Jewish Thought, Ethics, and Theology
Domain 4: Jewish thought, ethics, and theology. The exam tests your grasp of arguments - creation, covenant, chosenness, suffering, free will, messianism - and your ability to attribute them correctly.
Core ideas
- Monotheism and the Shema; covenant with Noah, Abraham, and Israel at Sinai; chosenness as responsibility, not superiority (Amos 3:2; Exodus 19:6).
- Tzelem Elohim (Genesis 1:27) grounds ethics; yetzer ha-tov and yetzer ha-ra; free will (Deuteronomy 30:19); teshuvah.
- Theodicy: Deuteronomic retribution, Job, olam ha-ba, Maimonides' Guide, Buber's 'eclipse of God,' Levinas's ethics as first philosophy, Heschel's prophetic theology.
- Maimonides' 13 principles; negative attributes; Kaplan's Reconstructionist naturalism.
Worked example
'Why does the Torah begin with creation rather than the first mitzvah?' Rashi (Genesis 1:1) cites Psalm 111:6: if the nations accuse Israel of stealing the land, answer that God created and apportions it. Reasoning: the question is literary-theological; Rashi's answer is a polemic about land and justice, not a scientific cosmogony. The same move - reading a textual anomaly as a theological claim - recurs in Ramban and modern commentators. A strong answer names the question, the source, the claim, and the counterclaim.
Traps
- Flattening diverse thinkers into 'Judaism says.'
- Confusing Maimonides the philosopher with Maimonides the halakhist.
- Treating chosenness as racism; ignoring covenantal obligation.
- Using 'tikkun olam' as a universal slogan without its sources.