Scholars have studied the concept of holy war in the Bible for well over a century. Both traditional Muslim and modern Western scholars have likewise studied the qur'?nic view of war, but little has been done to examine scriptural justification for holy war as a cross-cultural phenomenon. A comparison of biblical with qur'?nic war texts reveals that, despite historical, cultural, and geographical differences, scriptural justification for mass slaughter in war first appears for the purpose of defense but steadily evolves into (...) divinely encouraged and even divinely commanded offensive war. The differences in the evolving concept between the two scriptures and their exegesis can be explained by the different histories of two religious civilizations. (shrink)

Chow's defense of NHSTP ignores the fact that in psychology it is used to test substantive hypotheses in theory-corroborating research. In this role, NHSTP is not only inadequate, but damaging to the progress of psychology as a science. NHSTP does not fulfill the Popperian requirement that theories be tested severely. It also encourages nonspecific predictions and feeble theoretical formulations.

To better understand how to solve large-scale social dilemmas such as common-pool resource management, this paper provides a interdisciplinary critical analysis of scholarship to reveal the vicious...

This note is a generalization and improved interpretation of the main result of Karni and Schmeidler. A decision-maker is supposed to possess a preference relation on acts and another preference relation on state-prize lotteries, both of which are assumed to satisfy the von Neumann–Morgenstern axioms. In addition, the two preference relations restricted to a state of nature are assumed to agree. We show that these axioms are necessary and sufficient for the existence of subjective expected utility over acts with (...) state-dependent utility functions and a subjective probability measure. This subjective probability measure is unique when conditioned on the set of states of nature in which not all the prizes are equally desirable. (shrink)

Born in a small town in Lithuania, Rabbi Reuven Agushewitz emigrated to the United States in 1929. A Talmudic genius and an autodidact in philosophy, Rabbi Agushewitz published three philosophical works in Yiddish. Ancient Greek Philosophy, the first published but the last to be translated into English, offers a unique blend of clear philosophical principles and a flavorful Yiddish style, which Mark Steiner's translation preserves. Rabbi Agushewitz not only explains what the early Greek philosophers said, he also amplifies their (...) arguments with creative proofs that the ancients themselves did not offer. His attempts to correlate ancient philosophical statements with monotheism will resonate with the modern religious reader. In addition to the present volume, R. Agushewitz's philosophical books are Faith and Heresy and Principles of Philosophy, both published in translation under the auspices of the Michael Scharf Publication Trust of Yeshiva University Press. His volume of Talmudic novellae on Bava Kamma, "Bi'ur Reuven," was published with approbation from both Rabbi Aharon Kotler and Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik. These Talmudic giants differed sharply on their attitude toward the study of philosophy, but they concurred wholeheartedly on the scholarship of R. Agushewitz. (shrink)

“Israel is to blame, and not Oslo,” writes Reuven Kaminer, a longtime member of the Israeli left. The almost instinctual tendency to delegitimize the Palestinian right to determine their future on an equal basis is the source of the current tension, he explains, arguing that the conflict continues today because Israel, backed by the United States - which has repeatedly proven not to be an “honest broker” - refuses to recognize the just national rights of the Palestinian people.

Reuven Leigh provides the first in-depth introduction to the pioneering philosophy of Rabbi Shalom Schneersohn. Bringing him into dialogue with key continental philosophers Emmanuel Levinas, Jacques Derrida and Julia Kristeva, this book reveals how Schneersohn's views anticipated many prominent themes in 20th-century thought. Shalom Schneersohn (1860-1920) was the fifth Rebbe of the Habad-Lubavitch dynasty. He was a traditional, kabbalistic thinker and yet, beyond mysticism, he wrote extensively on speech, gender and the body. So why is he not better known? (...) Leigh begins by uncovering and contesting numerous scholarly assumptions that have operated to exclude traditional rabbinic thinkers from contemporary philosophical debates. Seeking to correct this, this book offers a close reading of Schneersohn's 1898 discourses. With the disruption of traditional binary structures being the dominant theme pervading Schneersohn's work, Leigh challenges Levinas' controversial ideas on the feminine. Examining Schneersohn on language, too, he highlights how Derridean deconstruction involves a more positive approach to presence that was already anticipated in the writings of Schneersohn. And from the disruption of the hierarchy of signification to the semiotic aspect of language and the maternal body, this book demonstrates how Schneersohn foreshadows a number of Kristeva's central philosophical concerns. A wide-ranging and inclusive volume, The Philosophy of Rabbi Shalom Schneersohn demonstrates not only how forward-thinking Schneersohn's ideas were a century ago, but how relevant they still are today. (shrink)

In the presence of incomplete risk attitudes, choices between noncomparable risky prospects are random. A random choice model advanced by Karni, 2021) includes the hypothesis that choices among noncomparable risky prospects are prompted by signals drawn from personal distributions. This paper introduces a scheme designed to elicit subjects’ assessments of their personal likelihoods of choices among noncomparable risky prospects and describes experiments designed to test the aforementioned hypothesis.

