Ethical will

An Ethical will (Hebrew: "Zava'ah") is a document designed to pass ethical values from one generation to the next. Rabbis and Jewish laypeople have continued to write ethical wills during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. (Riemer) In recent years, the practice has been more widely used by the general public. In BusinessWeek magazine and in an American Bar Association electronic newsletter it is described as an aid to estate planning; (Murphy; Friedman) in health care and hospice (Baines; Freed) and as a spiritual healing tool. (Weil; Freed).

The ethical will is an ancient document from the Judeo-Christian tradition. The original template for its use came from Genesis 49:1-33. A dying Jacob gathered his sons to offer them his blessing and to request that they bury him not in Egypt, but instead in Canaan in the cave at Machpelah with his ancestors.

Other Biblical examples of ethical wills include Deuteronomy 32:46-47 where Moses instructs the Israelites to be a holy people and teach their children, and Matthew 5, where Jesus blesses his disciples. The early rabbis urged men to “‘transmit the tradition’s ethical teachings”’ and they communicated orally to their sons. Later they were written as letters. Eleazar ben Samuel HaLevi of Mainz, Germany, who died 1357, wrote to and instructed his sons to “Put me in the ground at the right hand of my father...." German and Spanish examples of these letters can be found today in the Fordham Library Archives (www.fordham.edu).

Medieval ethical wills contain the directions of fathers to their children or of aged teachers to their disciples. They were often written calmly in old age. Some of them were carefully composed, and read as formal ethical treatises. But most were written in a personal writing style, and were intended for the private use of children and relatives, or of some beloved pupil who held a special place in his teacher’s regard. Because they were not designed for publication, they often revealed the writer's innermost feelings and ideals. Israel Abrahams, while editor of the Jewish Quarterly Review, judged that many of these ethical wills are intellectually poor, but of a high moral level.

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