Rabbi Elliot Dorff, Ph.D., is Rector and Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at the American Jewish University in Los Angeles. He has published books on Jewish medical ethics, social ethics, and personal ethics as well as a book on the concept and practice of Tikkun Olam.
Creating a person of character is arguably the most important task that parents and teachers have. Yes, our Jewish children and students should learn a skill to earn a living, they should learn broadly about the world around them (what in college is called “a liberal arts education”), and they should learn about their heritage and how to put it in practice – and hopefully develop the desire to continue and deepen their Jewish commitments throughout their lives. In some ways, though, the test of the success in all of these areas – including, perhaps, most especially our Jewish goals – is whether the child or student has developed a keen moral sense in evaluating actions and, even more importantly, has internalized moral norms and ideals in his or her own interactions with other people.
How do you inculcate moral character in your own children and in your students? Thankfully, there are many ways to do that, so if one method does not work with a particular person, others may. This means that we should consciously carry out this task with as many tools at our disposal as possible.
By far the most important way to teach ethics is to model moral behavior oneself. Children are keenly aware of what really matters to an adult and what is just lip service. Thus the parent and teacher must treat the youngster with respect even when the child has said or done something aggravating – and all the more when the child is simply challenging someone’s statement or behavior.
Part of this modeling involves teaching children to have reasonable expectations of other people and of themselves – and to learn when and how to forgive themselves and others when someone has acted badly. As they grow into their teenage years, especially, children tend to see everything in black and white – frankly too much so, for much of life is not nearly as neat and clean as they perceive it to be. Part of what parents and teachers need to teach, then, is that a moral person has to leave room for human foibles and accept apologies when they are sincere, especially when they are accompanied by actions that are intended to make up for the wrong. Conversely, children need to learn to ask forgiveness themselves – and to make up for whatever wrongs they have committed to the extent that they can – both to carry out their responsibility to others and to have a sense of self-worth themselves, despite some things that they say or do that are less than ideal.
In addition to hopefully good role models, Jewish children – and adults, for that matter –can learn from a plethora of Jewish materials. I discuss these at much greater length in Chapter One and in the Appendix of my book, Love Your Neighbor and Yourself: A Jewish Approach to Modern Personal Ethics. Here, though, is a list of some of the most important Jewish resources to learn to be a person of character:
Stories. The stories of the many dysfunctional families in Genesis, for example, inform us how not to act as parents and siblings. The Exodus-Sinai story, which is our core narrative as Jews, teaches us that we are a community, not just a collection of individuals, and that freedom from oppressors is valuable not only for its own sake, but to enable us to carry out the responsibilities of Sinai.
Theology. “You shall be holy, as I the Lord your God am holy” (Leviticus 19:2). This verse demands that we emulate God in our behavior. This is easier said than done, both because God does some morally questionable things in the Bible and Talmud and because acquiring God’s good traits is not easy. But, as the Talmud (B. Sotah 14a) says,
Rabbi Hamma, son of Rabbi Hanina, said: What is the meaning of the verse, “Follow the Lord your God” (Deuteronomy 13:5)? Is it possible for a mortal to follow God’s Presence? After all, the Torah says, “For the Lord your God is a consuming fire” (Deuteronomy 4:24). Rather, the verse means to teach us that we should follow the attributes of the Holy One, praised be He. As God clothes the naked… you should clothe the naked; the Holy One, blessed be He visited the sick, as it says [after the account of Abraham’s circumcision], “The Lord appeared to him by the terebinths of Mamre” (Genesis 18:1), so too you should visit the sick. The Holy One comforted those who mourned… you should comfort those who mourn. The Holy One buried the dead… you should also bury the dead.
Furthermore, an important motivation to act morally is kiddush ha-shem, sanctifying God’s Name (reputation) and, along with that, the reputation of us Jews who worship God. Conversely, an important motivation to avoid immoral behavior is so that we do not desecrate the Name of God (hillul ha-shem) and, with that, the reputation of the Jewish people.
Proverbs. The Book of Proverbs in the Bible, Ethics of the Fathers (Avot) in the Mishnah, The Laws of Ethics (Hilkhot De’ot) in Maimonides’ Mishneh Torah, and Luzzato’s Mesilat Yesharim (Path of the Righteous) are some important examples of Jewish texts that intend to teach us traits that we are supposed to emulate and others that we should avoid.
History. To take just one example, when I served on a federal government commission to review and revise the guidelines on research on human beings, the history of how Jews were used in Nazi experiments inevitably made me more sensitive to the need to ensure that the standards of informed consent of research subjects would be very high.
Family and Community. As indicated above, we learn first, and probably most, about morality from the standards of behavior modeled in our family and community, and that extends through the generations.
Prayer. Prayer can help us clarify our values by reminding us of the big picture, confess our sins so that we can move on with our lives, and remind us daily of the kind of people we should strive to be and the kind of world we should try to create.
Law. More than perhaps any other religion in the world, Judaism tries to articulate moral norms in legal terms. Law contributes to morality in a number of ways: it sets minimum standards, it defines remedies for moral infractions, it specifies a path for forgiveness, it provides a forum for discussing hard moral questions, and it articulates demanding goals to which to aspire.
In all these ways, then, the Jewish tradition gives us methods for discerning what is moral in the first place and then motivating us to be moral. Learning these Jewish resources for moral thinking and action ourselves and then teaching them to others is nothing less than a sacred task, perhaps the most sacred task that Jews can take on and work to accomplish.