Modern Jewish Ethics since 1970
Writings on Methods, Sources, and Issues
9781684582631
9781684582617
Distributed for Brandeis University Press
Modern Jewish Ethics since 1970
Writings on Methods, Sources, and Issues
A compelling and generative way to study and teach Jewish ethics.
The field of Jewish ethics is characterized by foundational questions about how to do Jewish ethics—questions that are inseparable from other scholarly work within the subject area. The essays in this collection show that analyzing methods of reasoning is a productive approach for both students and teachers of Jewish ethics. The volume is organized not by standalone essays but by sets of curated conversations between scholars from different time periods, academic subfields, and religious commitments (or lack thereof). These deliberate juxtapositions encourage scholars and students to undertake similar meta-ethical analyses on Jewish ethics as related to theories and methods, communities, constructions of the human, and bioethics. For the editors, Jewish ethics is not just a set of propositions or principles; it cannot be reduced to a single trajectory of thought or abstracted as an elaborate system of ideas. Instead, Jewish ethics is the field of study that engages Jewish texts, ideas, history, and experience in conversations about values and virtues, justice and good judgment, and human relations and responsibilities. This volume, which presents such discussions, is certain to spark many more.
The field of Jewish ethics is characterized by foundational questions about how to do Jewish ethics—questions that are inseparable from other scholarly work within the subject area. The essays in this collection show that analyzing methods of reasoning is a productive approach for both students and teachers of Jewish ethics. The volume is organized not by standalone essays but by sets of curated conversations between scholars from different time periods, academic subfields, and religious commitments (or lack thereof). These deliberate juxtapositions encourage scholars and students to undertake similar meta-ethical analyses on Jewish ethics as related to theories and methods, communities, constructions of the human, and bioethics. For the editors, Jewish ethics is not just a set of propositions or principles; it cannot be reduced to a single trajectory of thought or abstracted as an elaborate system of ideas. Instead, Jewish ethics is the field of study that engages Jewish texts, ideas, history, and experience in conversations about values and virtues, justice and good judgment, and human relations and responsibilities. This volume, which presents such discussions, is certain to spark many more.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction to the Volume
Part A: Theories and Methods
1. Doing Jewish ethics
Headnotes
Aharon Lichtenstein, from “Does Jewish Tradition Recognize an Ethic Independent of Halakha?” (1975)
Louis Newman, from “Woodchoppers and Respirators: The Problem of Interpretation in Contemporary Jewish Ethics” (1998)
Michal Raucher, from Conceiving Ethics: Reproductive Authority among Haredi Women (2020)
2. Forging Modern Norms from Jewish textual sources
Headnotes
Judith Plaskow, from Standing Again at Sinai: Judaism from a Feminist Perspective (1990)
Elliot Dorff, from Love Your Neighbor and Yourself: A Jewish Approach to Modern Personal Ethics (2003)
Shaul Magid, from “Ethics Differentiated from the Law”(2005)
3. Ethics and Law
Headnotes
Robert Cover, from “Nomos and Narrative” (1983)
David Novak, from Jewish Social Ethics (1992)
