[Avodah] Jewish Law

[Prof. Levine]

The following is from RSRH's commentary of Shemos 19: 10 - 13

10 And God said to Moshe: Go to the people and 
sanctify them today and tomorrow and have them wash their garments.

11 Let them be ready for the third day, for on 
the third day God will descend before the eyes of 
all the people upon Mount Sinai.

12 Set a boundary around the people and say to 
them: Be careful not to ascend the mountain or 
even to touch a part of it! Whoever touches
the mountain shall be put to death.

13 Let no hand touch it! For he shall be stoned 
to death, or only thrown down, whether it be 
beast or man, it shall not live. When the horn of
dismissal will sound a long, drawn-out blast, 
they may ascend the mountain again.

Jewish Law is the only system of laws that did not emanate from
the people whose constitution it was intended to be. Judaism is the only
“religion” that did not spring from the hearts of the people who find
in it the spiritual basis for their lives. It is precisely this “objective”
quality of Jewish Law and of the Jewish “religion” that makes them
both unique, setting them apart clearly and distinctly from all else on
earth that goes by the name of law or religion. This quality makes Jewish
Law the sole factor in human culture that can be considered the catalyst
and ultimate goal of every other manifestation of progress, whereas the
Law itself, as the given absolute ideal, remains above and beyond any
idea of progress.

All other “religions” and codes of law originate in the human minds
of a given era; they merely express the conceptions of God, of human
destiny, and of man’s relation to God and to his fellow man, that are
held by a given society in a particular period of history. Hence, all these
man-made religions and codes, like all other aspects of human civilization
— science, art, morals and manners — are subject to change
with the passing of time. For by their very nature and origin they are
nothing but the expressions of levels reached by civilization at various
stages in human development.

Not so the Jewish “religion” and Jewish Law. They do not stem from
beliefs held by human beings at one period or another. They do not
contain time-bound human concepts of God and of things human and
Divine. They are God-given; through them men are told by God’s Will
what their conceptions should be, for all time, about God and things
Divine and, above all, about man and human affairs.
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