Sinai and the Ethics of Liberation

Rabbi Phil Cohen

Phil Cohen, PhD is Rabbi to Congregation Beth Israel. Sun City Center, Florida. He has a Bachelor’s Degree in Sociology from Dickinson College, a Master’s Degree in Hebrew Letters from Hebrew Union College and was ordained in 1983 from the Hebrew Union College, Jewish Institute of Religion, in New York. After rabbinical school, he attended Brandeis University in Massachusetts, where he received a Ph.D. in Near Eastern/Judaic studies with a specialty in Jewish thought. 

Rabbi Cohen has served and taught congregations, churches and other houses of worship across the country to broaden and deepen the interfaith community. He is also an award-winning author. He has authored more than twenty published stories, dozens of articles and papers and of the eBook Lucky 13. He blogs for The Times of Israel, as well as at his website, philmcohen.com. He writes flash fiction, short stories, novels, as well as all things clergy write.

One of my favorite moments in the book of Exodus is the beginning of the Ten Commandments. Three months after liberation, the Israelites find themselves at the foot of Mount Sinai. This ragtag band of former slaves has been granted freedom, but freedom without form or substance. They need direction, and that is what they are about to receive.

These are God’s opening words, the preamble to the law that follows:
“I am the Eternal your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, the house of
bondage.”

These words are not yet a commandment; they are the moral foundation for all commandments to come. They define the relationship between God and Israel: I am your Liberator, God says. From that moment on, two truths take root deep within the Jewish soul.

First, you know that your freedom is not self-made; it is a gift from God. Second, you understand the pain of the lash. Many of you still bear its marks on your backs. Many more carry invisible scars. And because of that centuries-long experience of oppression, you know, instinctively and indelibly, that you must build a world in which the lash is never raised again. Your ethics are born of suffering; your compassion is your inheritance. That moral knowledge, etched into your very DNA, will live within you and your descendants forever.

Out of that Sinai experience flow the values that form the heart of the Jewish tradition. I offer five for reflection:

1.Tzedek, tzedek tirdof – “Justice, justice shall you pursue.”
The repetition of tzedek is intentional. It tells us that justice must be pursued not only as an end but also through just means. Justice is not optional; it is the very engine of covenantal life.

2.Tzelem Elohim – Every person created in the divine image.
This is Judaism’s most radical gift to civilization: that every human being carries within them a spark of divinity. To be created in God’s image means no one can be reduced to race, class, or category. All distinctions of power are secondary to the sacred equality of human worth.

3. Lo ta‘amod al dam re‘echa – “Do not stand idly by while your neighbor
bleeds.”
We are forbidden to be bystanders. Moral passivity is not an option. This verse demands civic engagement, the courage to act when others are in danger or distress.

4. Pikuach nefesh – The saving of life.
In Jewish law, saving a life transcends all other commandments. Every observance, even Shabbat itself, yields before the imperative to preserve life. This principle has guided Jewish involvement in medicine, rescue, and humanitarian relief across the ages.

5. Love the stranger, the widow, and the orphan, for you were strangers in
Egypt.
This injunction appears thirty-six times in the Torah, more than any other command. It
reaches back to the moment at Sinai, reminding us that our empathy is born of memory. Because we remember the taste of bondage, we are commanded to use our freedom to defend those who have none.

These five values translate naturally into the civic and political sphere because they are values of action. They call us to build a society that welcomes the stranger, pursues justice, refuses to stand idly by, and places human life above all else. We do this because we know ourselves as a people once enslaved, now free, and because we believe that within every human being glows the same divine spark.

Rabbi Phil Cohen