Rachel Adler, from Engendering Judaism: An Inclusive Theology and Ethics (1998)
Alan Mittleman, from “Theorizing Jewish Ethics” (2013)
4. Covenant
Headnotes
Emmanuel Levinas, from “The Pact” (1982)
Eugene Borowitz, from Renewing the Covenant: A Theology for the Post-Modern Jew (1991)
Walter Wurzburger, from Ethics of Responsibility: Pluralistic Approaches to Covenantal Ethics (1994)
Mara Benjamin, from The Obligated Self: Maternal Subjectivity and Jewish Thought (2018)
5. Character / Virtue
Headnotes
Jonathan Wyn Schofer, from “Self, Subject, and Chosen Subjection: Rabbinic Ethics and Comparative Possibilities” (2005)
Sarra Lev, from “Talmud that Works Your Heart: New Approaches to Reading” (2016)
Geoffrey Claussen, from “Mussar in a White Supremacist Society” (2021)
6. Ethical Values
Headnotes
David A. Teutsch, from “Reinvigorating the Practice of Contemporary Jewish Ethics: A Justification for Values-Based Decision Making” (2005)
Tanhum Yoreh, from Waste Not: A Jewish Environmental Ethic (2019)
Part B: Communities
1. Families
Gail Labovitz, from Marriage and Metaphor: Constructions of Gender in Rabbinic Literature (2009)
Jennifer A. Thompson, from “Reaching Out to the Fringe: Insiders, Outsiders, and the Morality of Social Science” (2015)
Rebecca J. Epstein-Levi, from “Person-Shaped Holes: Childfree Jews, Jewish Ethics, and Communal Continuity” (2021)
2. Speech
Mark Washofsky, from “Internet, Privacy, and Progressive Halakhah” (2014)
Matthew Goldstone, from The Dangerous Duty of Rebuke: Leviticus 19:17 in Early Jewish and Christian Interpretation (2018)
Lena Sclove, from “Beyond the Binary of Silence and Speech: What Jewish Liturgy and Spirals Reveal about the Limits and Potentials of Spiritual Caregiving for Survivors of Sexual Abuse” (2022)
3. Solidarity
Aryeh Cohen, from Justice in the City: An Argument from the Sources of Rabbinic Judaism (2012)
Amanda Mbuvi, from “Avadim Hayinu: An Intersectional Jewish Perspective on the Global Ethic of Solidarity” (2020)
4. Economics
Jill Jacobs, from There Shall Be No Needy: Pursuing Social Justice through Jewish Law and Tradition (2009)
Aaron Levine, from Economic Morality and Jewish Law (2012)
Sam Brody, from “Jewish Economic Ethics in the Neoliberal Era, 1980-2016” (2021)
5. Zionism and the Jewish State
Chaim Gans, from A Just Zionism: On the Morality of the Jewish State (2008)
Ruth Gavison, from “Reflections on the Meaning of Jewish in the expression ‘a Jewish and Democratic State” (2014)
Julie Cooper, from “A Diasporic Critique of Diasporism: The Question of Jewish Political Agency” (2015)
6. State Power & Violence
Levey, “Judaism and the Obligation to Die for the State” (1987)
Michael Broyde, from “Only the Good Die Young?” (2006)
Melissa Weintraub, from “Does Torah Permit Torture?” (2007)
Beth Berkowitz, from Execution and Invention: Death Penalty Discourse in Early Rabbinic andChristian Cultures (2016)
Nadav S. Berman, from "Jewish Law, Techno-Ethics, and Autonomous Weapon Systems: Ethical-Halakhic Perspectives” (2020)
7. Environment
Michael Wyschogrod, from “Judaism and the Sanctification of Nature” (1991)
Hava Tirosh-Samuelson, from Religion and Environment: The Case of Judaism (2020)
Ariel Evan Mayse, from “Where Heaven and Earth Kiss: Jewish Law, Moral Reflection, and Environmental Ethics” (2019)
Adrienne Krone, from “Ecological Ethics in the Jewish Community Farming Movement” (2019)
Part C: Constructions of the Human
1. Animals
Aaron S. Gross, from The Question of the Animal and Religion: Theoretical Stakes, Practical Implications (2015)
Rafael Rachel Neis, from “‘All That is in the Settlement’: Humans, Likeness, and Species in the Rabbinic Bestiary” (2019)
