Covenant and Character: Covenant

The Project

My covenant and character project is an attempt to link Torah, ethics and ritual together on a personal level.

The Torah is viewed as the articulation of a covenant which creates a sense of existence lived in relation to God and community. The key texts here are Genesis 17:1-2 and the Ten Utterances.

I approach ethics chiefly through the lens of the Jewish mussar tradition, which focuses on character and character traits. Mussar is open to the ethical insights of wisdom traditions from around the world; at the same time it focuses on Jewish teachers going back to the Talmud and employs a vocabulary that enables connections with the Torah and Jewish ritual.