ETHICAL WILLS

that cannot be acquired from legal arguments or philosophical treatises.

Finally, I think ethical wills offer a third way between sheer philosophy on the one hand and Halakhah on the other. This makes the genre of ethical wills especially important for Reform Judaism . Our movement goes back to a longstanding debate about what constitutes the core of Judaism . We stand in agreement with many rebellions against strict rabbanism in saying that mere adherence to Halakhah is not enough. This critique has been the basis of any number of movements in Judaism , from mysticism to Hasidism to Zionism . On the other hand, we as a movement have at times gone too far in another direction, namely philosophy. The early founders of Reform were convinced they could create a modern, rational, and progressive religion on the grounds of a scientific study of history and culture. The result was often a Jewish ethical culture that had little or no religious content. Ethical wills are a vehicle for teaching us how to be Jewish , not only in terms of neo-Orthodox Halakhah, but, more importantly, emotionally and intellectually, without along the way turning Judaism into a secular philosophy. They get right to the point of what the Reform movement has been all about: that Judaism is about bringing the spiritual into our lives. This is an element of our tradition we have been all too ready to ignore or forget.

In his introduction to the reprint of Israel Abrahams ’ Hebrew Ethical Wills, Judah Goldin begins by quoting Moshe Hayyim Luzzato, who wrote a famous ethical treatise, Mesillat Yesharim. Luzzato says in opening his work,“I have not composed this work to teach people what they do not already know, but to remind them...of what is well known to them indeed. For most of what I say is nothing more than what most people do know and have absolutely no doubts about. But what is said in the following pages is constantly ignored,

118