Principles, Duties, and Practices of Judaism Intended for the Moral and Religious Instruction of Hebrew Youth

Jewish Colonization Association

1911

Duties to One’s Country

One must love one’s country, defend it, obey its laws, love one’s fellow citizens, and not disturb their peace.

Work toward the well-being, peace, and prosperity of the country in which you live, and pray for it to the Lord, for in its prosperity and peace shall you have peace. (Jeremiah 29:7)

Cursed be he who does not follow the law. (Deuteronomy 27:26)

Pray to God for the good of your government. (m. Avot 3:2)

Fear, my child, the Lord and the king, and meddle not with revolutionaries. (Proverbs 24:21)

Follow the laws and sentences dictated by judges, veer neither to the right nor to the left of the laws they have promulgated. (Deuteronomy 17:11)

Stray not from thy fellow citizens. (m. Avot 2:5)

We must prove that we are brave in order to defend our village and our cities. (2 Samuel 10:12)

One must not avoid paying legally established taxes; the laws of the state must be observed. (see b. Bava Kamma 113a)

Duties to One’s Parents

One owes one’s parents love, respect, obedience, and assistance when needed.

Honor your father and your mother, so shall you live many years. (Exodus 20:12)

Listen, my child, to the teachings of your father, and do not spurn the instructions of your mother, for they will be as an adornment of grace for your head and pendants for your neck. (Proverbs 1:8–9)

The wise child pleases his father, and the foolish scorns his mother. (Proverbs 15:20)

Fear your mother and your father. (Leviticus 19:3)

Obey your father, he who engendered you, and do not spurn your mother as she ages. (Proverbs 23:22)

Cursed be he who dishonors his father or his mother. (Deuteronomy 27:16)

Translated by
Michele McKay
Aynesworth
.

Credits

Jewish Colonization Association, Principios deberes y practicas del judaismo [Principles, Duties, and Practices of Judaism] (Paris: Jewish Colonization Association, 1911), pp. 51–52, 55–56.

Published in: The Posen Library of Jewish Culture and Civilization, vol. 7.

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Creator Bio

Jewish Colonization Association

Est. 1891

Philanthropist Baron Maurice de Hirsch founded the Jewish Colonization Association (JCA or ICA) in 1891 to facilitate mass Jewish emigration from Europe and Russia to rural Argentina, which de Hirsch imagined as a place where Jews would be free from antisemitism. To achieve this, the JCA focused its efforts on supporting Jewish agricultural initiatives and farming education. By 1930, the JCA had purchased over fifty thousand hectares of Argentinean farmland where more than twenty thousand Jewish colonists lived and worked. By that time, the JCA’s interest in Jewish emigration and agriculture had also expanded to support Jewish farming initiatives in Brazil, the United States, Canada, Palestine, Cyprus, and Turkey. It is still active in Israel as the Jewish Charitable Association.

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