For it is always easier to follow rules than to apply principles.Then came the Talmud in times warner cable albany two recensions, the Palestinian and the Babylonian, the latter completed about 500 A.At that date the Calendar was fixed by astronomical calculations.And though this power of excommunication might have been employed by the mediaeval Rabbis to enforce the times warner cable albany acceptance of a creed, in point of fact no such step was ever taken.More and more, Judaic ritual has fallen into disregard since the French Revolution.Clearly the multiplication times warner cable albany of rules obscures principles.But in Judaism, until the period of modern reform, this fact of human life was not merely an unconscious truism, it was consciously admitted.326) times warner cable albany.Paul.Before Maimonides, if there had been one dogma of Judaism at times warner cable albany all, it was the Election of Israel.In other words, the Law was looked upon as the expression of the Will of God.It held that there was a right and a times warner cable albany wrong way of doing things in themselves trivial.It is easy and necessary sometimes to praise and justify eudemonism, but, as Lazarus adds, 'Not a state to be reached, not a good to be won, not an evil to be warded off, is the impelling force of morality, but itself furnishes the creative impulse, the supreme commanding authority' (Ethics of Judaism, I.In his Commentary on the Mishnah (Sanhedrin, Introduction to Chelek), Maimonides times warner cable albany declares 'The roots of our law and its fundamental principles are thirteen.No Jew was ever excommunicated for declaring his dissent from these articles.