Jewish Ethics Since 1970: Writings on Methods, Sources & Issues

A compelling and generative way to study and teach Jewish ethics.

The field of Jewish ethics is characterized by foundational questions about how to do Jewish ethics--questions that are inseparable from other scholarly work within the subject area. The essays in this collection show that analyzing methods of reasoning is a productive approach for both students and teachers of Jewish ethics. The volume is organized not by standalone essays but by sets of curated conversations between scholars from different time periods, academic subfields, and religious commitments (or lack thereof). These deliberate juxtapositions encourage scholars and students to undertake similar meta-ethical analyses on Jewish ethics as related to theories and methods, communities, constructions of the human, and bioethics. For the editors, Jewish ethics is not just a set of propositions or principles; it cannot be reduced to a single trajectory of thought or abstracted as an elaborate system of ideas. Instead, Jewish ethics is the field of study that engages Jewish texts, ideas, history, and experience in conversations about values and virtues, justice and good judgment, and human relations and responsibilities. This volume, which presents such discussions, is certain to spark many more.

Jonathan K. Crane is the Raymond F. Schinazi Scholar of Bioethics and Jewish Thought at the Ethics Center at Emory University, where he is also professor of medicine and affiliated faculty in the Department of Religion. He is the coauthor of Ahimsa: The Way to Peace and the author of Narratives and Jewish Bioethics and Eating Ethically: Religion and Science for a Better Diet. Emily Filler is assistant professor in the Religion Department at Washington and Lee University. Mira Beth Wasserman is the director of the Center for Jewish Ethics and associate professor of rabbinic literature at the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College. She is the author of Jews, Gentiles, and Other Animals: The Talmud after the Humanities.