SUICIDE, ASSISTED SUICIDE, ACTIVE EUTHANASIA

experience of God is genuine and revelation is genuine, but for the liberal Jewish thinker- following the model of Buber - only the ground of Jewish duty is revealed i.e., the presence of God . In the I-Thou moments of our personal and communal lives we experience the divine presence. From the intimacy of the relationship we intuit what is required of us.'® The specifics of Jewish duty(mitzvot) are the human response to the experience of the divine. Yitz Greenberg adds that in our partnership with God we are encouraged to become more like God by mastering our environment. Further, the covenantal model takes Jewish tradition seriously, because the religious classics of Judaism are the accumulated wisdom of the Jewish people, which are authoritative by virtue of their testifying to the genuine struggle of the Jewish people to live within the covenantal relationship. To utilize the texts is to take one’s stance as part of the continuing drama of Jewish history. It offers a specific locus for our being by placing us within a community. Our autonomy is limited by our willingness to bring our individual will under the scrutiny of collective wisdom and collective responsibility. It means we do not have to invent our Jewish selves nor do we exist in a lonely vacuum, but we are part of living community. With this method individuals have the right to exercise a great deal of control over their own lives. In such a system quality of life questions become are as valid as quantity of life questions.

Finally a system of covenantal ethics must also have a concept of a just society. Central to the formulation of such a concept are the historic experiences of the Jewish people as slaves in Egypt . Our tradition constantly calls upon us to identify with the weak and the powerless so that they may be liberated from the economic, social, political, and spiritual fetters which prevent their fully becoming b'tzelem elohim(in the image of God ).'” The Shoah also creates a moral imperative to prevent the dark forces which reside within the human soul from overwhelming our divine potential.™® The Shoah is a warning which cannot be ignored. Jewish and human life become all the more sacred when faced with the smoking ovens. Further, the re-establishment