How Do Non-Religious Jews Participate in the Jewish Covenant? Rabbi Dr. Judah Goldberg on Brit Avot and Brit Sinai (291)
May 18, 2026
AI Summary
5 min readIn the book of Genesis, before there was a single commandment at Mount Sinai, God made a covenant with Abraham. The Torah tells the story of a people, a land, an ethical mission, and an intimate relationship with God. But after the revelation at Sinai, many religious Jews assume that the covenant of the law—Brit Sinai—simply absorbed or replaced everything that came before it. Dr. Judah Goldberg argues that this is a mistake. Brit Sinai did not erase Brit Avot (the covenant of the patriarchs). The two covenants exist side by side, and understanding the distinction between them changes how religious Jews relate to Jewish peoplehood, Zionism, spirituality, and even their own daily prayers.
The Two Covenants: Law and Vision
The central framework Dr. Goldberg presents, drawing from Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik and his student Rabbi Walter Wurzburger, is that Halakha is a floor, not a ceiling. Brit Sinai provides the rigid scaffolding of law—objective, universal, and inviolable. It tells a Jew exactly what to do. But Brit Avot, which predates Sinai, is about values. It tells a Jew what to care about. These values are more foundational and more intuitive than the legal system, and they include four core commitments: Jewish peoplehood, the land of Israel, the pursuit of the ethical, and intimacy with God.
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What you'll learn
- 1 (01:38) **Introduction: The Two Covenants** - Scott Khan introduces the core question: does Brit Sinai (the covenant of Torah) replace or coexist with Brit Avot (the covenant of the patriarchs)?
- 2 (06:19) **The Thesis: Halakha as Floor, Not Ceiling** - Goldberg explains that Rav Soloveitchik and Rabbi Walter Wurtzburger argue Brit Sinai added to, not replaced, Brit Avot.
- 3 (10:10) **The Four Core Values of Brit Avot** - Goldberg lists the foundational values of the patriarchal covenant: peoplehood, land of Israel, pursuit of the ethical, and intimacy with God.
- 4 (12:00) **Personal Examples: Holocaust Commemoration and Aliyah** - Goldberg shares two stories illustrating how Brit Avot fills gaps in Halakhic language.
- 5 (17:04) **Halakha as a Parallel Track, Not a Layer** - Scott Khan presses on whether Brit Avot is "on top of" Halakha or a separate system; Goldberg confirms it is a parallel track.
- 6 (21:19) **Evidence from Rabbinic Sources** - Goldberg shows how Maimonides and Chazal repeatedly invoke the patriarchs to add weight beyond Halakha.
- 7 (25:58) **The Danger of Subjectivity: Keeping Values Authentic** - Scott Khan asks how we prevent Brit Avot from becoming a cover for contemporary morality.
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Show Notes
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For many Orthodox Jews, Judaism is ultimately defined by Torah and halakha. We received the Torah at Har Sinai, and from that moment onward, Jewish life became a life of mitzvot, obligation, and commandedness. But what about everything that came before Sinai?
What about the covenant with Avraham, Yitzchak, and Yaakov? What about Jewish peoplehood, responsibility for other Jews, the Land of Israel, ethical mission, and the sense of belonging to a shared Jewish destiny?
And perhaps most provocatively: what does all of this mean for the way religious Jews relate to nonreligious Jews today?
In this episode, Rabbi Dr. Judah Goldberg argues that Brit Sinai did not erase Brit Avot. The covenant of Torah stands at the center of Judaism, but it exists alongside an earlier covenant that still shapes Jewish life and Jewish obligation. Drawing on Rav Soloveitchik and Rabbi Walter Wurzburger, Dr. Goldberg explains why covenantal responsibility cannot be reduced entirely to halakhic categories, and why Jewish destiny, Jewish nationhood, and commitment to the Jewish people possess real significance even beyond formal observance.
That raises difficult and controversial questions. Can secular Zionism contain authentic religious value? Is there spiritual significance in Jewish solidarity even outside full halakhic commitment? And if covenantal values exist alongside halakha, how do we prevent Judaism from becoming untethered from Torah itself?
As Shavuot approaches, this conversation explores how Torah, covenant, peoplehood, and Jewish destiny intersect, and what that might mean for the relationship between religious and nonreligious Jews in the modern Jewish world.
To listen to Dr. Goldberg's series, Before Sinai: Jewish Values and Jewish Law, click here.
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