family feeling. I argued in Covenant of Conversation, Kadochim, that Judaism is more than an

ethnicity. It's a call to holiness. In one sense, however, there is an important ethnic dimension to

Judaism. It's best captured in the 1980s joke about an advertising campaign in New York.

Throughout the city city there were giant

posters with the slogan, you have a friend in the Chase Manhattan Bank. Underneath one,

an Israeli had scribbled words, but in Bank La Ume, you have Mishbacher, Jews are, and a conscious

of being a single extended family. This is particularly evident in this

week's parisher. Repeatedly, we read of social legislation couched in the language of family.

When you buy or sell to your neighbor, let no one wrong his brother. If your brother

becomes impoverished and sells some of his property, his near

redeemer is to come to you and redeem what his brother sold. If your brother is impoverished

and indebted to you, you must support him. He must live with you like a foreign resident.

Don't take interest or profit from him, but fear your God and let your brother

live with you. If your brother has become impoverished and is sold to you, don't work him like a

slave. Now, the phrase, your brother in these verses, isn't meant literally. At times it means

your relative, but mostly it means your fellow Jew. This is a distinctive way of thinking

about society and our obligations to others. Jews aren't just citizens of the same nation or

adherence of the same faith. We are members of the same extended family. We are biologically or

electively children of Abraham and Sarah. For the most part, we share

the same history on the festivals. We relive the same memories. We were forged in the same

crucible of suffering. We are more than friends. We're Mishbacher, family. The concept of family

is absolutely fundamental to Judaism.

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