IB World Religions 6.6.1. Interpretation and Authority: Love of God, Love of Neighbour and the Golden Rule Notes

6.6.1. Interpretation and Authority: Love of God, Love of Neighbour and the Golden Rule

Torah as ethical source

1. Jewish ethics begins from Torah rather than from moral reasoning conducted independently of it. On the traditional account, what a Jew ought to do is derived from what God commanded through Moses.
2. The Torah does not sort its commandments into moral and ceremonial classes. The Ten Commandments (Exodus 20, Deuteronomy 5) put obligations towards God and obligations towards other people in one list.
3. Two commands are treated across the tradition as summarizing the rest. They are the love of God (Deuteronomy 6:4 and 6:5) and the love of the neighbour (Leviticus 19:18).
4. Alongside its legal material the tradition carries narrative, and reads it as instruction. Abraham arguing with God over Sodom and Joseph forgiving his brothers are treated as ethical teaching, not only as history.
5. Rabbinic thought also asks what the law is for. Maimonides argued that the mitzvot exist to refine character and to order society, which licenses asking what a given commandment is meant to achieve.
6. Every Jewish movement shares these sources and weighs them differently. All hold the ethical mitzvot binding, and they disagree over who may say what those mitzvot now require.

Love of God

1. "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul and with all your might" (Deuteronomy 6:5) follows immediately on the Shema's declaration that God is one.
2. Jews recite the two sentences together twice daily. The ethical command is therefore embedded in the most frequently repeated words in Jewish worship.
3. The tradition reads love of God as shown in action rather than felt as an emotion. The verses that follow instruct the hearer to teach the words to children, speak them at home and on the road, and bind them as a sign.
4. Rabbinic reading of "with all your might" (me'odekha) extends the command to possessions. One standard reading is "with all your money", which makes generosity a way of loving God.
5. "With all your soul" was read as willingness to die rather than commit certain transgressions. Rabbi Akiva's death under Roman execution, reciting the Shema, became the model of Kiddush Hashem, the sanctification of the Name.
6. The everyday form of the same idea is that a Jew's conduct reflects on God. Public wrongdoing by a Jew is called chillul Hashem, desecration of the Name, and rabbinic law treats it as an aggravated wrong for that reason.

Love of neighbour

1. "You shall love your neighbour as yourself: I am the Lord" (Leviticus 19:18) closes a verse that opens by forbidding vengeance and the bearing of a grudge.
2. Rabbi Akiva called the verse a great principle of the Torah. Ben Azzai answered that the verse on humanity made in God's likeness (Genesis 5:1) is greater still, because it covers those a person does not think of as neighbours.
3. The chapter the command sits in is concrete rather than abstract. Leviticus 19 requires leaving the corners of the field for the poor, paying a labourer the same day, and not cursing the deaf or putting a stumbling block before the blind.
4. The same chapter extends the command explicitly to the outsider. "You shall love him as yourself, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt" is said of the ger, the resident stranger (Leviticus 19:34).
5. Rabbinic law builds a whole category on the verse. Gemilut chasadim, acts of loving kindness, covers visiting the sick, comforting mourners, burying the dead and providing for a bride.
6. Tzedakah, usually translated as charity, is classed under justice rather than generosity, since its root means righteousness. Maimonides ranks eight levels of it, the highest being help that leaves the recipient self-supporting.
7. Rabbinic discussion of who counts as a neighbour has run in both directions. Some medieval authorities read the word narrowly as fellow Jew, while mainstream modern opinion across the movements holds the obligations of kindness owed to all people, citing darkhei shalom, the ways of peace.

The Golden Rule

1. The best known Jewish version of the rule is stated negatively. Hillel told a would-be convert, "what is hateful to you, do not do to your fellow: that is the whole Torah, and the rest is commentary" (Shabbat 31a).
2. The negative form does specific work. It sets a floor a person can actually check, where a positive form invites someone to impose on others whatever they would want for themselves.
3. Hillel's closing instruction matters as much as the rule. "Go and learn it" keeps the detailed law in place, so the principle summarizes the commandments rather than replacing them.
4. Rabbi Akiva's positive formulation from Leviticus 19:18 stands alongside it, and the tradition keeps both. One states the minimum owed to anyone, and the other states the aspiration.
5. The rule is applied through law rather than around it. The prohibition on lashon hara (damaging speech about others), the duty to return lost property, and the rules of honest weights and measures are treated as its worked out form.
6. The movements agree that the rule binds and differ on what follows from it. Reform and Liberal authorities are readier to revise a specific ruling that appears to conflict with it, while Orthodox authorities hold that the law defines what the principle requires.

From principle to ruling

1. Principles do not settle cases on their own, so Jewish ethics works through law. A question is brought to a rabbi, who reasons from Torah, Talmud, codes and precedent towards a ruling on the case in front of him.
2. The written answers are called responsa, in Hebrew she'elot u-teshuvot, questions and answers. They are where Jewish ethical reasoning is actually visible, covering matters from medical treatment to business practice.
3. Rulings weigh competing obligations rather than applying a single rule. Pikuach nefesh, the saving of a life, overrides almost every other commandment, which shows that the system ranks its own values.
4. The tradition also recognizes conduct above the legal minimum. Lifnim mishurat hadin describes acting inside the line the law draws, doing more than a ruling strictly requires.
5. Talmudic cases make the point concrete. In Bava Metzia porters who broke their employer's barrels had their cloaks seized in compensation, and Rav ruled that the cloaks be returned and the wages paid, citing the verse about walking in the way of the good.
6. Character is treated as part of the method. The maxims of Pirkei Avot (Sayings of the Fathers) shape the person who will make the judgement, on the view that sound rulings need sound people.

Ethical authority across the movements

1. Every Jewish movement holds the ethical mitzvot binding. The disagreement is about who may decide what those mitzvot require now, and on what basis.
2. Ultra-Orthodox communities look to leading poskim (decisors) and to the judgement of recognized great scholars, on the view that a life saturated in Torah produces reliable moral judgement.
3. Orthodox authorities work from halakhah as a system with its own internal development. A new question is answered by reasoning from precedent rather than by appeal to current moral sentiment.
4. Conservative and Masorti Judaism holds halakhah binding and historically developing. Its law committee issues rulings and may adopt more than one valid position on the same question.
5. Reform and Liberal Judaism holds the ethical mitzvot binding and the ritual ones open to change. It treats informed individual conscience, guided by tradition and by rabbinic guidance, as the final ethical decision maker.
6. The practical effect shows wherever a new question arrives. The movements often reach the same conclusion by different routes, and where they differ the difference is usually about method rather than about whether the ethical demand is real.