Scepticism has been the driving force in the development of Greco-Roman culture in the past, and the impetus for far-reaching scientific achievements and philosophical investigation. Early Jewish culture, in contrast, avoided creating consistent representations of its philosophical doctrines. Sceptical notions can nevertheless be found in some early Jewish literature such as the Book of Ecclesiastes. One encounters there expressions of doubt with respect to Divine justice or even Divine involvement in earthly affairs. During the first centuries of the common era, (...) however, Jewish thought, as reflected in rabbinic works, was engaged in persistent intellectual activity devoted to the laws, norms, regulations, exegesis and other traditional areas of Jewish religious knowledge. An effort to detect sceptical ideas in ancient Judaism, therefore, requires a closer analysis of this literary heritage and its cultural context. This volume of collected essays seeks to tackle the question of scepticism in an Early Jewish context, including Ecclesiastes and other Jewish Second Temple works, rabbinic midrashic and talmudic literature, and reflections of Jewish thought in early Christian and patristic writings. Contributors are: Tali Artman, Geoffrey Herman, Reuven Kiperwasser, Serge Ruzer, Giuseppe Veltri, Cana Werman, and Casten Wilke. (shrink)

This book studies how poetic structure transforms verbal imitations of religious experience into concepts. The book investigates how such a conceptual language can convey such non-conceptual experiences as meditation, ecstasy or mystic insights. Briefly, it explores how the poet, by using words, can express the ‘ineffable’. It submits to close reading English, French, German, Spanish, Italian, Armenian and Hebrew texts, from the Bible, through medieval, renaissance, metaphysical, and baroque poetry, to romantic and symbolistic poetry.

One of the central assumptions of the present study is that mystic or religious poetry not just formulates mystic or religious ideas: it somehow converts theological ideas into religious experience, by verbal means. It somehow seems to reach the less rational layers of the mind by some drastic interference with the smooth functioning of the cognitive system, or by a quite smooth regression from ‘ordinary consciousness’ to some ‘altered state of consciousness’. In this way, the experience is affected not only (...) by its contents, but also by the perceived quality of the structure of the underlying mental process. This brings us to recognize that mystic or religious poetry is sometimes of vastly different styles. In my book I distinguish between two prototypes of such styles, those that are based on drastic and on smooth interference, respectively. The present article will examine poems based on a very special kind of drastic disruption, of which George Herbert was the grand master. This prototype uses typographic schemes for disruptions in orientation, activating mechanisms of prelinguistic babbling, delaying connection of signifiers with the signified, and transcending distinctions to go to unity. Also looked at will be psychological and social defenses against these disruptions as well as ways to overcome those defenses. In this article I will consider the relationship between mystic poetry and what Willie van Peer calls ‘typographic foregrounding’. In this relationship, I will suggest, both mystic and aesthetic principles are involved. (shrink)

In this article I reject the claim that the responsibilities acquired by gamete providers can be transferred to their biological children's intending parents. I defend this position by first showing that arguments in defence of the transferability of responsibilities in gamete provision cases fail to distinguish between the transfer and delegation of responsibility. I then provide an argument against the transferability of responsibilities in gamete provision cases that differs from the ones offered by James Lindemann Nelson and Rivka Weinberg. Though (...) I conclude that gamete providers have inalienable responsibilities towards their biological offspring, I note that the precise ethical and policy implications this has for gamete provision remain somewhat unclear. (shrink)

Is it true that the suffering associated with chronic illness can be controlled in all but a few intractable cases? The bio-ethical literature gives the impression that suffering is primarily pain and that a competent physician should be able to control suffering. This perception jibes neither with my forty years of clinical experience nor with suffering as depicted in novels. Using Kenaz' novel,The Way to the Cats as a starting point, I argue that, with regard to suffering and illness, fiction (...) is closer to reality than professional literature, and suffering is far more than pain. I content that the control of suffering is a modern myth. This argument applies equally well to the control of non-insulin dependent diabetes. Patient selection, duration of follow-up, remembering what we want to remember, bias, self-fulfilled prophecy, and asking the wrong questions are offered as partial explanation for the gap between perception and reality. The complexity of suffering and the elusiveness of its control should be honestly recognized. (shrink)

