This book brings together people’s intuitions, philosophical theories, and principles of Jewish ethics to suggest where our values should lead us. The author argues that a moral freedom of respect upholds freedom of the Self and respect for the Other.

This book brings together people's intuitions, philosophical theories, and principles of Jewish ethics to suggest where our values should lead us. The author argues that a moral freedom of respect upholds freedom of the Self and respect for the Other.

Ethics in the axial age -- Some aspects of rabbinic ethics -- Medieval philosophical ethics -- Medieval rabbinic and kabbalistic ethics -- Modern Jewish ethics.

This companion to Elliot Dorff's three books on Jewish ethics -- Matters of Life and Death , To Do the Right and the Good , and Love Your Neighbor and Yourself -- is designed for group as well as individual study. Through suggested readings from Dorff's books, probing questions, lively discussion topics, and simple writing exercises, readers will be able to analyze and clarify their own positions on a host of controversial issues: sex, surrogate motherhood, adoption, family abuse, (...) responsibilities for charitable giving, the ethics of war, suicide, and euthanasia, and more. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:The Oxford Handbook of Jewish Ethics and Morality Edited by Elliot N. Dorff and Jonathan K. CraneLouis E. NewmanThe Oxford Handbook of Jewish Ethics and Morality EDITED BY ELLIOT N. DORFF AND JONATHAN K. CRANE New York: Oxford University Press, 2012. 499 pp. $150The Oxford Handbook of Jewish Ethics and Morality addresses what has long been a major lacuna in the field (...) of Jewish studies. No one who studies the history of Judaism would deny that ethics has always occupied a central place in Jewish thought and practice. Yet the scope and range of Jewish ethical reflection, the variety of ethical theories that have animated this tradition, and the diversity of ethical viewpoints represented by major thinkers across the centuries remain far less widely understood than they should be. With the publication of this outstanding and highly readable collection of essays, however, Elliot Dorff and Jonathan Crane have given us the most definitive and encyclopedic presentation of Jewish ethics ever assembled.This latest addition to the Oxford Handbook series encompasses twenty-nine essays that span the history of Jewish ethics from biblical times to the present, but that also introduce readers to its applied and theoretical dimensions as well as the practitioners and scholars who collectively define the field of Jewish ethics. Part 1, “Jewish Ethical Theories,” which is more accurately a comprehensive history of Jewish ethics, includes insightful pieces on biblical, rabbinic, and medieval ethics, but also pieces on key figures in the modern period from Baruch Spinoza to Martin Buber, Abraham Isaac Kook, and Joseph B. Soloveitchik, among others. This section also includes important explications of the ethics of the various modern movements of Judaism (Orthodox, Conservative, Reform, and Reconstructionist) as well as essays on specific events and theoretical perspectives that have shaped Jewish ethical discourse in the postwar period—the Holocaust, feminism, and postmodernism. What emerges from these short but remarkably focused and accessible essays is a rich tapestry in which the wide array of genres and methods that characterize the ethics of Judaism are on full display.The second half of the volume is devoted to applied ethics, and here again the diversity of Jewish ethics is showcased. The topics covered include bioethics, the ethics of speech, sexuality, business, the treatment of animals and the environment, politics (both in America and in Israel), criminal justice, and war. The topic of bioethics is wisely subdivided so that we find separate treatments of beginning and end of life, of access to health care, and of genetic technologies. [End Page 219] While some of these essays rehearse positions that will be familiar to those within the tradition, each is an original contribution designed to present the spectrum of positions on that issue that have been articulated by contemporary Jewish ethicists. Accordingly, this volume will now become the first place to look for broad, representative presentations on the most commonly discussed ethical issues of our time.The value of the whole collection is further enhanced by the editors’ introductions, which place the individual essays in context and explain their editorial decisions in selecting and arranging the contributions as they have. Each essay is accompanied by a substantial list of suggestions for further reading that will be valuable to readers in their own right. The entire volume is rounded out with a subject index and a list of references to classical Jewish literature. One could simply not ask for a more carefully constructed or broadly useful handbook on this subject.In any edited collection of this nature, the quality of the individual contributions will vary to some extent. In this instance, the overall quality is extremely high, which is a tribute both to the individual contributors and to the editorial guidance provided by Dorff and Crane. Still, one cannot help but notice that some essays in the second section of the book are more descriptive (e.g., Daniel Sinclair’s essay on end-of-life issues) while others are more ideologically driven (e.g., Arthur Waskow’s essay on environmental ethics). Similarly, while the essays average approximately fifteen to twenty pages each, a few are shorter and more cursory (e.g., Aaron Mackler’s essay on... (shrink)

