Shavuos Ethos Analysis
Speech joke yetzer hara and yetzer tov
(…so I decided its 2017, I’ll listen to everyone.)
Believe it or not, part of what Shavuos represents is the introduction of liberal ideas to our society. Before Uriel jumps at my throat, let me clarify…
No society before the Torah or without Torah’s influence has attributed intrinsic value to individual life. Without the Torah, government spending to heal or preserve life would be considered an absurd venture. The right to life, which the American Declaration of Independence considered "self-evident," was not evident to anyone that didn’t absorb Torah values.
Think back to Rome only a few hundred years ago. Killing for entertainment was the most popular amusement in decorated country, where some 50,000 people would crowd into the Coliseum to watch convicted criminals, slaves, and POWs fed to the lions to the death. Lest the crowd get bored, routine executions by burning, beheading, and skinning people alive were offered for amusement during intermission.
“Lo Sirtzach,” the sixth of the Aseres Adibros revealed at Mattan Torah, was not simply ethical rationality to the stability of society. The Torah instead asserted that all individual human beings were holy because they were created in the image of God. As the …show more content…
The pasuk in Kedoshim: "You shall not commit a perversion of justice; you shall not favor the poor and you shall not honor the mighty" would have been regarded as outlandish had God not commanded it. According to the Torah, even a king is not above the law and even a slave is not below it. Jewish courts do -- and always have- heard cases initiated by wronged workers, women, and foreigners. By contrast, ancient Athens, the so-called "cradle of democracy," extended full legal rights to only a few thousand men who owned land, leaving its other hundreds of thousands of residents with no recourse to the
(…so I decided its 2017, I’ll listen to everyone.)
Believe it or not, part of what Shavuos represents is the introduction of liberal ideas to our society. Before Uriel jumps at my throat, let me clarify…
No society before the Torah or without Torah’s influence has attributed intrinsic value to individual life. Without the Torah, government spending to heal or preserve life would be considered an absurd venture. The right to life, which the American Declaration of Independence considered "self-evident," was not evident to anyone that didn’t absorb Torah values.
Think back to Rome only a few hundred years ago. Killing for entertainment was the most popular amusement in decorated country, where some 50,000 people would crowd into the Coliseum to watch convicted criminals, slaves, and POWs fed to the lions to the death. Lest the crowd get bored, routine executions by burning, beheading, and skinning people alive were offered for amusement during intermission.
“Lo Sirtzach,” the sixth of the Aseres Adibros revealed at Mattan Torah, was not simply ethical rationality to the stability of society. The Torah instead asserted that all individual human beings were holy because they were created in the image of God. As the …show more content…
The pasuk in Kedoshim: "You shall not commit a perversion of justice; you shall not favor the poor and you shall not honor the mighty" would have been regarded as outlandish had God not commanded it. According to the Torah, even a king is not above the law and even a slave is not below it. Jewish courts do -- and always have- heard cases initiated by wronged workers, women, and foreigners. By contrast, ancient Athens, the so-called "cradle of democracy," extended full legal rights to only a few thousand men who owned land, leaving its other hundreds of thousands of residents with no recourse to the