Love Your Neighbor and Yourself: A Jewish Approach to Modern Personal Ethics

A leading ethicist suggests ways to take the moral high road in one’s personal life.

In this topically relevant book on modern ethical issues, Dorff focuses on personal ethics, Judaism’s distinctive way of understanding human nature, our role in life, and what we should strive to be, both as individuals and as members of a community. Dorff addresses specific moral issues that affect our personal lives: privacy, particularly at work as it is affected by the Internet and other modern technologies; sex in and outside of marriage; family matters, such as adoption, surrogate motherhood, stepfamilies, divorce, parenting, and family violence; homosexuality; justice, mercy, and forgiveness; and charitable acts and social action.

Elliot N. Dorff, a Conservative rabbi, is Rector and Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at the University of Judaism. He was ordained by the Jewish Theological Seminary and earned his Ph.D. in philosophy from Columbia University, with a dissertation in moral theory. He has written over 150 articles on Jewish thought, law, and ethics, and eight books, including two JPS volumes —Matters of Life and Death (1998) and To Do the Right and the Good (2002). He is a co-editor of Etz Hayim: Torah and Commentary.