Doctors have been treating infectious diseases for hundreds of years, but the risk they and other medical professionals are exposed to in an epidemic has always been high. At the front line of the present war against COVID-19, medical teams are endangering their lives as they continue to treat patients suffering from the disease. What is the degree of danger that a medical team must accept in the face of a pandemic? What are the theoretical justifications for these risks? This (...) article offers answers to these questions by citing opinions based on Jewish ethical thought that has been formulated down through the ages. According to Jewish ethics, the obligation to assist and care for patients is based on many commandments found in the Bible and on rulings in the Responsa literature. The ethical challenge is created when treating the sick represents a real existential danger to the caregivers and their families. This consideration is relevant for all dangerous infectious diseases and particularly for the coronavirus that has struck around the world and for which there is as yet no cure. Many rabbis over the years have offered the religious justifications for healing in a general sense and especially in cases of infectious diseases as they have a bearing on professional and communal obligations. They have compared the ethical expectations of doctors to those of soldiers but have not sanctioned taking risks where there is insufficient protection or where there is a danger to the families of the medical professionals. (shrink)

Ethics at the Center culls the best of Rabbi Elliot Dorff's pioneering thinking in Jewish ethics over the course of nearly five decades.

Twentieth century continental thinkers such as Bergson, Levinas and Jonas have brought fresh and renewed attentions to Jewish ethics, yet it still remains fairly low profile in the Anglophone academic world. This collection of critical essays brings together the work of established and up-and-coming scholars from Israel, the United States, and around the world on the topic of Jewish religious and philosophical ethics. The chapters are broken into three main sections - Rabbinics, Philosophy, and Contemporary (...) Challenges. The authors address, using a variety of research strategies, the work of both major and lesser-known figures in historical Jewish religious and philosophical traditions. The book discusses a wide variety of topics related to Jewish ethics, including "ethics and the Mishnah," "Afro Jewish ethics," "Jewish historiographical ethics," as well as the conceptual/philosophical foundations of the law and virtues in the work of Martin Buber, Hermann Cohen, and Baruch Spinoza.The volume closes with four contributions on present-day frontiers in Jewish ethics. As the first book to focus on the nature, scope and ramifications of the Jewish ethics at work in religious and philosophical contexts, this book will be of great interest to anyone studying Jewish Studies, Philosophy and Religion. (shrink)

This volume of essays examines key themes in Jewish philosophy and ethics from the rigorous perspective of philosophical analysis. The first set of essays takes up the challenge of living a Jewish life, and includes essays on pleasure, joy, human suffering, Jewish ritual practice and the philosophical life. The second set of essays analyzes the value and meaning of autonomy, human freedom and tolerance in Jewish thought, crucial themes in western political thought and life. (...) Other essays in the volume examine the many meanings of Jewish texts, and such crucial issues in applied Jewish ethics as ecology, medical ethics, and justified homicide. Finally, a number of essays plumb the depths of one of the most influential and creative Jewish thinkers of the twentieth century, Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik. Taken as a whole, this volume advances the engagement of classical Jewish themes with Anglo-American philosophy, shedding new light both on the Jewish tradition, and on the western philosophical enterprise. (shrink)

This paper depicts the meanings of human dignity as they unfold and evolve in the Bible and the "Halakhah". I posit that three distinct features of a Jewish conception of human dignity can be identified in contrast to core characteristics of a liberal conception of human dignity. First, the original source of human dignity is not intrinsic to the human being but extrinsic, namely in God. Second, it is argued that the "dignity of the people" has precedence over personal (...) autonomy and liberty, which are core liberal pillars. The third characteristic pertains to the potential conflict between personal autonomy and liberty, and God's commandments. The theoretical analysis of human dignity is then examined in light of several Supreme Court decisions in Israel during the 1990s. I illustrate that Jewish religious and secular-liberal conceptions pull in different directions in the rulings of liberal and religious Justices in Israel. (shrink)

Modern Jewish Philosophy and the Politics of Divine Violence Is commitment to God compatible with modern citizenship? In this book, Daniel H. Weiss provides new readings of four modern Jewish philosophers - Moses Mendelssohn, Hermann Cohen, Franz Rosenzweig, and Walter Benjamin - in light of classical rabbinic accounts of God's sovereignty, divine and human violence, and the embodied human being as the image of God. He demonstrates how classical rabbinic literature is relevant to contemporary political and philosophical (...) debates. Weiss brings to light striking political aspects of the writings of the modern Jewish philosophers, who have often been understood as non-political. In addition, he shows how the four modern thinkers are more radical and more shaped by Jewish tradition than has previously been thought. Taken as a whole, Weiss' book argues for a fundamental rethinking of the relationship between Judaism and politics, the history of Jewish thought, and the ethical and political dynamics of the broader Western philosophical tradition. (shrink)

