Q & A
Joseph Telushkin: You Shall Be Holy

by Rahel Musleah, Religion BookLine -- Publishers Weekly, 1/4/2006

Rabbi Joseph Telushkin

RBL: Why do we need a book on ethics?

Telushkin: The word `religious’ has become associated in people’s minds only with rituals. This is particularly sad given that the Jewish tradition has long put an extraordinary emphasis on ethics. Perhaps the most famous story in the Talmud is when a non-Jew asks Rabbi Hillel to define the essence of Judaism. In a sentence, while standing on one foot, Hillel says, `What is hateful onto you don’t do onto your neighbor. The rest is commentary. Now go and study.’ He puts ethics at the center of Judaism. Throughout history ethics have been taught through laws and examples. I spent a lot of my time finding anecdotes that illustrate how the laws are carried out in daily life.

RBL: Can you define the relationship between religion and ethics?

Telushkin: In the Jewish case, it’s God’s central demand of human beings. God created human beings in God’s image and wants us to treat ourselves and other human beings with the awareness that they, too, are in God’s image. That’s a struggle for us. People get on our nerves. We can be unfair. We all have two aspects in our nature: the yetzer hatov, the inclination towards kindness—and the yetzer hara—the inclination towards selfishness and meanness. Religion tells us that this is probably the most important struggle in which we can engage.

RBL: You say in your introduction that the focus of the book is improving one’s character. Is this a self-help book?

Telushkin: It’s like the ultimate self-help book. It gives practical strategies through a spiritual orientation.

RBL: Have you uncovered any techniques for becoming a “good” person?

Telushkin: Much of it is summarized in the notion of moral imagination—trying to think through what the needs of the other person are in any given situation—and also the recognition that doing the right thing, more often than not, turns out to be the right thing to do.

RBL: This is Volume I: You Shall Be Holy. What’s next?

Telushkin: Vol. II will be called Love Your Neighbor as Yourself, and will focus on more interpersonal issues. Volume III, It is Not Good for a Person to be Alone, will focus on family, friendship and community.

RBL: What stories have resonated with you most?

Telushkin: I’ve been deeply influenced by the Hillel story. You can literally spend your whole life studying how to be an ethical person. It’s not self-evident. That’s why ethics is not for simpletons.