In this volume, Rabbi Aharon Lichtenstein explores the development of the religious personality. He advocates a life centered on the service of God, but recognizes multiple paths to this goal. Acknowledging that both the Jewish value system and human experience are multifaceted, he examines the relevant issues from an unusually wide perspective. Rabbi Lichtenstein's essays reflect not only a staunch commitment to Halakha and a firm grounding in rigorous Torah study, but also a deep spirituality, a profound moral sensitivity, and (...) a keen awareness of both the challenges and opportunities of modernity. While being enlightened by Rabbi Lichtenstein's penetrating analyses and wide-ranging learning, the reader will also be inspired by the beauty of his vision of the religious life. These essays originated as lectures, and have been selected and adapted for print by Rabbi Reuven Ziegler. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:WORKING WARFARE AND ITS RESTRICTIONS IN THE JEWiSH TRADITION Reuven Kimelman Brandeis University The test case for any political theory of checks and balances is war. It also tests the outer limits of the ethical deployment of power. I. Types of Wars The Jewish ethics of war focuses on two issues: its legitimation and its conduct. The Talmud classifies wars according to their source oflegitimation. Biblically mandated wars (...) are termed mandatory (milhemet mitzvah or milhemet hovah). Wars undertaken at the discretion of the Sanhédrin are termed discretionary (milhemet reshut). There are three types of mandatory wars: Joshua's war of conquest againstthe seven Canaanite nations, the war againstAmaleq, anddefensive wars against an already launched attack. Discretionary wars are usually expansionary efforts undertaken to enhance the political prestige of the government or to secure economic gain. The first type of mandatory war is only of historical interest as the Canaanite nations lost their national identity already in ancient times. This ruling, which appears repeatedly in rabbinic literature, is part ofa tendency to blunt the impact of the seven-nations policy. The Bible points out that these policies were not implemented even during the zenith of ancient Israel's power (Kings 9:20; 2 Chr 8:7-9; see also Judges 1:21-33, Ps 106:34). Indeed, an ancient Midrash explicitly excludes the possibility of transferring the seven-nations ruling to other non-Jewish residents of the Land ofIsrael. Maimonides is just as explicit in emphasizing that all trace 44Reuven Kimmelman of them has vanished. By limiting the jurisdiction of the seven-nations ruling to the conditions ofancient Canaan it was effectively removed from the postbiblical ethical agendaand vitiated as aprecedent forcontemporary practice. The second category ofmandatory war, against Amaleq, has also been rendered operationally defunct by comparing them with the Canaanites, or by postponing the battle to the immediate premessianic struggle, or by viewing them as a metaphor for genocidal evil. The two remaining categories, reactive defensive wars (which are classified as mandatory) and expansionary wars (which are classified as discretionary) remain intact. So, for example, King David's response to the Philistine attackaredesignated mandatory, whereashis wars "to expandthe border of Israel" are designated discretionary. Intermediate wars such as preventive, anticipatory, or preemptive defy so neat a classification. Not only are the classifications debated in the Talmud, but commentators disagree on the categorization of the differing positions in the Talmud. The major clash occurs between the eleventh century Franco-German scholar Rashi and the thirteenth century Franco-Provencal scholar Meiri. According to Rashi, the majority position considers preemptive action to be discretionary whereas the minority position expounded by Rabbi Judah considers it to be mandatory. According to Meiri, a preemptive strike, against an enemy who it is feared might attack or who is already known to be preparing for war is deemed mandatory by the majority ofthe rabbis, but discretionaryby Rabbi Judah. Accordingly, Rabbi Judah defines a counterattack as mandatory only in response to an already launched attack. A similar reading of Maimonides also limits the mandatory classification to a defensive war launched in response to an attack. With these distinctions between mandatory and discretionary wars in mind, we should be able to investigate the Jewish concerns with the problematics ofwarby focusing on preemptive strikes, declarations ofwar, ethics of warfare, and draftability. II. Preemptive Strikes as Self-Defense Not only Machiavellians view the security and survival ofthe state as nonnegotiable. National self-defense is as much amoral right as is personal self-preservation. Whereas it is clear that offensive war cannot be subsumed under the inalienable right of self-defense, the moral status of pre-emptive attacks is not as clear. Is the moral category of self-defense Working Warfare and Its Restrictions in the Jewish Tradition 45 limited to an already launched attack? The majority talmudic position, according to Rashi, and that of Rabbi Judah, according to Meiri, would answer in the affirmative. Their position is seconded by Article 51 of the United Nations Charter, which states: "Nothing in the present Charter shall impair the inherentright ofindividual ofcollective self-defense ifan armed attack occurs against a member." The minority position of Rabbi Judah, according to Rashi, and the... (shrink)

