ETHICAL WILLS

largely by authors who were connected either with the thirteenth century pietistic movement of the Hasidei Ashkenaz or with Kabbalistic mysticism, especially in the wake of the exile from Spain Nor does it seem on closer inspection that this literature is really made up of true wills at all. Rather, what we call Hebrew ethical wills in the classical sense are really well-crafted moral treatises written as though they were wills—that is, as though they were the words of a dying father to his children.

These observations raise a number of questions. If these are not really ethical wills, what are they? Why are they written as wills! And what does this have to do, first of all, with the ethics of aging and, second, with Reform Judaism. It is to these questions that| propose to address myself in the next few minutes.

Let us look first at the genre itself. I should begin by point: ing out that the notion of a distinct genre of ethical wills is itself of

rather recent vintage. The term“ethical wills,” and the conceptualization that it constitutes a genre, is to be credited to Israel Abrahams , who published a collection of such literature in 1926 as part of the Schiff Library of Jewish Classics project of the Jewish Publication Society .’ The purpose of the Schiff Library in general, and of this collection in particular, was to show that the Jews had created a classical Hebrew literature that was just as worthy of study and respect as the literature produced in Greek and Latin . Abrahams collected a variety of moral writings that seemed to be in fini testament form, put them together in one book, and titled the collection Hebrew Ethical Wills. 1t is perhaps significant that no entry for such a literature appears in the Jewish Encyclopedia that appeared in the early part of the century—that is, before the appearance of Abrahams ’ Hebrew Ethical Wills—but does appear in the subsequen! Encyclopedia Judaica . Abrahams brought together in one place mors!

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