Judaism in the twentieth century began to return to its scriptural, communal roots after a centuries-long detour through Greek-influenced natural philosophy, a detour during which science and ethics were assumed to be partners and Jewish ethics drew heavily on natural philosophy and science. Twentieth-century philosophical ethics and science, particularly biological science, have developed in such a way as to make any continuation of that historical partnership problematic. This is not altogether regrettable because the problematizing (...) of this long-standing partnership has driven Jewish ethics back to its real roots: covenantal relationship, and moral wisdom and discernment. (shrink)

Jewish Philosophy for the Twenty-First Century showcases living Jewish thinkers who produce innovative ideas taking into consideration theology, hermeneutics, politics, ethics, science and technology, law, gender, and ecology.

"Jewish Philosophy and the Academy reflects in broad terms on the current state of Jewish philosophy in the university. This generation of university teachers lives at a unique historic junction. It is the last to be taught by the giants of European Wissenschaft des Judentums and the first to experience the remarkable expansion of Judaic scholarship in Israel and abroad." "Emil Fackenheim suggests that if we are indebted to Athens for the philosophical method, we are also (...) indebted to Jerusalem for the ethical content of philosophy, which is both an intellectual and a moral challenge. This dual challenge shapes the diverse papers in this volume."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved. (shrink)

Jewish Messianism and the History of Philosophy contests the ancient opposition between Athens and Jerusalem by retrieving the concept of meontology - the doctrine of nonbeing - from the Jewish philosophical and theological tradition. For Emmanuel Levinas, as well as for Franz Rosenzweig, Hermann Cohen and Moses Maimonides, the Greek concept of nonbeing clarifies the meaning of Jewish life. These thinkers of 'Jerusalem' use 'Athens' for Jewish ends, justifying Jewish anticipation of a future messianic (...) era as well as portraying the subjects intellectual and ethical acts as central in accomplishing redemption. This book envisions Jewish thought as an expression of the intimate relationship between Athens and Jerusalem. It also offers new readings of important figures in contemporary Continental philosophy, critiquing previous arguments about the role of lived religion in the thought of Jacques Derrida, the role of Plato in the thought of Emmanuel Levinas and the centrality of ethics in the thought of Franz Rosenzweig. (shrink)

Philosophers generally agree that meaningful ethical statements are universal in scope. If so, what sense is there to speak about a business ethics particular to Judaism? Just as a Jewish algebra and a Jewish physics are contradictions in terms, so too, is the notion of a particularly Jewish business ethics. The goal of this paper is to deny the above assertion and to explore the potentially unique characteristic of a Jewish business ethics. (...) class='Hi'>Ethics, in the final analysis, is not like algebra or physics. Specifically, it is argued here that – in terms of substance – Jewish business ethics differs from secular approaches in three very specific ways. Jewish ethics: (1) recognizes God as the ultimate source of value, (2) acknowledges the centrality of the community, (3) and holds out the promise that men and women (living in community) can transform themselves. We define Jewish ethics as the interpretation of the written and oral Torah to determine what God commands us to be and to do. The paper carefully explores this definition and examines its specific implications for modern business ethics. (shrink)

Since the classical period, Jewish scholars have drawn on developments in philosophy to enrich our understanding of Judaism. This methodology reached its pinnacle in the medieval period with figures like Maimonides and continued into the modern period with the likes of Rosenzweig. The explosion of Anglo-American/analytic philosophy in the twentieth century means that there is now a host of material, largely unexplored by Jewish philosophy, with which to explore, analyze, and develop the Jewish tradition. (...) Jewish Philosophy in an Analytic Age features contributions from leading scholars in the field which investigate Jewish texts, traditions, and/or thinkers, in order to showcase what Jewish philosophy can be in an analytic age. United by the new and engaging style of philosophy, the collection explores rabbinic and Talmudic philosophy; Maimonidean philosophy; philosophical theology; and ethics and value theory. (shrink)