Gambling and Speculation takes the long, historic perspective of its controversial subject. The book offers not only a better understanding of the recent "gambling craze," but also a fundamental inquiry into human nature and the structure of societies. The Brenners argue that the negative image of gamblers and of speculators stems from prejudice, whose roots are in the distant, forgotten past. Legal scholars have frequently confused gambling with speculation and the anti-gambling laws were, at times, erroneously interpreted as implying the (...) prohibitions of contracts in futures and insurance markets. One consequence of all this confusion was that during this century both in the United States and England, the legislation and law on betting and gambling became ambiguous. The authors touch on this issue and make policy recommendations: to abolish restrictions on the industry, diminish the states' role in selling lotteries, and, at the same time, make legal distinctions capable of helping the tiny percentage of players who might be "addicted.". (shrink)

Reuven Brandt on parental responsibility and gamete donation.

Reuven Brandt on anonymity and mitochondrial donation.

The Institute of Medicine has recently endorsed arguments put forward by John Appleby calling for mandatory sex selection against female offspring in the initial trials of mitochondrial replacement techniques. In this paper I argue that, despite this endorsement, the reasons offered by Appleby for mandatory sex selection are inadequate. I further argue that plausible revisions to Appleby's arguments still fail to convincingly defend such an intrusive policy. While I remain neutral about whether intending parents making use of mitochondrial replacement techniques (...) ought to have access to sex selection, I conclude that to date the case for mandatory sex selection has not been satisfactorily made. (shrink)

Bioethics, Volume 36, Issue 4, Page 403-410, May 2022.

A recent update to the Geneva Declaration’s ‘Physician Pledge’ involves the ethical requirement of physicians to share medical knowledge for the benefit of patients and healthcare. With the spread of COVID-19, pockets exist in every country with different viral expressions. In the Chareidi religious community, for example, rates of COVID-19 transmission and dissemination are above average compared with other communities within the same countries. While viral spread in densely populated communities is common during pandemics, several reasons have been suggested to (...) explain the blatant flouting of public health regulations. It is easy to fault the Chareidi population for their proliferation of COVID-19, partly due to their avoidance of social media and internet aversion. However, the question remains: who is to blame for their community crisis? The ethical argument suggests that from a public health perspective, the physician needs to reach out and share medical knowledge with the community. The public’s best interests are critical in a pandemic and should supersede any considerations of cultural differences. By all indications, therefore, the physician has an ethical obligation to promote population healthcare and share medical knowledge based on ethical concepts of beneficence, non-maleficence, utilitarian ethics as well as social, procedural and distributive justice. This includes the ethical duty to reduce health disparities and convey the message that individual responsibility for health has repercussions within the context of broader social accountability. Creative channels are clearly demanded for this ethical challenge, including measured medical paternalism with appropriate cultural sensitivity in physician community outreach. (shrink)

Dov Fox’s Birth Rights and Wrongs offers a largely compelling argument for expanding the scope of legal actions and remedies available to those whose reproductive choices are wrongfully frustrated by the actions of others. The dominant focus of the book is individuals who, due to the negligence and/or malice of medical professionals, suffer harms arising from reproduction imposed, denied, or confounded. A serious examination of these kinds of injuries is certainly appropriate given that medical professionals are increasingly involved in individuals’ (...) reproductive plans and that serious harms may arise when desired medical interventions are improperly implemented. I will not take issue with the general framework developed by Fox for addressing these kinds of harms. My focus here will be to show that Fox’s arguments have consequences for two kinds of cases that lie beyond the scope of those he explicitly acknowledges. The first is instances of reproductive wrongs that occur outside the confines of the patient/medical practitioner relationship. The second is claims made by children for harms suffered in virtue of being denied contact with their biological parents and/or access to identifying information about their biological parents. (shrink)

Rivalry is an attempt to understand facets of entrepreneurial societies by integrating the economic analysis with historical, political and psychological considerations, customarily shunned by economists. The author argues that decisions to make new business ventures, and readiness to take risks are both related to concepts of ranking hierarchies on local, national or international levels. He then constructs a theory of business enterprise and of rivalry supported by evidence on entrepreneurship, innovation, advertising, all examined with their historical, political or organisational concerns. (...) This notion of rivalry among businessmen is used to derive guidelines for anti-trust legislation. Instead of pricing, profitability, concentration ratios and other criteria used today to infer non-competitive behaviour, he suggests using a measure of a firm's relative rate of innovation to infer it. By extending the notion of rivalry to the political sphere, national and international, guidelines are derived to evaluate the performance of state-owned enterprises and to examine policies related to free trade. (shrink)