2. Gender and Sexuality
Headnotes
Daniel Boyarin, from “Dialectics of Desire: ‘The Evil Instinct is Very Good’” (1995)
Tamar Ross, from Expanding the Palace of Torah: Orthodoxy and Feminism (2004)
Laura Levitt, from “Love the One You’re With” (2009)
Max Strassfeld, from Trans Talmud: Androgynes and Eunuchs in Rabbinic Literature (2022)
3. Genes
Headnotes
Paul Root Wolpe, from “If I Am Only My Genes, What Am I? Genetic Essentialism and a Jewish Response” (1997)
Robert Gibbs, “Mending the Code” (2015)
Sarah Imhoff, from “How American Jews Imagine Community, and Why That Matters” (2020)
4. Disability
Judith Abrams, from Judaism and Disability: Portrayals in Ancient Texts from the Tanach through the Bavli (1998)
Tzvi C. Marx, from Disability in Jewish Law (2002)
Adrienne Asch, “Recognizing Death while Affirming Life: Can End of Life Reform Uphold a Disabled Person’s Interest in Continued Life?” (2005)
Julia Watts Belser, “Improv and the Angel: Disability Dance, Embodied Ethics, and Jewish Biblical Narrative” (2019)
5. Race
Lewis Gordon, from “Afro-Jewish ethics?” (2018)
Judith Kay, from “Jews as Oppressed and Oppressor: Doing Ethics at the Intersections of Classism, Racism, and Antisemitism” (2020)
Annalise E. Glauz-Todrank, from “Jewish Critical Race Theory and Jewish ‘Religionization’ in Shaare Tefila Congregation v. Cobb” (2020)
Part D: Bioethics
1. Medical ethics
J. David Bleich, from “Using Data Obtained through Immoral Experimentation” (1993)
Benjamin Freedman, from Duty and Healing: Foundations of a Jewish Bioethics (1999)
Noam J. Zohar, from “Is Enjoying Life a Good Thing? Quality-of-Life Questions for Jewish Normative Discourse” (2006)
Toby Schonfeld, from “Messages from the Margins: Lessons from Feminist Bioethics” (2008)
Jason Weiner, from “Are There Limits to How Far One Must Go For Others? Toward a theoretical model for healthcare providers” (2020)
Laurie Zoloth, from Second Texts and Second Opinions: Essays Toward a Jewish Bioethics (2022)
2. Reproduction
Fred Rosner, from “In Vitro Fertilization and Surrogate Motherhood: The Jewish View” (1983)
Elie Spitz, from “‘Through Her I Too Shall Bear a Child’: Birth Surrogates in Jewish Law” (1996)
Don Seeman, from “Ethnography, Exegesis, and Jewish Ethical Reflection: The New Reproductive Technologies in Israel” (2010)
Sarah Zager, from “Water Wears Away Stone: Caring for Those We Can Only Imagine” (2020)
3. Abortion
Dena Davis, from “Abortion in Jewish Thought: A Study in Casuistry” (1992)
Rebecca Alpert, from “Sometimes the Law is Cruel: The Construction of a Jewish Antiabortion Position in the Writings of Immanuel Jakobovits” (1995)
Alan Jotkowitz, from “Abortion and Maternal Need: A Response to Ronit Irshai” (2011)
Ronit Irshai, from “Response to Alan Jotkowitz” (2011)
4. Aging/Ends of Life
Byron Sherwin, from “Jewish Views on Euthanasia” (1974)
Ruth Langer, from “Honor Your Father and Mother: Care Giving as a Halakhic Responsibility” (1998)
Jonathan K. Crane, from Narratives and Jewish Bioethics (2013)
Jeffrey L. Rubenstein, from “Can a Goses Survive for More Than Three Days? The History and Definition of the Goses” (2016)
Introduction to the Volume
Part A: Theories and Methods
1. Doing Jewish ethics
Headnotes
Aharon Lichtenstein, from “Does Jewish Tradition Recognize an Ethic Independent of Halakha?” (1975)
Louis Newman, from “Woodchoppers and Respirators: The Problem of Interpretation in Contemporary Jewish Ethics” (1998)
Michal Raucher, from Conceiving Ethics: Reproductive Authority among Haredi Women (2020)
2. Forging Modern Norms from Jewish textual sources
Headnotes