This book explores the major philosophical issues in the historic interplay of Islamic and Jewish philosophy. The problems considered are issues of abiding philosophical interest:* Freedom and determinism* The nature and meaning of history* The basis of ethical values* The foundations and social implications of friendship* The viability and relevance of the idea of GodThe approach taken here is distinctive in several ways. The perspective is cross-cultural, rather than parochial, synthetic rather than descriptive. The object is not to (...) find the 'sources' of ideas, as if to credit the philosophical originality of one group or cast aspersions on the philosophical dependency of another, but rather to follow a conversation that takes place across the centuries. (shrink)

This article argues that the Judaic understanding of creation care is a potent response to the challenges of the Anthropocene because Judaism acknowledges that humans have much in common with all other created beings, while respecting their alterity, and because Judaism insists on human responsibility toward and care of the created world. However, Jewish environmental ethics of care and responsibility could be greatly enriched if it incorporates the insights of the feminist ethics of care, ecofeminism, and environmental (...) virtue ethics, three discourses to which Jewish environmentalists have paid limited attention so far, even though the secularization of Judaism in the twentieth century has impacted these discourses. (shrink)

Revisiting Edward Said's late proposals for a one-state solution, Butler has come to a startling suggestion: Jewish ethics not only demand a critique of Zionism, but must transcend its exclusive Jewishness in order to realize the ethical ...

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 41.2 (2003) 271-272 [Access article in PDF] Lenn E. Goodman. Jewish and Islamic Philosophy: Crosspollinations in the Classic Age. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1999. Pp. xv + 256. Cloth, $55.00. This book is a bold if not audacious survey of select themes in Jewish and Islamic philosophy. The "crosspollinations" to which the subtitle refers carry the (...) author back to classical Greece, and forward to Spinoza, Kant, Bergson, Darwin, and beyond. Medieval Jewish and Islamic philosophers are placed as the centerpieces of a humanistic tradition rooted in the past and still resonating in the present.This is a view of medieval philosophy to which many a medievalist would like to subscribe, but which few would dare describe with such brio and eloquent assurance as Lenn Goodman, who is both a historian of philosophy and a philosopher. This confidence waylays Goodman, though, in that he regularly substitutes pronouncements for patient explanation and argument. The reader who is not already familiar with the issues discussed and positions advanced will have a hard time following him. More informed readers may well question many of his summary judgments and piquant observations.The ideal reader of this work is one who has read Goodman's other studies, to which the notes frequently refer. The arguments adumbrated here are presumably laid out in detail in these earlier essays and books. The text before us is thus for the most part more a statement of faith, the author's summary credo, than a reasoned exposition of Jewish and Islamic philosophy. To Goodman, "the approach is synthetic rather than descriptive" (ix).The book deals with "issues of abiding philosophical interest: freedom and determinism, the nature and meaning of history, the basis of ethical values, the foundations and social implications of friendship, the viability and relevance of the idea of God." These admirable themes are pursued in separate yet complementing chapters that compare the tenth-century free-thinker and physician Muhammad ibn Zakariyâ al-Râzî and Epicurus; the tenth-century pietist Bahya ibn Paquda and Kant; and the fourteenth-century Maghribi historian Ibn Khaldûn and Thucydides. Three other chapters compare, respectively, Maimonides and such major Islamic philosophers as Avicenna, Al-Ghazâlî, and Ibn Bâjjah; Maimonides, Al-Ghazâlî, and the Persian ethicist Miskawayh (tenth/eleventh centuries); and Maimonides, Aristotle, and Spinoza.It is at once obvious that Maimonides (twelfth century) is at the heart of this work, reflecting Goodman's longstanding interest in this towering figure of medieval Jewish philosophy. Less obvious is Goodman's contention that Maimonides is to be seen not only in relation to Avicenna, Al-Ghazâlî, and Ibn Bâjjah, but also to Râzî, Bahya, and Miskawayh. Goodman has constructed a narrative of persons and ideas, abstracting from their contexts common concerns and purposes. While there is much to admire in these constructions—patently erudite and challenging as they are—the direct filiations Goodman assumes are often conjectural at best.Take, for example, Goodman's chapter on "Maimonides and the Philosophers of Islam," with its subtitles of "Creation" and "Theophany." These terms are shorthand for Maimonides' treatment of the science of physics and metaphysics, both in their normative and extraordinary appearances. Goodman correctly notes that Maimonides is deeply indebted to Muslim philosophers (and their Greek predecessors) for his knowledge of these fields, though he does stretch matters in singling out the importance of Al-Kindî and Râzî as influences upon Maimonides' thought.Goodman does this in part because he believes Maimonides shared, in varying degrees, a creationist position with them. Goodman accepts at face value Maimonides' assertion that only a creationist thesis allows for voluntarism, a (theologically) meaningful Divine Will. "Only voluntarism," Goodman asserts in the name of Maimonides, "can break the stranglehold of necessity, making emanation itself possible, allowing change, and crucially, allowing change in the natures of things, that is, evolution, as a means of bringing creation to 'maturity'"(98). This statement, besides its anachronistic introduction of evolution into medieval notions of change, misinterprets Maimonides' view... (shrink)

Examines core issues common to Jewish and Islamic philosophy, such as freedom and determinism, the basis of ethical values, and the relationship between faith ...

