Essays on Ethics: A Weekly Reading of the Jewish Bible (Covenant & Conversation Book 7)

Morality is that shared system of self-imposed restraints that allow my freedom to coexist with yours.

The alternative to power is law: law freely accepted and freely obeyed. Only by observing the rule of law – law that applies equally to the rich and poor, the powerful and powerless – do we escape the tragic cycle of freedom that begets conflict that leads to chaos, resulting in the use of force that generates tyranny, the freedom of the few and th

The Jewish belief that we are untainted by original sin, and capable of choosing between good and evil without special divine help, is not shared by all forms of Christianity, where it is known as the Pelagian heresy.

When you feel shame, you are experiencing or imagining what it is like to be seen doing what you did by others. The first instinct on feeling shame is to wish to be invisible or elsewhere.

guilt culture is a morality of freedom. A shame culture is a morality of conformity and social control.

Implicit in the Torah is the radical idea that the free God seeks the free worship of free human beings.