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Welcome

Rabbi Shmuley Boteach Photo

For the first time in history we are witnessing the mainstreaming of Jewish ideas, Jewish values, Jewish personalities, and Jewish culture in the American media. Slowly but surely, Jewish values are sculpting and molding the mainstream culture. My aim with the creation of the Jewish Values Network is to greatly accelerate this trend.

The purpose of the Jewish Values Network is to disseminate Jewish Values to the mainstream American public through every avenue of the media, and to bring the teachings of the Torah to the masses, making Judaism a light to the world.

-Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, Founder and Executive Director of THIS WORLD: The Jewish Values Network

Symposium on Jewish Values
November 17, 2009 Highlights

What are Jewish values?


    Man and God
  • Humans are meant to join God as partners in creation, doing our part on earth to confer dignity and caring on others and alleviate human suffering.
  • Humans are permitted and even obligated to challenge God in the face of seeming divine miscarriages of justice.

    • Man and himself

  • What you do is more important than what you believe. Doing the right thing for the wrong reasons if far more important than waiting for the proper motivation, even if doing so makes one unpopular or jeopardizes one’s vital interests.
  • Humans are free to choose their own path and are capable of liberating themselves from the limitations of human nature.
  • Man is more than the sum total of his actions, misdeeds can always be redeemed and the path of righteousness re-embraced.
  • Cultivation of the mind and spirit are more noble than cultivation of the body.
  • Humans must not seek perfection, but wrestle with their nature amidst a predilection to do otherwise.

    • Man and the world

  • World redemption over personal salvation; the predominance of collective consciousness over personal consciousness.
  • Man has the capacity and imperative to perfect THIS world.
  • Law is ineffective unless it is immutable. Morality and ethics must be anchored in an absolute divine standard.
  • Peace is superior to war, forgiveness higher than vengeance.
  • History is directional. The world is headed toward a more glorious future in which swords will be beaten into ploughshares and war will be abolished.
  • Life is all that is blessed and good. Death is the absence of life, and therefore should never be glorified.
  • The most beautiful things in life are those that, like love, are invisible, transcendent, and cannot be experienced with the five senses.
  • Knowledge should be pursued for the sake of knowledge. Ignorance equals darkness.

    • Man and his fellow man

  • Brotherhood of mankind and kinship of all living things.
  • Human beings are equal and each of infinite value.
  • The dignity of man must be upheld and protected by all.
  • Leadership is about moral courage, not brute strength.
  • The family is the bedrock of society.
  • The merging of male and female energy through marriage—literally and metaphorically. The taming and softening of hard and aggressive energy with softer, more compassionate energy.
  • Human beings must never accept in silence the suffering of his fellow man.
  • The innocence of children should always be preserved.
  • The world is enriched by cultural and ethnic diversity. Sameness and conformity are to be shunned.

    • Man and beast

  • Human beings are commanded by God to protect animal life and never treat any animals cruelly or sadistically. Animals are G-d’s creatures.
  • Animal life may be taken for human consumption, but not for game or sport.