This book analyses the response of the classic texts of Jewish tradition to Plato's 'Euthyphro dilemma': does God freely determine morality, or is morality independent of God?

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

Over the past decade much significant new work has appeared in the field of Jewish ethics. While much of this work has been devoted to issues in applied ethics, a number of important essays have explored central themes within the tradition and clarified the theoretical foundations of Jewish ethics. This important text grew out of the need for a single work which accurately and conveniently reflects these developments within the field. The first text of its kind in almost (...) two decades, Contemporary Jewish Ethics and Morality presents wide-ranging and carefully organized recent essays on Jewish ethical theory and practice. Serving as an introduction to Jewish ethics, it acquaints the student with the distinctive methodological issues involved and offers a sampling of Jewish positions on contemporary moral problems. The book features work from both traditionalist and liberal contributors, making this the only volume which encompasses the full range of contemporary Jewish ethical perspectives. Writers such as Harold Schulweis, Judith Plaskow, David Novak, David Hartman, and Blu Greenberg discuss law and ethics, natural law, humility, justice, sex and the family, euthanasia, and other vital issues relating to modern Judaism. Many of the readings appear here for the first time, making this important text the most timely sourcebook in its field. Uniquely qualified to reflect the high level and depth of contemporary work in this area of study, Contemporary Jewish Ethics and Morality is an essential contribution to any course dealing with Jewish ethics. (shrink)

Twenty short incidents in young children's lives, with questions to think about, illustrate various aspects of Jewish ethics and values such as mercy, patience, charity, prayer, respect for elders, and faith.

Halakhah and ethics in the Jesus tradition -- Matthew's divorce texts in the light of pre-rabbinic Jewish law -- Let the dead bury their dead : Jesus and the law revisited -- James, Israel, and Antioch -- Natural law in Second Temple Judaism -- Natural law in the New Testament? -- The Noachide commandments and New Testament ethics -- The beginning of Christian public ethics : from Luke to Aristides and Diognetus -- Jewish and Christian public ethics in (...) the early Roman Empire. (shrink)

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)

Purpose The COVID-19 pandemic broke out at the end of 2019, and throughout 2020 there were intensive international efforts to find a vaccine for the disease, which had already led to the deaths of some five million people. In December 2020, several pharmaceutical companies announced that they had succeeded in producing an effective vaccine, and after approval by the various regulatory bodies, countries started to vaccinate their citizens. With the start of the global campaign to vaccinate the world’s population against (...) COVID-19, debates over the prioritization of different sections of the population began around the world, but the prison population has generally been absent from these discussions. Approach and Findings This article presents the approach of Jewish ethics regarding this issue, that is, that there is a religious and a moral obligation to heal the other and to take care of his or her medical well-being and that this holds true even for a prisoner who has committed a serious crime. Hence, prisoners should be vaccinated according to the same priorities that govern the administration of the vaccine among the general public. Originality The originality of the article is in a comprehensive and comparative reference between general ethics and Jewish ethics on a subject that has not yet received the proper attention. (shrink)

Leading contemporary Jewish thinker David Novak has here compiled ten of his essays on a variety of issues in Jewish ethics. Drawing constantly on classical Jewish tradition, Novak also looks at a wide range of modern critical scholarship on the ancient sources. He aims to point out certain common features of Jewish and Christian ethics and the normative implications of this overlapping of traditions; he assumes the reality of a "Judeo-Christian ethic," while refusing to minimize the (...) doctrinal differences between the two traditions. The essays address such major normative issues in social justice as ecology, war and peace, the treatment of minorities, and the approach to AIDS patients. This combination of theoretical reflection and practical application, along with careful and detailed analysis of classical Jewish texts, makes the book a welcome contribution to contemporary ethical theory and normative ethics as well as a work of original Jewish theology. (shrink)

Applying Jewish Ethics: Beyond the Rabbinic Tradition is a groundbreaking collection that introduces the reader to applied ethics and examines various social issues from contemporary and largely under-represented, Jewish ethical perspectives.

Expands the horizons of Jewish virtue ethics, demonstrating how central virtue has been to the history of Jewish ethics.