This article represents an analysis of the Jewish philosophy of the Modern and Contemporary as the holistic phenomenon. In contrast to antiquity and the Middle Ages, when philosophy was a rather marginal part of Jewish thought, in Modern Times Jewish philosophy is formed as a distinct part of the World philosophy. Despite the fact that representatives of Jewish philosophy wrote in different languages and actively participated in the different national schools of (...) philosophy, their work has internal continuity and integrity. The article formulates the following five criteria for belonging to Jewish philosophy: belonging to philosophy itself; reliance on Jewish sources; the addressee of Jewish philosophy is an educated European; intellectual continuity ; working with a set of specific topics, such as monism, ethics and ontology, the significance of behavior and practical life, politics, the problem of man, intelligence, language and hermeneutics of the text, Athens and Jerusalem, dialogism. The article provides a list of the main authors who satisfy these criteria. The central ones can be considered Baruch Spinoza, Moshe Mendelssohn, Shlomo Maimon, German Cohen, Franz Rosenzweig, Josef Dov Soloveichik, Leo Strauss, Abraham Yehoshua Heshel, Eliezer Berkovich, Emil Fackenheim, Mordechai Kaplan, Emmanuel Levinas. The main conclusion of the article is that by the end of the 20th century Jewish philosophy, continuing both the traditions of classical European philosophy and Judaism, has become an important integral part of Western thought. (shrink)

Tristram Engelhardt provides an important set of reflections for bioethics in a secular context. Taking Engelhardt's work as its point of departure this article explores the challenges that Jewish ethicists face in contributing to bioethics in a secular context. The article explores how the Jewish tradition can address issues in bioethics in ways that are true to its tradition and at the same time accessible and relevant to "moral strangers" in a secular society. Keywords: bioethics, Engelhardt, Jewish (...) tradition, moral strangers, multicultural, natural law CiteULike Connotea Del.icio.us What's this? (shrink)

Kenneth Reinhard - Jewish Messianism and the History of Philosophy - Journal of the History of Philosophy 43:3 Journal of the History of Philosophy 43.3 370-371 Martin Kavka. Jewish Messianism and the History of Philosophy. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004. Pp. xiii + 241. Cloth, $65.00. In Jewish Messianism and the History of Philosophy, Martin Kavka traces a subterranean history of what he calls "the Jewish meontological tradition," a recurrent encounter (...) with questions of non-being both indigenous to Jewish religious and philosophical thinking and arising in the Jewish relation to Greek meontology and its ethical afterlife in Western philosophy. Kavka argues that these strands of meontological ideas in turn inform a crucial mode of Jewish messianic thought, providing it with conceptual.. (shrink)

A Philosophy of Mitzvot by Rabbi Dr. Gersion Appel sets forth the Hinnukh's objectives and his approach to revealing the religious and ethical meaning of the mitzvot. In his wide-ranging study, the author presents a comprehensive view of Jewish philosophy as developed by the Hinnukh and the classical Jewish philosophers. The Hinnukh emerges in this study as a great educator and moral and religious guide, and his classic work as a treasure-trove of Jewish knowledge, religious (...) inspiration, and brilliant insight in the molding of human character. (shrink)

This discussion develops six of the most important guiding principles of classical Jewish business ethics and illustrates their application to a complex recent case of product liability. These principles are: (1) the legitimacy of business activity and profit; (2) the divine origin and ordination of wealth (and hence the limits and obligations of human ownership); (3) the preeminent position in decision making given to the protection and preservation (sanctity) of human life; (4) the protection of consumers from commercial (...) harm; (5) the avoidance of fraud and misrepresentation in sales transactions; and (6) the moral requirement to go beyond the letter of the law. Although these Talmudic principles are clearly obligatory only for “Torah-obedient” Orthodox and Hasidic Jews, many Jews share a sensibility informed by them. Non-Jews, too, may be instructed by Jewish teachings about business ethics. (shrink)