Jewish Ethics

A number of Christian theologians and philosophers have been critical of overly moralizing approaches to the doctrine of sin, but nearly all Christian thinkers maintain that moral fault is necessary or sufficient for sin to obtain. Call this the “Moral Consensus.” I begin by clarifying the relevance of impurities to the biblical cataloguing of sins. I then present four extensional problems for the Moral Consensus on sin, based on the biblical catalogue of sins: (1) moral over-demandingness, (2) agential unfairness, (3) (...) moral repugnance, and (4) moral atrocity. Next, I survey several partial solutions to these problems, suggested by the recent philosophical literature. Then I evaluate two largely unexplored solutions: (a) genuine sin dilemmas and (b) defeasible sinfulness. I argue that (a) creates more problems than it solves and that, while (b) is well-motivated and solves or eases each of the above problems, (b) leaves many biblical ordinances about sin morally misleading, creating (5) a pedagogical problem of evil. I conclude by arguing that (5) places hefty explanatory burdens on those who would appeal to (b) to resolve the four extensional problems discussed in this paper. So Christian thinkers may need to consider a more radical separation of sin and moral fault. (shrink)

In the Hebrew Scriptures, there are familiar consequences for disobedience to God—destruction of holy sites, slavery, exile, and death. But there is one consequence that is less familiar and of special interest in this chapter. Disobedience to God sometimes results in stark reversals in God’s very relationship and experiential availability to God’s own people. Such people may even remove God’s very presence. This is a curious form of punishment that threatens the very spiritual identity of the victims of the reversal. (...) This chapter explores divine reversal in the Hebrew Scriptures (and its continuation in the New Testament). Insofar as the self-identified people of God commit positive injustices against others, and even insofar as they are culpable for failing to prevent such injustices from occurring, devotees of the Hebrew Scriptures—so, devout Jews and Christians alike—ought to take seriously the possibility that God will side with those who suffer the injustices and even, in a sense, sanctify their life, practices, and identity. Divine reversals pose problems for Jewish and Christian ethics, which must grapple with the possibility that God might seem to adopt inconsistent moral positions across time—or at least inconsistent moral postures. (shrink)

Sublinhando que a evocação dos acontecimentos que tiveram lugar ab origine converge, segundo a perspectiva mítico-religiosa, para a manifestação das forças sagradas, de acordo com o referencial teórico-conceitual de Eliade, o artigo assinala que tal invocação implica uma correlação de narrativas míticas e gestos e ações paradigmáticas que se destinam a suscitar o poder sagrado e a produção de seus efeitos, ressaltando a prece como poder mágico de exercer influência sobrenatural, como afirma Mauss. Dessa forma, analisando a oração que caracteriza (...) o monoteísmo judaico-cristão, o artigo assinala o relacionamento pactual que encerra Javé e Israel como um processo que implica a Sua invocação como Deus, que converge para manifestações e intervenções na vida do povo em sua realidade concreta, perfazendo, segundo a perspectiva bíblico-teológica neotestamentária, uma construção que encerra a expressão da existência escatológica e realização de si em Bultmann. Finalizando, baseado na perspectiva teológico-filosófica de Tillich, o texto sublinha o poder que implica a oração em um processo que se sobrepõe às estruturas supraindividuais de destruição através do novo ser que o Deus-Homem Jesus Cristo manifesta e que envolve a capacidade de superar as estruturas escravizadoras do mal e as consequências autodestruidoras do estado de alienação existencial. (shrink)

Review of Alan L. Mittleman (ed.) Holiness in Jewish Thought.

One of the best-known principles of halakha is that Shabbat is violated to save a life. Who does this saving and how do we know that a life is in danger? What categories of illness violate Shabbat and who decides? A historical-sociological analysis of the roles played by Jew, non-Jew, and physician according to the approach of “medical cosmology” can help us understand the differences in the approach of the Shulchan Aruch compared to later decisors (e.g., the Mishnah Berurah). Such (...) differences illuminate how premodern medical triage coexisted with a different halakhic understanding than that of the biomedical age. (shrink)

Hermann Cohen made a distinction between the logic of science and the ideal of ethics, and noted that the natural world and the world of ethics are perceived very differently. This is because the order of the physical world is unchangeable (e.g, the sun sets in the west, night follows day, etc), while in the ideal world ethical rules can be accepted or rejected. It seems there should be one explanation for science, which is empirically self-evident, and another for ethics, (...) which is something that is open to debate. Cohen reasoned there must be something that allows science and ethics to coexist and interrelate. (shrink)

