The Jewish Moral Virtues

Book excerpt: The Jewish Moral Virtues is a book of musar - practical ethical wisdom applied to contemporary life. In form and purpose, it is parallel to William Bennett's bestselling Book of Virtues. Authors Borowitz and Schwartz synthesize traditional scholarship from a wide range of Jewish sources with personal insights into modern ethical dilemmas. Traditionally, Jewish ethical teachers have been concerned with law or general guidance for a good life, i.e., virtue, rather than philosophical meditations upon specific issues. This collection is structured upon the twenty-four virtues selected by a thirteenth-century Roman Jew, Yehiel ben Yekutiel, including trustworthiness, lovingkindness, compassion, generosity, charity, humility, and pure-heartedness, among others, and expands to include wisdom from the ancient rabbis, medieval philosophers, and Yehiel's successors over the past seven centuries.