The number and magnitude of the ethics failures reported on a nearly daily basis in newspapers and on blogs are seemingly unprecedented. The "castle is on fire," to borrow a rabbinic metaphor, and each one of us is faced with the question: Is there anything we can do about it? In this book, Moses Pava explores new and alternative ways of relating to Jewish texts and concepts. In doing so, he invents a nuanced, flexible, and sufficiently sensitive vocabulary to (...) conduct productive ethical dialogues, both within and between communities. (shrink)

"Written in a racy, persuasive style, the book impresses the reader as a work of significant scholarship...I encourage students of comparative religions- and especially those of Islamic economics- to read it with great care."&$151; Islamic Studies The worlds of economics and theology rarely intersect. The former appears occupied exclusively with the concrete equations of supply and demand, while the latter revolves largely around the less tangible concerns of the soul and spirit. Intended as an interfaith clarification of the relationship between (...) the material and the spiritual worlds, this volume first inspects secular beliefs about the relationship between economics and ethics. Exploring the differences and similarities between the treatment of economic issues in each of the great monotheistic religions, Rodney Wilson reveals how each tradition considers such subjects as individual wealth, lending, economic regulation, usury, insurance capitalism, socialism, and banking. He concludes with an intriguing epilogue on the rapidly expanding field of business ethics. (shrink)

The Jewish Family Ethics Textbook guides teachers and students of all ages and backgrounds in mining classical and modern Jewish texts to inform decision making on hard choices.

I. Ethics, media, monstration -- II. Memory, forgetting, and the misuse of images -- III. Religious heritage in humanism, modernity, and postmodernity -- IV. Jewish thought after the Shoah.

In recent years, more and more religious communities have been refusing to vaccinate their children, and in so doing are allowing diseases to spread. These communities justify resistance to vaccination on various religious grounds and make common cause with nonreligious communities who oppose vaccination for their own reasons. Today this situation is reflected primarily in the spread of measles, and vaccine hesitancy was identified by the World Health Organization as 1 of the top 10 global health threats of 2019. The (...) present article presents the religious and ethical arguments for the obligation within Jewish tradition to vaccinate all children. Apart from the obligation on parents to vaccinate their own children, it includes the ethical arguments based on Judaism that call for parents to become organized and force schools to refuse to accept children who have not been vaccinated and demand vaccination of those who have not been inoculated. (shrink)

The case for dialogue -- Increasing moral capital through moral imagination -- The art of ethical dialogue -- Intelligent spirituality in business -- Spirituality in (and out) of the classroom -- Listening to the anxious atheists -- Beyond the flat world metaphor -- Dialogue as a restraint on wealth -- The limits of dialogue.

He shows, for example, how the ethics of Judaism and the ethics of Jews often are at odds, how the Judeo-Christian ethic is an obsolete myth, and how Jewish and ...

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)

The bioethical issues confronting the Jewish chaplain in a long-term care facility are critical, particularly as life-support systems become more sophisticated and advance directives become more commonplace. May an elderly competent patient refuse CPR in advance if it is perceived as a life-prolonging measure? May a physician withhold CPR or artificial nutrition and hydration (which some view as basic care and not as therapeutic intervention) from terminal patients with irreversible illnesses? In this study of Jewish ethics relating to (...) these issues, the author carefully examines the moral implications and legal precedents in the literature. Jewish ethics, affirming a 'sanctity of life' position, suggest that while an elderly person may direct in advance that CPR not be administered in most instances, in the absence of a DNR (Do Not Resuscitate) order, CPR must be performed. In reference to 'tube-feeding', while there is some debate about whether elderly patients may refuse the initiation of 'tube-feeding', there is a consensus that once initiated, it may not be withdrawn. (shrink)

Preface What is a theologian doing appearing here in the guise of an ethician? Somewhat to my own surprise, I gradually realized that my interest in the ...

This essay explores what Jewish ethics has to say about globalization in relation to the AIDS crisis. Special attention is paid to the consequences in affirming current intellectual trends to transcend traditional limits in both society and thought for rethinking traditional Jewish values. The discussion proceeds from two presuppositions. The first is that there is an intimate connection between ethics, science, and politics. The second is that the history of Jewish ethics involves three distinct forms that are (...) generally correlated but rarely identical in content and moral judgment. These three forms are law, wisdom or virtue, and covenant. The discussion considers related issues of accidental connections in time between the bubonic plague and Zionism and between AIDS and homosexuality in relation to moral–theological issues related to divine providence and distributive justice. (shrink)

