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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

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What are Jewish values?

  • The belief in the brotherhood of mankind and the kinship of all living things.
  • The belief in the equality and infinite value of all human beings and in their dignity, which must be upheld and protected by all.
  • History is directional. The world is is headed toward a more glorious future in which swords will be beaten into ploughshares and war will be abolished.
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  • Peace is superior to war, forgiveness higher than vengeance, and cultivation of the mind and spirit more noble than mere cultivation of the body.
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  • Man is utterly free to choose his own path. Empowered with freedom of choice, he is capable of liberating himself from the limitations of human nature.
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  • Law is ineffective unless it is immutable. Morality and ethics must be anchored in an absolute divine standard.
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  • Humans are meant to join G-d as junior partners in creation, establishing justice, feeding the poor and strengthening the weak.
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  • Leadership is not about genius or brute strength but moral courage.
  • LIfe is all that is blessed and all that is good. Death is an absence of life, a void, an abyss. Man must never glorify death.
  • People are more than the sum total of his actions. They can always repent of previous misdeeds and reembrace the path of righteousness.
  • Humans are commanded by G-d to protect animal life and never to treat animals cruelly or sadistically. Animal life may be taken for human survival and consumption, but not for game or sport.
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  • The family is the bedrock of society and its most important social unit.
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  • Man need not bow his head in submission in the face of seemingly divine injustice, and humans must never accept the suffering of their fellowmen in silence. We are permitted to challenge G-d in the face of seeming divine miscarriages of justice.
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  • The innocence of children is always to be preserved. A parent's principal responsibility is to inspire his child to choose a righteous path.
  • The world is enriched by cultural and ethnic diversity. Sameness and conformity are to be shunned.
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  • The most beautiful things in life are those that, like love, are invisible, transcendent, and cannot be experienced with the five senses.
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  • Man must do the right thing because It is right, even if that makes him unpopular or jeopardizes his vital interests.
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  • Doing the right thing for the wrong reasons is far more important than waiting for the proper motivation.