Abraham Joshua Heschel's oeuvre deals with the continuum of Jewish religious consciousness from the biblical and rabbinic periods through the kabbalistic and Hasidic ones with regard to God's concern for humanity. The goal of this study is to show how such a “Nachmanidean” reading has partially displaced the discontinuous “Maimonidean” reading promoted by Yehezkel Kaufman, Ephraim Urbach, and Gershom Scholem. The result is that Heschel's understanding of the development of Jewish theologizing is more influential now than it was during his (...) lifetime. This study traces the growth of that development and explores how Heschel became the scholar-theologian who most succeeded in bridging the gap between scholarship and constructive theology. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Significant Interests and the Right to KnowReuven Brandt (bio)1. IntroductionDaniel Groll's book Conceiving People (2021) attempts a novel and insightful defence of why individuals ought to choose open over anonymous gamete donation, barring any special circumstances. In broad strokes, the overall argument proceeds by defending three main claims: (1) that failing to disclose to children that they are donor-conceived is morally problematic, (2) that children who are informed that (...) they are donor-conceived (either intentionally by their social parents or otherwise) are likely to have a worthwhile, significant, subjective interest1 in having knowledge about their gamete donor(s), and (3) that parents have a duty to advance their children's worthwhile subjective significant interests. Groll's account departs from other criticisms of anonymous gamete donation in that it does not rest on the view that knowledge about one's genetic progenitors is essential to self-knowledge, identity formation, or other elements of wellbeing for creatures like us. The view thus attempts to avoid the pitfalls plaguing other criticisms of anonymous gamete donation, which tend to rely on controversial (and likely false) claims of genetic essentialism and/or genetic exceptionalism.Groll's thesis rests on the much more modest (and likely correct) claim that seeking information about one's genetic progenitors is one of many permissible, fruitful, and valuable routes to identity formation. According to Groll, it just so happens that a large portion of donor-conceived individuals aware of the absence of biological ties to one or more social parents choose this route to identity formation. And this empirical fact combined with plausible views about parents' obligations to promote their offspring's wellbeing gives prospective pro-creators strong reason to choose open donors over anonymous donors.Although many aspects of the picture Groll paints are attractive, I remain unconvinced that the overall argument succeeds. My criticism of the argument is multipronged. I am skeptical that failing to disclose to a child that they were donor-conceived and/or failing to disclose information to a child that they are [End Page 201] likely to find important violates the parental duty to build intimate relationships with one's offspring. This shifts the force of Groll's argument to the empirical claim that donor-conceived children are likely to have a significant subjective interest in knowing information about their biological relations. As I will show, the empirical evidence for this claim is not as strong as Groll presumes. In the absence of a deontic argument for disclosure, Groll must provide more robust empirical evidence that anonymous gamete donation is likely to result in off-spring with their weighty interests frustrated, or else argue that the risk is not worth taking. These are not fatal flaws but show that more empirical and normative work needs to be done to defend this line of argument.A more serious set of worries arise in response to Groll's claim that the interest that donor-conceived individuals have in genetic information is likely to be significant. Little is said about what constitutes a significant interest, except that interests fall along a linear spectrum and that the significance of an interest is a factor of "the space, so to speak, it takes up in a person's mental economy (do they think about it a lot?) and the extent to which they organize their lives around it" (2021, 63). My worries here are three-fold. First, it is unclear whether the empirical data support the claim that donor-conceived individuals are likely to have an interest in genetic knowledge that is significant in the sense that it occupies a large portion of their mental energy and is a locus around which they organize their lives. Second, there is scant discussion about whether an interest can become morally problematic (and so no longer worthwhile on Groll's account) if it is given too much weight. I will argue that a plausible reading of Groll's account requires that we treat overvalued interests as no longer worthwhile. Consequently, Groll's argument risks presuming the kind of genetic chauvinism—the view that genetic knowledge is essential to wellbeing—that he seeks to reject. Third, if... (shrink)

Sophisticated arguments advanced by Harry Silverstein, David Boonin, and Jeff McMahan attempt to show that being responsible for an individual's existence need not result in an obligation to ensure that the needs of that individual are satisfied. While these arguments take place within the abortion debate, by extension they threaten causal accounts of procreative responsibility more generally. In this article, I defend causal accounts of procreative responsibility by showing that these arguments do not succeed, but without thereby undermining the permissibility (...) of abortion. Further, while being causally involved in the existence of a person is not sufficient for acquiring procreative responsibilities, I argue that there is an especially strong case for ascribing such responsibilities to gamete donors. (shrink)