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December 19, 1972

Character (1972)

Character Development Chasidim & Mitnagdim
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Article

By Way of Apology

This monograph is not a work of musar (practical ethics), but the apology for its publication is the same as that preferred by most authors of classical musar texts: an attempt to redress a balance. It is a truism that Judaism covers the entire gamut of human existence – from the most esoteric to the most mundane, ritual and ethics, law and mysticism, tradition and philosophy, the individual and the community, the sacred and the profane, the national and the universal, the control of man’s basest passions and most abject concupiscence to his noblest metaphysical yearnings. This very variety of concerns and interests lends itself almost naturally to an eclecticism of emphasis. Every individual, movement, and age will find some particular note or strain in this symphony of faith values which it will cherish over others. Hence, Judaism is happily not a monolith, and has the capacity to respond to the deepest religious and human strivings of every disposition and temperament. At the same time, it would be (and has been) dreadfully erroneous to conclude that Judaism is whatever one wishes to make of it – an infinitely pliable piece of spiritual plastic which can be twisted, pulled, and pushed at will to fit in with whatever one’s preconceived notions happen to be at the time. Such attempts to fashion a Judaism in one's own image, doing violence to its clearly held doctrines and offending its spirit and intention, may be emotionally satisfying, but they are intellectually dishonest. Judaism possesses enough variety and heterogeneity of emphases to enable new challenges and changing orientations to find resonance within its wide scope. It can become “modern” and “relevant” – but within limits that will prevent its spiritual emasculation and intellectual falsification. There is a long tradition in Judaism – from the Talmudim to the Midrashim, from Saadia to Karo to Azulai, from Yehudah He-Hasid to Yitzhak Abohav – that one ought to seek out a specific mitzvah as the comma…
Character Development

Outline

Campus Conversations: Ethical Dilemas on a University Campus (1999)

Your classmate tells you that she “obtained” a copy of a very difficult final (i.e., Organic Chemistry) and she is willing to share – do you report her? make a copy of the final for yourself? just ignore the offer? You find that throughout the past few weeks, money has been “disappearing” from your wallet. Your roommate suddenly has a lot of spending cash at her disposal – every time that you leave her alone in the room, you find that money is missing – should you confront her about it? speak to a resident assistant or the residence supervisor? You find that when you talk to your professor about schoolwork, he begins to discuss other students and faculty members. He tells you the marks of other students from tests and comments about their papers. During the course of conversation, he mentions that he has a personal aversion to a particular student – despite the fact that she is an A student, he will lower her grade. Do you report him to the academic dean? Tell the student? Talk to the faculty member directly about his conduct? You are standing in the lobby and your friend has just told you a racist joke – while laughing, you realize that a security guard has been behind you the whole time and has overheard the conversation – do you apologize? Avoid the guard from now on? Is the above an example of chilul Hashem?
Character Development

Note

Fromm and Erlich (1986)

No, this is not a note on some imagined connection between Eric Fromm and Paul Erlich. Not at all. It is, rather, an outrageous pun on an equally outrageous situation. Our Orthodox Jewish society seem to be progressively obsessed with frumkeit, piety or religiosity. We have the frum, the half-frum, the "FFB" ("frum from birth") and the "BT" (Baal Teshuva — the newly frum) and, most notably, the frum and the super-frum (or glatt-frum).Now, there is nothing wrong with asserting that there are different levels of piety, varying degrees of frumkeit. My problem is with the term itself, and especially its use as a label, both pejorative and honorific. The very plethora of quantative measures of frumkeit is an indication of demonstrative piety with all its attendant exhibitionism.Any truly religious personality must recoil from such crude means of evaluating fellow human beings, and Jews should be especially sensitive to such gross ostentation and conspicuous frumkeit which is anathema to genuine spirituality.If not frumkeit, what then? When I was a child, I was taught the Hasidic maxim that, "a galach (priest) must be frum;a Jew should be ehrlich." Ehrlichkeit means integrity, honor, honesty. Ehrlichkeit is the true distinguishing characteristic of the religious personality, whose exquisite moral sensitivity must reject invidious comparisons of more or less piety.Frumkeit, at best, refers to mitzvot she1bein adam la-makom, the relations between man and his Creator. It says nothing directly about the quality of one's relations with his fellow humans. It requires an additional step to include bein adam le'chavero, social behavior, in the rubric of the Man-God relation. But this is not the Jewish way, which grants bein adam le1chavero autonomous status.Ehrlichkeit, however, covers both areas. Integrity is a quality that describes both man's ritual and his social conduct. One's "religious" life, no less than his ethical life, can be honorable or dishonorable. The best word f…
Character Development