Judith Plaskow, from Standing Again at Sinai: Judaism from a Feminist Perspective (1990)
Elliot Dorff, from Love Your Neighbor and Yourself: A Jewish Approach to Modern Personal Ethics (2003)
Shaul Magid, from “Ethics Differentiated from the Law”(2005)
3. Ethics and Law
Headnotes
Robert Cover, from “Nomos and Narrative” (1983)
David Novak, from Jewish Social Ethics (1992)
Rachel Adler, from Engendering Judaism: An Inclusive Theology and Ethics (1998)
Alan Mittleman, from “Theorizing Jewish Ethics” (2013)
4. Covenant
Headnotes
Emmanuel Levinas, from “The Pact” (1982)
Eugene Borowitz, from Renewing the Covenant: A Theology for the Post-Modern Jew (1991)
Walter Wurzburger, from Ethics of Responsibility: Pluralistic Approaches to Covenantal Ethics (1994)
Mara Benjamin, from The Obligated Self: Maternal Subjectivity and Jewish Thought (2018)
5. Character / Virtue
Headnotes
Jonathan Wyn Schofer, from “Self, Subject, and Chosen Subjection: Rabbinic Ethics and Comparative Possibilities” (2005)
Sarra Lev, from “Talmud that Works Your Heart: New Approaches to Reading” (2016)
Geoffrey Claussen, from “Mussar in a White Supremacist Society” (2021)
6. Ethical Values
Headnotes
David A. Teutsch, from “Reinvigorating the Practice of Contemporary Jewish Ethics: A Justification for Values-Based Decision Making” (2005)
Tanhum Yoreh, from Waste Not: A Jewish Environmental Ethic (2019)
Part B: Communities
1. Families
Gail Labovitz, from Marriage and Metaphor: Constructions of Gender in Rabbinic Literature (2009)
Jennifer A. Thompson, from “Reaching Out to the Fringe: Insiders, Outsiders, and the Morality of Social Science” (2015)
Rebecca J. Epstein-Levi, from “Person-Shaped Holes: Childfree Jews, Jewish Ethics, and Communal Continuity” (2021)
2. Speech
Mark Washofsky, from “Internet, Privacy, and Progressive Halakhah” (2014)
Matthew Goldstone, from The Dangerous Duty of Rebuke: Leviticus 19:17 in Early Jewish and Christian Interpretation (2018)
Lena Sclove, from “Beyond the Binary of Silence and Speech: What Jewish Liturgy and Spirals Reveal about the Limits and Potentials of Spiritual Caregiving for Survivors of Sexual Abuse” (2022)
3. Solidarity
Aryeh Cohen, from Justice in the City: An Argument from the Sources of Rabbinic Judaism (2012)
Amanda Mbuvi, from “Avadim Hayinu: An Intersectional Jewish Perspective on the Global Ethic of Solidarity” (2020)
4. Economics
Jill Jacobs, from There Shall Be No Needy: Pursuing Social Justice through Jewish Law and Tradition (2009)
Aaron Levine, from Economic Morality and Jewish Law (2012)
Sam Brody, from “Jewish Economic Ethics in the Neoliberal Era, 1980-2016” (2021)
5. Zionism and the Jewish State
Chaim Gans, from A Just Zionism: On the Morality of the Jewish State (2008)
Ruth Gavison, from “Reflections on the Meaning of Jewish in the expression ‘a Jewish and Democratic State” (2014)
Julie Cooper, from “A Diasporic Critique of Diasporism: The Question of Jewish Political Agency” (2015)
6. State Power & Violence
Levey, “Judaism and the Obligation to Die for the State” (1987)
Michael Broyde, from “Only the Good Die Young?” (2006)
Melissa Weintraub, from “Does Torah Permit Torture?” (2007)
Beth Berkowitz, from Execution and Invention: Death Penalty Discourse in Early Rabbinic andChristian Cultures (2016)
Nadav S. Berman, from "Jewish Law, Techno-Ethics, and Autonomous Weapon Systems: Ethical-Halakhic Perspectives” (2020)
7. Environment
Michael Wyschogrod, from “Judaism and the Sanctification of Nature” (1991)
Hava Tirosh-Samuelson, from Religion and Environment: The Case of Judaism (2020)
