Tag: ethics

• March 18, 2026

  Ancient Torah, Modern Brain: The Science of Jewish Compassionate Reasoning

  For centuries, Jewish tradition has insisted that the struggle between good and evil is not merely theological—it is psychological. The rabbis described this as the tension between the yetzer hara and the yetzer hatov, the human inclinations toward fear and selfishness on the one hand, and compassion and moral responsibility on the other. Today, neuroscience offers a remarkable confirmation of this ancient insight. Modern research shows that human behavior emerges from interacting brain systems, some oriented toward threat and survival, others toward care, reflection, and cooperation. This convergence suggests something profound: Torah may be understood not only as spiritual teaching but as a system for training the moral mind. Ritual becomes practice. Study becomes cognitive training. Compassion becomes a disciplined capacity. What Jewish civilization developed over centuries may represent one of humanity’s earliest sustained efforts to cultivate what we might now call the compassionate brain—the ability to regulate fear, strengthen moral clarity, and act with responsibility toward others.

• March 17, 2026

  Ritual as Moral Neuroplasticity:  Judaism and the Neuroscience of Moral Formation

  Judaism may be understood not as a tradition that chose between ritual and ethics, but as a civilization that refused to separate them. From the Jewish military colony at Elephantine, to the philosophical Judaism of Alexandria, to the moral reconstruction of the early rabbis after catastrophe, we see a continuous effort to ensure that religious structure serves ethical purpose. The prophets did not reject ritual; they rejected ritual without justice. The rabbis did not abandon law; they refined it to protect life and dignity. Across centuries, Jewish civilization repeatedly returned to one central insight: that law must protect the vulnerable, power must answer to compassion, and religious life must train human beings toward moral responsibility. Seen through this lens, Judaism represents one of history’s earliest sustained attempts to build a compassion-centered civilization—one in which ritual becomes training, study becomes moral formation, and ethics becomes the purpose of religious life.

• March 17, 2022

  Compassionate Reasoning

  It is out and Oxford and Amazon are keeping the price below $35. From the Introduction: “This book, more than any of my other books, centers on the creation of a new idea and a new approach to thinking, feeling, and doing that might help transform human relations for the better. I have encapsulated that in the phrase “Compassionate Reasoning” which is founded upon an exploration of and devotion to compassion as one of the most amazing and important emotions and ethical principles that brings healing and hope to human relations. The “reasoning” part rests on the importance for human reasoning, and moral reasoning in particular, as it is expressed and described over the centuries in at least five different approaches to virtue and moral decision-making. I have asked myself how I can acknowledge the roots of this journey toward this new idea and combination of skills and practices. When …

• December 27, 2015

  LEADERSHIP, IDEA, AND EVIL

   

  There is no mystery to evil.
  In fact making evil into a mystery,
  Is a bad idea.
  There are only good ideas and bad ideas.
  Anything that brings purposeful, unprovoked harm,
  To other sentient beings,
  Is a bad idea.
  Evil is a bad idea,
  In the hands of a leader.
  Be a leader only,
  With a good idea.
  If you must,
  Be a follower,
  For a good idea.
  Be smart enough,
  To be aware,
  Of your own bad ideas,
  And confine them to your head.
  If you cannot,
  Then you must leave immediately.

  The temptation to mystify evil is equal to our bewilderment at humanity, how many good people are led to do the worst things imaginable. The answer is not evil in them, but the evil of bad ideas inside leaders, and the tragedy of human obedience. The one alternative that has always worked is very good …

• October 18, 2014

  Conflict Prevention Values In Judaism: Coping with a Bad Summer by Beginning a New Year

   

  Below is an excerpt from my book, Between Eden and Armageddon: The Future of World Religions, Violence, and Peacemaking, pp. 177-179 . The reason I am reproducing this now is given the Jewish season of New Year, repentance,  and the never ending assault this summer on the decency of the Abrahamic religions, their constant use and abuse by states and extremists alike, it strikes me as the right time to remember the thousands of years and thousands of texts that are humanitarian and decent in just one tradition, let alone all the great sacred traditions of humanity. We must not forget, we must not let states and their extremists bury the wisdom of any great tradition.

  Conflict Prevention Values In Judaism

  A. Self

  benevolent care of the self (al tehi rasha bifne, ahavah kamokha, im ayn ani li)[1]

  self-scrutiny and change (heshbon ha-nefesh, teshuva)[2]…