Hermann Cohen agreed with Immanuel Kant that ethics must be directed towards the well-being of humanity. The essential feature of this is its universality. As Cohen saw it, progress was (or at least ought to be) moving towards universal suffrage and democratic socialism. Following Kant, Cohen defended the so-called categorical imperative; that we should treat humanity in other persons always as an end and never as a means only. (Kant’s famous definition of the categorical imperative is to “act only according (...) to that maxim whereby you can, at the same time, will that it should become a universal law.”). (shrink)

Anticipating Martin Buber, Hermann Cohen said we must recognize the living, breathing individual as a “Thou,” and not just as a generic example of humanity. As significant as the universal ethical ideal is for Cohen, he recognized that ethics is concerned with individuals only insofar as they are members of humanity as a whole. Ethics can’t always deal with individual moral feelings or with sin. In other words, it is religion -- rather than ethics -- that concerns itself with the (...) sin of the individual. (shrink)

In contemporary bioethics, the autonomy of the patient has assumed considerable importance. Progressing from a more limited notion of informed consent, shared decision making calls upon patients to voice the desires and preferences of their authentic self, engaging in choice among alternatives as a way to exercise deeply held values. One influential opinion in Jewish bioethics holds that Jewish law, in contradistinction to secular bioethics, limits the patient's exercise of autonomy only in those instances in which treatment choices are sensitive (...) to preferences. Here, we analyze a discussion in the Mishna, a foundational text of rabbinic Judaism, regarding patient autonomy in the setting of religiously mandated fasting, and commentaries in the Babylonian and Palestinian Talmuds, finding both a more expansive notion of such autonomy and a potential metaphysical grounding for it in the importance of patient self-knowledge. (shrink)

According to Emmanuel Levinas, the individual bears an infinite obligation to the other person. In the Talmudic reading “Judaism and revolution,” Levinas suggests that we move from the ethical encounter to social relationships using contracts—both particular contracts and the social contract. So social relationships are created by limiting obligation, and as a result these relationships can only be practically acceptable, not ethical. Jewish religious practice for Levinas should also be understood as a set of negotiated limits to our infinite obligation.

This essay offers a Jewish approach to ethnography in religious ethics. Following the work of other ethnographers working in religious ethics, I explore how an ethnographic account of reproductive ethics among Haredi Jewish women in Jerusalem enhances and improves Jewish ethical discourse. I argue that ethnography should become an integral part of Jewish ethics for three reasons. First, with a contextual approach to guidance and application of law and norms, an ethnographic approach to Jewish ethics parallels the way ethical decisions (...) are made on a daily basis in Jewish communities. Second, ethnography bolsters the voices of those involved in ethical discourse. Third, ethnography facilitates the bridge between local ethical questions and global ethical discourse. (shrink)

Although the role of ethics in modern Jewish thought has been widely explored, major works by foundational philosophers remain largely absent from such discussions. This essay contributes to the recovery of these voices, focusing on the Hebrew writings of Moses Mendelssohn and Nachman Krochmal. I argue that these texts reveal the existence of a shared ethical project animating these founding philosophical voices of Jewish modernity, and that reconstructing their claims contributes to broader conversations about the relationship between ethics and law. (...) Mendelssohn and Krochmal present Jewish law as addressing needs emerging from the history of moral philosophy—from the modern histories of Platonic and Aristotelian ethics. Moreover, my reading highlights these thinkers’ ongoing relevance, suggesting that their work illuminates the role of law in ethical cultivation. (shrink)

This article addresses the notion of bearing witness and the responsibility bore by the witness, by a careful reading of Emmanuel Levinas's writings. According to Levinas, one of the major experiences of modern man, is the preference of being a "witness" than being a "participant." The phenomenological investigation of bearing witness reveals the witness's involvement in the act and the occurrence that he witnessed. My aim here is to better understand the modern human condition, in which the encounter between the (...) subject and reality takes place through the mediation of technology. To this end, we consider both the philosophy of Martin Heidegger, which concerns itself with the condition of the Dasein, its sense of being out-of-place in the world, and the authentic manner in which it seeks to overcome this feeling, and that of Levinas, who offers a different perspective focusing on issues of the ethics and responsibility stemming from the encounter between the person and that which lies beyond him. To understand how man uses technology to mediate reality we also consider the enlightening phenomenological and sociological work of Susan Sontag, which, in its exposure of the passion to bear witness, provokes reflection on various aspects of control, curiosity, and involvement. All this facilitates a better understanding of Levinas's conception of bearing witness and the manner in which he demands responsibility and ethicality of the individual not merely as a witness to reality but also–by virtue of his bearing witness–as a partner to it. (shrink)