Judism identifies the virtue of humility as constitutive of the moral life and as furnishing its dispositional foundation. The paper traces the central place given humility in Jewish moral teaching and in the Jewish understanding of God. The author asks whether this stress on humility is supported by rational ethical theory. His claim is that an examination of Rawls' contract view suggests this is so by revealing that a sense of humility not only encourages adoption of the moral (...) point of view but guides moral reasoning to sound conclusions. (shrink)

This essay presents and analyzes the recent work of four prominent contemporary Jewish ethicists: Eugene Borowitz, David Novak, Byron Sherwin, and Walter Wurzburger. These authors are united in their affirmation of covenant as the central category of Jewish moral obligation and their concern to construct a Jewish ethic out of the classical sources of Judaism. Yet, as an individual analysis of their books will show, they adopt markedly different views of the authority of traditional Jewish law (...) , the respective roles of individual and community in moral deliberation, and the degree to which changing historical circumstances alter moral truths. (shrink)

This paper attempts to develop the foundations of a contemporary Jewish moral theory. It treats the Jewish legal and moral tradition as the object of an act of interpretive recovery that is carried out by contemporary Jews who are sensitive to the demands of their historical situation, a situation defined by the Nazi destruction of European Jewry and by the reestablishment of the Jewish state. In the course of the paper I develop an approach to post-Holocaust (...) class='Hi'>Jewish experience that derives from the work of Emil Fackenheim and try to show how Jewish moral imperatives arise within Fackenheim's account of the Jewish situation. The Jew's understanding of the role of God in moral obligation, his appreciation of the demands of the historical moment, and his interpretive recovery of the Jewish moral tradition-all are shown to depend upon and emerge from a reflective examination of Jewish moral and legal resistance during the Holocaust. (shrink)

A collection of rabbinic and biblical sayings and quotations on a variety of topics, dealing primarily with responsibilities to people and animals and care of ...

Persons exhibiting mutations in two tumor suppressor genes, BRCA1 and BRCA2, have a greatly increased risk of developing breast and/or ovarian cancer. The incidence of BRCA gene mutation is very high in Ashkenazi Jewish women of European descent, and many issues can arise, particularly for observant Orthodox women, because of their genetic status. Their obligations under the Jewish code of ethics, referred to as Jewish law, with respect to the acceptability of various risk-reducing strategies, may be poorly (...) understood. In this article the moral direction that Jewish law gives to women regarding testing, confidentiality, and other issues is explored. The intent is to broaden nurses' knowledge of how a particular religious tradition could impact on decision making around genetics testing, with the aim of enhancing their understanding of culturally sensitive ethical care. (shrink)

The concept of Jewish ethics is elusive. Law occupies a prominent place in the phenomenology of traditional Judaism. What room is left for ethics? This paper argues that the dichotomy between law and ethics, with regard to Judaism, is misleading. The fixity of these categories presumes too much, both about normativity per se and about Judaism. Rather than naming categories “law” and “ethics” should be seen as contrastive terms that play a role in fundamental arguments about how to characterize (...) Judaism. (shrink)

Rabbinic tales of drought, disaster, and charismatic holy men illuminate critical questions about power, ethics, and ecology in Jewish late antiquity. Through a sustained reading of the Babylonian Talmud's tractate on fasts in response to drought, this book shows how Bavli Taʿanit challenges Deuteronomy's claim that virtue can assure abundance and that misfortune is an unambiguous sign of divine rebuke. Employing a new method for analyzing lengthy talmudic narratives, Julia Watts Belser traces complex strands of aggadic dialectic to show (...) how Bavli Taʿanit's redactors articulate a strikingly self-critical theological and ethical discourse. Bavli Taʿanit castigates rabbis for misuse of power, exposing the limits of their perception and critiquing prevailing obsessions with social status. But it also celebrates the possibilities of performative perception - the power of an adroit interpreter to transform events in the world and interpret crisis in a way that draws forth blessing. (shrink)

The Vatican recently published directives regarding “beginning of life” issues that explain the Catholic Church's position regarding new technologies in this area. We think that it is important to develop a response that presents the traditional Orthodox Jewish position on these same issues in order to present an alternative, parallel system. There are many points of commonality between the Vatican document and traditional Jewish thought as well as several important issues where there is a divergence of opinion. The (...) latter include the status of the zygote as produced during in vitro fertilization, the acceptable of procreation in a method other than through the conjugal act, and the permissibility of deriving benefit from the products of an illicit act. These points of agreement and disagreement are discussed in detail in this article. (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)

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)