jewish ethical literature are not obsolete. The questions they pose, the wisdom they impart, and the traditions they evoke often surprise their readers with unanticipated contemporaneity. While conditions of daily human life have changed since the time of their composition, the human condition has not substantially changed. The problems that vexed and challenged their authors continue to vex and to perplex us today.
For the authors of the classics of Jewish ethical literature, human existence is too precarious, life is too fragile, not to be taken with the utmost seriousness. In painting the portrait that is one’s own life, a single reckless stroke can mar the entire work. Commenting on the verse in Ecclesiastes (9:8), “Let your garments be always white; let not oil be lacking on your head,” a hasidic master observed, “A person should view himself as being dressed in white silken garments with a pitcher of oil on his head, walking a tightrope. A single wrong small step and he becomes soiled; a single irretrievable step and he falls into the abyss below.” 1
In his famous treatise, Common Sense , Thomas Paine wrote, “When we are planning for posterity, we ought to remember that virtue is not hereditary.” An identical statement might have been penned by any of the authors of any one of the works of Jewish ethical literature. Like Thomas Paine, they knew that building one’s life as a work of art is the product of continuous, deliberate choice and unstinting personal effort. In this regard, Israel Salanter, founder of the nineteenth-century Musar movement, compared continuous moral development to the flight of a bird. Once a bird stops exerting effort to fly, once a bird ceases flapping its wings, it falls. Similarly, Salanter observed that moral development, building one’s life as a work of art, requires constant exertion, study, reflection, and practice. 2
In the art of living, each individual is an apprentice. As Moses Maimonides said, “It is impossible for a person to be endowed by nature from birth with either virtue or vice, just as it is impossible that one should be skilled by nature in a particular art.” 3 Life is an apprenticeship during which one has the opportunity to create the ultimate art form—one’s own life.
According to Maimonides, the quest for human meaning, moral virtue, and artful existence cannot be acquired by proxy. Maimonides interpreted the well-known talmudic adage “If I am not for myself, who will be for me?” to mean that no one but one’s own self can create the work of art that is one’s own self. 4 Self-potential may only be realized by means of what the hasidic master Mendel of Kotsk called arbeiten auf sich —working on oneself. 5
The soul is a seed implanted within each of us. Each person is like a tree that may choose whether to bring forth its own fruit. At life’s end, one may return a diminished form of what one received, or more than one received, at life’s beginning. One has the choice to corrode or to create, to pollute or to improve, what one initially had been granted. 6
While little Jewish genius was invested throughout the ag