Ariel Evan Mayse, from “Where Heaven and Earth Kiss: Jewish Law, Moral Reflection, and Environmental Ethics” (2019)
Adrienne Krone, from “Ecological Ethics in the Jewish Community Farming Movement” (2019)
Part C: Constructions of the Human
1. Animals
Aaron S. Gross, from The Question of the Animal and Religion: Theoretical Stakes, Practical Implications (2015)
Rafael Rachel Neis, from “‘All That is in the Settlement’: Humans, Likeness, and Species in the Rabbinic Bestiary” (2019)
2. Gender and Sexuality
Headnotes
Daniel Boyarin, from “Dialectics of Desire: ‘The Evil Instinct is Very Good’” (1995)
Tamar Ross, from Expanding the Palace of Torah: Orthodoxy and Feminism (2004)
Laura Levitt, from “Love the One You’re With” (2009)
Max Strassfeld, from Trans Talmud: Androgynes and Eunuchs in Rabbinic Literature (2022)
3. Genes
Headnotes
Paul Root Wolpe, from “If I Am Only My Genes, What Am I? Genetic Essentialism and a Jewish Response” (1997)
Robert Gibbs, “Mending the Code” (2015)
Sarah Imhoff, from “How American Jews Imagine Community, and Why That Matters” (2020)
4. Disability
Judith Abrams, from Judaism and Disability: Portrayals in Ancient Texts from the Tanach through the Bavli (1998)
Tzvi C. Marx, from Disability in Jewish Law (2002)
Adrienne Asch, “Recognizing Death while Affirming Life: Can End of Life Reform Uphold a Disabled Person’s Interest in Continued Life?” (2005)
Julia Watts Belser, “Improv and the Angel: Disability Dance, Embodied Ethics, and Jewish Biblical Narrative” (2019)
5. Race
Lewis Gordon, from “Afro-Jewish ethics?” (2018)
Judith Kay, from “Jews as Oppressed and Oppressor: Doing Ethics at the Intersections of Classism, Racism, and Antisemitism” (2020)
Annalise E. Glauz-Todrank, from “Jewish Critical Race Theory and Jewish ‘Religionization’ in Shaare Tefila Congregation v. Cobb” (2020)
Part D: Bioethics
1. Medical ethics
J. David Bleich, from “Using Data Obtained through Immoral Experimentation” (1993)
Benjamin Freedman, from Duty and Healing: Foundations of a Jewish Bioethics (1999)
Noam J. Zohar, from “Is Enjoying Life a Good Thing? Quality-of-Life Questions for Jewish Normative Discourse” (2006)
Toby Schonfeld, from “Messages from the Margins: Lessons from Feminist Bioethics” (2008)
Jason Weiner, from “Are There Limits to How Far One Must Go For Others? Toward a theoretical model for healthcare providers” (2020)
Laurie Zoloth, from Second Texts and Second Opinions: Essays Toward a Jewish Bioethics (2022)
2. Reproduction
Fred Rosner, from “In Vitro Fertilization and Surrogate Motherhood: The Jewish View” (1983)
Elie Spitz, from “‘Through Her I Too Shall Bear a Child’: Birth Surrogates in Jewish Law” (1996)
Don Seeman, from “Ethnography, Exegesis, and Jewish Ethical Reflection: The New Reproductive Technologies in Israel” (2010)
Sarah Zager, from “Water Wears Away Stone: Caring for Those We Can Only Imagine” (2020)
3. Abortion
Dena Davis, from “Abortion in Jewish Thought: A Study in Casuistry” (1992)
Rebecca Alpert, from “Sometimes the Law is Cruel: The Construction of a Jewish Antiabortion Position in the Writings of Immanuel Jakobovits” (1995)
Alan Jotkowitz, from “Abortion and Maternal Need: A Response to Ronit Irshai” (2011)
Ronit Irshai, from “Response to Alan Jotkowitz” (2011)
4. Aging/Ends of Life
Byron Sherwin, from “Jewish Views on Euthanasia” (1974)
Ruth Langer, from “Honor Your Father and Mother: Care Giving as a Halakhic Responsibility” (1998)
Jonathan K. Crane, from Narratives and Jewish Bioethics (2013)
Jeffrey L. Rubenstein, from “Can a Goses Survive for More Than Three Days? The History and Definition of the Goses” (2016)
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