This study attempts to provide access to the thinking about poverty and the poor reflected in classic rabbinic literature, focusing on a single passage in Leviticus Rabbah that addresses the verse (Lev. 25:25) beginning “should your brother come to ruin.” This passage affords us an opportunity to take a penetrating look into the meaning of poverty, and into its theological and metaphysical contexts, which lie beyond the social and economic issue of poverty. Rabbinic literature comes to us in a variety (...) of genres, which address matters of law, of exegesis, and of midrashic interpretation of the Hebrew Bible. Traditionally we distinguish between halakhic and aggadic midrash, between those midrashic interpretations that seek to reveal biblical law (as the halakhah of Judaism) and those that seek to probe the biblical narrative and reveal the thinking and philosophy behind them. The midrash we will study and examine in this article is part of the collection known as Leviticus Rabbah, an anthology of sermons from the Land of Israel, in Hebrew and Galilean Aramaic, on the book of Leviticus. It appears that the version of Leviticus Rabbah now extant includes an ancient collection from the third century CE, to which were added Amoraic sermons from the fourth and fifth centuries. (shrink)

After a section of Methodological Preliminaries, I consider Truth and Argumentation in the Jewish Legal Tradition, under the following subheadings: Truth in Judaism, Truth and Norms, Truth and Language, Truth and Logic, Truth and Argumentation. I thus use an external framework in order to pose questions to the Jewish legal tradition, and identify internal resources which may provide partial answers to these questions. But are these partial answers so peculiar, theological, culturally contingent as to lack any value in terms of (...) a potential contribution to these same issues as posed within Western jurisprudence? This may be doubted, given the West’s adoption or construction of the divine right of kings on the one hand and of holistic theories of interpretation on the other, derived from the Bible and later Jewish tradition, mediated and fortified through a Christianised Rome. (shrink)

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

Machine generated contents note: -- PART 1: Overview * Jewish Ethics in a New Key * Temptations of Tradition * Sacred Compromise * Renewing Jewish Ethics * PART II: On the Ground * Learning to Speak about the Elephant in the Room * The Art of Moral Criticism * Deal Breaker and the Money Laundering Rabbis * Loving the Stranger and the Fall of the Agriprocessors * The Problem with Income and Wealth Inequalities * PART III: Frontiers * "The Exaltation (...) of the Possible" -- Ethics and Play * An Optimistic Case for the Future of Jewish Ethics In a Post-Madoff World. (shrink)

Jon Jacobs emphasises their distinctive contributions, emphasises the shared rational emphasis of their approach to Torah, and draws out resonances with ...

Obedience and the law of life in Sirach -- God's gracious acts of deliverance in the Hodayot -- Sin, the Spirit, and human obedience in Romans 7-8.

One of the riddles that enthrall those who study modern Jewish thought is how Maimonides attained such high stature among thinkers so far removed from one another – medievals and moderns, rationalists and mystics. One may fairly say that Maimonides was the religious and philosophical anchor for a stunning variety of thinkers, but it appears that more than they seek to understand Maimonides’ views, they find in him an ethical and religious model that enables them to create and formulate their (...) own innovative ethical teachings. I will seek to demonstrate that just as Maimonides provides the anchor for these thinkers’ independent creative work, their great admiration for him comes to define, in the final analysis, the limits of the philosophy that they offer. This is no simple matter. It has far-reaching implications, marking off the horizon of those philosophers’ thought. The example through which I shall present those limits is that of Eros – religious Eros and attitudes toward the body and sexuality in modern Jewish thought. In order to highlight the sense of indebtedness and loyalty to Maimonides and the limits set by that sense in modern Jewish thought, this study examines Spinoza’s attitude to love and Eros and the critique of that position by Hermann Cohen, followed by consideration of the problematic indications of limitation in both thinkers. These inquiries require first some attention to the status of Eros in religious thought and to the tension between the Spinozean position on Eros, with its exoteric significance, and the position taken by Hermann Cohen. Both of these thinkers express a preference for intellectual love over erotic love – a surprising similarity that indicates the horizons that were closed off to them because of the limits they imposed on themselves by accepting the authority of Maimonides. -/- . (shrink)

The 23rd volume in the respected series Ô Basic Bioethics’, this book contains seven original and two reprinted essays and a substantial introductory chapter by the editor. The main concern of the editor, and of several contributors, is to dispel the view that organised reli- gion has been consistently hostile to new biomedical developments. Instead, they emphasise that the practice of medicine is endorsed by the Church and by Jewish tradition. In principle, germline mod- ification might count as an extension (...) of medicine. A consensus emerges in the volume that germline modification would be accept- able if it could be developed and applied with safety and social equity, without destroying any human embryos, and if conducted purely for therapeutic purposes rather than for any form of genetic enhancement. (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.

