To Heal a Fractured World: The Ethics of Responsibility

In Judaism, faith is not acceptance but protest, against the world that is, in the name of the world that is not yet but ought to be.

despite the Torah’s insistence on justice as the foundation of society, there is something prior to justice and to society itself, namely the gossamer strands of kindness that link self to self in bonds of love.

God creates divine justice, but only we can create human justice, acting on behalf of God but never aspiring to be other than human.

In this world, the optimists have it, not because they are always right, but because they are positive. Even when wrong, they are positive, and that is the way of achievement, correction, improvement, and success. Educated, eyes-open optimism pays; pessimism can only offer the empty consolation of being right.

collective responsibility is a special feature of the biblical covenant, not a universal principle of societies as such.

That requires covenantal, not just contractual, politics.

Between them they constitute the biblical refutation of tragedy. No evil decree cannot be rescinded. There is no inexorable fate. That is the difference between a Greek oracle and a biblical prophet. An oracle predicts; a prophet warns.

in the long term under such conditions. Morality is the history of humanity’s attempts to construct a common life on the basis of shared codes, conventions and convictions.

simhah, usually translated as ‘joy’. What it really means is the happiness we share, or better still, the happiness we make by sharing.