What is an ethical will?
Ask the rabbi.
WAYS & WILLS
Rabbi Raymond Apple
Q. I can’t be sure of being sufficiently with it to tell my family before I die how I hope they will run their lives when I am gone. What do you advise?
A. Write an ethical will. This is a genre of Jewish writing which was widespread for many centuries.
Israel Abrahams published a whole book entitled “Hebrew Ethical Wills”, which is not only historically important but practical as guidance for people in your situation.
These wills don’t deal with money or property or even with philosophy but with ethical principles.
Though they often begin with the words “My son”, their intended audience is the family as a whole. They express the person’s hope that the family would stay together, pray regularly, be honest in business, deal uprightly with Gentiles, and raise their children with moral and ethical principles.
Sometimes they reflect social problems such as the temptation to talk, gossip and distract other people during synagogue services.
Indeed some ethical wills encourage members of the family to stay home and not go to the synagogue in order not to be distracted or led into evil talk.
Often the writer shows a shrewd understanding of his family, for example, when he urges them not to be lazy.
We see that earlier generations were not always as pious and learned as we imagine: sometimes, a father has to tell his son bluntly not to forget to devote time to his studies and not to give his teacher trouble.
TISHAH B’AV: ATTACKS ON THE BOOKS
Tishah B’Av marks the destruction of the two Temples in Jerusalem and of other sanctuaries as well as countless individuals. It also commemorates the destruction of innumerable books.
The destruction of books is described in the dirge (“kinnah”), “Sha’li S’rufah BaEsh” written by Meir of Rothenburg in the 13th century. Books are regarded in Judaism as people entitled to respect in life and after death.
The history of literary persecution culminates in the Holocaust but begins in the Bible with attacks on the record of Jeremiah’s prophecies (Jer. 36:23); Maimonides warns that those responsible would have no afterlife. There were many attacks on the Talmud (e.g. in Paris in 1233-4).
The perpetrators sometimes had a bad conscience; for instance, the executioner of the rabbinic teacher Chanina ben Teradyon threw himself into the flames (AZ 17a).
The attackers were often renegade Jews, accusing their former coreligionists of blaspheming Jesus. Such renegades were often abetted by Church Inquisitors.
Jews often went into exile carrying their books; as recently as the Holocaust, the survivors included books.
Our enemies feared our books, our ideas and our ethics. No matter how much force the enemy had, there would be a time when we would prevail and the world would listen to us.
Rabbi Raymond Apple served for 32 years as the chief minister of the Great Synagogue, Sydney, Australia’s oldest and most prestigious congregation. He is now retired and lives in Jerusalem where he answers interesting questions.