The main theme of the article is the tension between the obligation to preserve life, and the value of timely death. This tension is resolved by distinguishing between precipitating death, which is prohibited, and merely removing an impediment to it, which is permitted. In contemporary Jewish law, a distinction is made between therapy, which may be discontinued, and life-support, which must be maintained until the establishment of death. Another theme is that of “soft” patient autonomy, and its role in dealing (...) with the dying in both traditional Jewish law and Israel’s Terminal Patient Law, 2005. Preventing suffering in relation to a dying person, and praying for his or her death are also discussed in the article. (shrink)

This work is based on the prestigious Gifford Lectures, which Lenn Goodman was invited to deliver in 2005. Goodman was asked to speak about the commandment to 'love thy neighbour as thyself' from the standpoint of Judaism.

Jewish ethics like Judaism itself has often been charged with being "particularistic," and in modernity it has been unfavorably compared with the universality of secular ethics. This charge has become acute philosophically when the comparison is made with the ethics of Kant. However, at this level, much of the ethical rejection of Jewish particularism, especially its being beholden to a God who is above the universe to whom this God prescribes moral norms and judges according to them, is also a (...) rejection of Christian (or any other monotheistic) ethics, no matter how otherwise universal. Yet this essay argues that Jewish ethics that prescribes norms for all humans, and that is knowable by all humans, actually constitutes a wider moral universe than does Kantian ethics, because it can include non-rational human objects and even non-human objects altogether. This essay also argues that a totally egalitarian moral universe, encompassing all human relations, becomes an infinite, totalizing universe, which can easily become the ideological justification (ratio essendi) of a totalitarian regime. (shrink)

From Abraham to Abu Ghraib, from the dissenting prophets to Darfur, he probes history, the Bible and the works of contemporary thinkers for ideas about both ...

In this essay, the author considers how one particular faith community, contemporary Judaism, in all its internal diversity, has reflected on the issue of how far the project of genetic intervention ought to go when the subject of the future - embodied, willful, and vulnerable - is at stake. Knowing, naming, and acting to change is not only a narrative of faith traditions; it is a narrative of biological science as well.

This article presents an analysis of the ethical considerations raised by preimplantation genetic diagnosis from a Jewish perspective. It weighs the Jewish imperatives to pursue good health against a number of harms that may follow from the expanded use of PGD technology, including increased medical risk to the mother, the destruction of embryos and possible emotional harm to the child born from this procedure. It pays special attention to the potential harms that may befall those in society who do not (...) have access to PGD or who choose not to employ it. (shrink)

Expanded from the Chief Rabbi of South Africa's doctoral thesis, Defending the Human Spirit explores the Torah's legal system compared to Western law.

[1] Pinḳas "Aḥaron Boisḳ." Pinḳas "Rishon le-Yafo." Pinḳas 81 pisḳaʼot (Yafo). Pinḳas "Reshimot mi-London." Pinḳas Yerushalayim, 793 -- kerekh 2. Maḥberot ḳeṭanot, Boisḳ 1-2. Pinḳas ha-dapim, 1-4. Pinḳas 5.

[1] Pinḳas "Aḥaron Boisḳ." Pinḳas "Rishon le-Yafo." Pinḳas 81 pisḳaʼot (Yafo). Pinḳas "Reshimot mi-London." Pinḳas Yerushalayim, 793 -- kerekh 2. Maḥberot ḳeṭanot, Boisḳ 1-2. Pinḳas ha-dapim, 1-4. Pinḳas 5.

Chapter 1 Welcome to A Kids Mensch Handbook What is a mensch, anyway? How can I be someone people respect? What's A Kid's Mensch Handbook all about? ...

In this, his third book on modern ethics for JPS, Elliot Dorff focuses on personal ethics, Judaism's distinctive way of understanding human nature, our role in ...

" In their ground-breaking book, "What the Angel Taught You; Seven Keys to Life Fulfillment," two world-renowned educators collaborate to ask and answer some of ...