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

The field of Jewish ethics is never far from foundational questions about how to do Jewish ethics – and these questions are inseparable from other kinds of scholarly conclusions or prescriptions. In part because Jewish ethics is inherently deliberative, the volume is organized not by standalone essays but by small sets of curated conversations between scholars from different time periods, academic subfields, and religious commitments (or lack thereof).

These deliberate juxtapositions are to encourage scholars and students to develop similar meta-ethical analyses on Jewish ethics, broadly construed. Jewish ethics is not just a set of propositions or principles; nor can it be reduced to a single trajectory of thought or abstracted as an elaborate system of ideas. 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, human relations and responsibilities. This volume presents some of those conversations 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, the author of Narratives and Jewish Bioethics, and the author of Eating Ethically: Religion and Science for a Better Diet. 

Emily A. Filler is Assistant Professor in the Study of Judaism at Washington and Lee University, and Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Jewish Ethics. Her work has been published in the Journal of Religious Ethics, Religions, Shofar, the Journal of Textual Reasoning, Studies in American Jewish Literature, and several edited volumes. She is currently completing her first monograph, a study of modern Jewish philosophy, biblical violence, and the virtues of plain sense interpretation.

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.