Jewish Values

Overview

Recall questions on the Torah and Jewish values, the Ethics of the Fathers, gemiluth chasadim and tzedakah, the Noahide Code, God's qualities and holiness as values, God as the source of morality, and Kellner on Jewish ethics.

What you need to know

Answer each one before you reveal it.

Questions from this subtopic

Each one with the model answer underneath.

1. 1

   How is the Torah related to Jewish values?

   Model answer

   Values in Judaism are not treated as a separate philosophical system bolted onto revelation; they are drawn out of the Torah and its interpretation. Because the commandments reach into every part of life, from courtroom procedure to how one speaks to an employee, the tradition's ethics comes to a student embedded in law and narrative rather than as abstract principle.

2. 2

   What is the Ethics of the Fathers, and where does it sit in the Mishnah?

   Model answer

   It is the short tractate of rabbinic maxims about character, study and conduct, placed in Nezikin, the order otherwise concerned with damages, courts and civil liability. Sitting the moral sayings alongside the law of torts makes a point in itself. It contains almost no legal rulings, offering instead chains of teachers and their sayings on caution in judgment, humility, the danger of anger and the accountability of every action, and it is widely studied on Shabbat afternoons in the summer months.

3. 3

   What are the three things on which the world is said to stand?

   Model answer

   Torah, meaning study, avodah, meaning worship, and gemiluth chasadim, acts of loving-kindness. The saying, attributed to Simeon the Just, is one of the best-known lines in the Ethics of the Fathers and gives Judaism a threefold measure of a well-lived life: learning, prayer and practical kindness together.

4. 4

   How does gemiluth chasadim differ from tzedakah?

   Model answer

   Tzedakah is giving money and is owed to the poor. Gemiluth chasadim is broader: it is done with one's person as well as one's purse, is owed to rich and poor alike, and reaches the dead as well as the living. Visiting the sick, comforting mourners, burying the dead and celebrating with a bride and groom are the standard examples.

5. 5

   What is the Noahide Code?

   Model answer

   The set of obligations that rabbinic tradition holds to bind all humanity, not only Jews. It is usually counted as seven: rejecting idolatry, not blaspheming, not murdering, not stealing, avoiding forbidden sexual relations, not eating flesh taken from a living animal, and setting up courts of justice.

6. 6

   Why does the Noahide Code matter for how Jews see non-Jews?

   Model answer

   Because it means Judaism does not have to regard everyone outside the covenant as lost. A non-Jew who keeps these obligations is counted among the righteous of the nations and, in the standard rabbinic view, has a share in the world to come. It gives Judaism a universal moral floor without requiring universal conversion.

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