Graduation Address Excerpts
2003
“
Hold Fast Our Integrity: A
Joban Task in a Joban World”
Dr. C. Hassell Bullock (C ’70)
Professor of Old Testament and the
Franklin S. Dyrness Professor of Biblical
Studies at Wheaton College
Today I want to address a topic that has
become part of the soul of our American
culture, and so endemic to our self-under-
standing, that we could say
integrity
is
defined and explicated as
the
American
value. That is, it is joined inextricably to our
American ideas of
life, liberty, and the pursuit
of happiness.
To understand American life –
and this is one of the many good things
about us – we have to recognize how this
value guides our national and private lives….
I suggest that we find the classic statement on
the shape of
integrity
in the book of Job….
When the Almighty singled Job out, it was
because he was a “blameless (Heb.,
tam
)
and
upright man, who fears God and turns away
from evil” (Job 1:8). And when the
Adversary makes his second frontal assault,
God reminds him that Job “still holds fast
his
integrity
” (
Heb.,
tumato
) [
Job 2:3]. The
point is that Job exhibits a consistent moral
conduct,
1
based upon moral principles to
which he adheres and to which he bears tes-
timony, both in the prologue and the dialogue.
The Adversary thought there had to be a
chink in Job’s armor somewhere. The
Hebrew word
tumah
(“
integrity”) has the
meaning of
completeness,
wholeness,
or
consistency
.
Therefore, we may
speak of
integrity
as
wholeness
or
consistency
of character
….
While the book focuses
on a single individual
and his integrity, the
classical nature of the
book turns the spotlight on us as religious
professionals. Job’s maintenance of his
integrity, so hardnosed and unre-
lenting, highlights a model for the academic
world and the community of faith.
Admittedly, it brought Job into conflict with
his peers and into tension with the Deity,
but it guided him through the labyrinthine
ways of his life….
Colleagues, students, and congregants have
every right to demand of us a consistency
of character. The peo-
ple whom we serve
want to know that our
life and actions are
governed by principles
that connect our pri-
vate and public
personae.
1
Klaus Koch, “Tamam,”
in
Theological Lexicon
of the Old Testament
,
ed.
by Ernst Jenni and
Claus Westermann,
trans. by Mark E. Biddle
(
Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson Publishers,
1997), 3:1426.
Graduation Address
Cincinnati, May 29, 2003
Rabbi Elliot Dorff, Ph.D.
Rector and Sol & Anne Dorff
Distinguished Professor of
Philosophy, Co-Chair of
Bioethics, University of Judaism
We Jews rightfully treasure our
tradition for a whole host of
reasons. Among others, it gives
us a sense of roots and a sense
of what to hope for; it makes
life meaningful by marking off
the events of life and the sea-
sons of the week and the year;
it gives us a wealth of wisdom about how to
live life and sets a critically important tone
of questioning absolutely everything; it gives
us a worldwide community in the past,
present, and future; it provides us with a
complete civilization, with lit-
erature, philosophy, law, music,
art, dance, and a homeland; it
gives us a sense of the sacred
and multiple ways to interact
with God.
One other reason we cherish
our tradition, though, is that it
often gives us moral direction
and motivation. And yet in
modern times, we sometimes
find that it is hard to apply the
tradition to the issues that confront us.
Sometimes that is because modern science
and technology have created facts that our
ancestors could never have even imagined,
let alone treated, and sometimes the chal-
lenge comes from a very different direction
–
namely, the new social, political, and eco-
nomic circumstances in which Jews find
themselves in America, circumstances with
few, if any, parallels in Jewish history.
...
My approach
is
halakhic, it
does
pay par-
ticular attention to Jewish law in order to
discern our moral duties. But what I had
in mind is not what philosophers call “legal
formalism” at all – that is, an approach in
which you obey the law simply because it |
is the law and you determine its demands
solely on the basis of what the texts say.
Instead, I would use the living, dynamic
Jewish legal system in which you obey the
law for a whole variety of reasons and you
determine its demands on the basis not
only of precedent but also of theological,
historical, social, moral, and even econom-
ic concerns….
Graduation Address
Los Angeles, May 19, 2003
“
Probing the Jewish Tradition for Moral Guidance”
34
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