Generally speaking, an ethical will is used as a…
Generally speaking, an ethical will is used as a will to give over ethics which is generally described as relations between you and other human beings. I am defining ethics a little bit differently. I am defining ethics in the broad sense that ethics is knowledge. This knowledge or ethics is meant to be given over to you so that you can deal with other persons, the RBSO, or the world around you in a way that will allow you to paint this magnificent painting.
— from True North (Ethics, Integrity, Truth, Values) · Hebrew Ethical Wills by Israel Abrahams
In the book
Maimonides put it more sharply: ethics is fundamentally about character traits, the noble qualities of a person, and nearly all of them turn out to be instruments for the well-being of other people. I define it even more broadly for you: ethics is knowledge — the knowledge of how to deal with other people, with God, and with the world around you. At its most basic, ethics is just choosing right or good behavior in your dealings with other people. […] (In truth that particular book reads less like a farewell and more like a book of commandments for how to live — which only convinced me further that a life's ethics and a life's instructions are the same document.) I defined ethics for you, up above, as a kind of knowledge — how to deal rightly with people, with God, and with the world — and I want to be honest that I have spent far more of my life on the first and the third of those than I am qualified to spend on the second. But this much I know from the inside. — True North (Ethics, Integrity, Truth, Values)