Abstract.The legend of the golem, the creation of life through mystical and magical means, is the most famous postbiblical Jewish legend. After noting recent references to the golem legend in fiction, film, art, and scientific literature, I outline three stages of the development of the legend, including its relationship to the story of Frankenstein. I apply teachings about the golem in classical Jewish religious literature to implications of the legend for ethical issues relating to bioengineering, reproductive biotechnology, robotics, artificial intelligence, (...) artificial life, and corporate ethics. The golem legend emerges as a source of prudent guidance through the minefield of ethical and spiritual problems emerging from current and expected developments in biotechnology. (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)

ijCs tAj A Program for Jewish Scholarship After the Holocaust, Jewish scholarship should be devoted to that which advances Judaism. ...

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 ...