Elliot Dorff, Ethics at the Center: Jewish Theory and Practice for Living a Moral Life. University of Nebraska Press, 2024
In A Theory of Justice (1971), John Rawls introduced the method of reflective equilibrium to describe the process by which we reconcile our individual moral judgments and intuitions with philosophical principles. According to Rawls, arriving at a moral position requires an ongoing negotiation between our considered real-world convictions about morality, on the one hand, and abstract principles, on the other, until we arrive at a place where all these varied considerations fit together into one coherent understanding. For Rawls, the practice of reflective equilibrium helps us navigate the moral missteps that can arise from overreliance on broad ethical formulas and principles, while also correcting for the indeterminacy and bias that comes from an ethics focused excessively on our individual moral intuitions and convictions.
In Ethics at the Center: Jewish Theory and Practice for Living a Moral Life (2024), Elliot Dorff models a similar approach to ethics through a Jewish lens. In varied contexts, Rabbi Dorff shows how “living a moral life” as a Jew requires a willingness to engage deeply with the principles that emerge from Jewish texts and to bring those principles into conversation with our individual and often evolving moral convictions. In this anthology, Rabbi Dorff adapts selections from his wide-ranging articles and responsa on varied topics in Jewish ethics, providing a window into how he, as a leading voice for Conservative Judaism, has wrestled over time with evolving ethical questions through the lens of Jewish texts and his own moral intuitions.
Rabbi Dorff’s chapter on providing aid in dying demonstrates how he views Jewish ethics as an evolving and iterative practice rather than an abstract appeal to unyielding rules and principles. Here he reflects on the factors that caused him to change his own views on this issue. In 1997, he authored a categorical responsum forbidding “assisted suicide.” Revisiting the issue more than two decades later, in 2020, he authored a new responsum that carved out “narrow exceptions to the general prohibition on seeking or offering aid in dying” (p. 59), including extending medical aid to those expected to die soon and suffering uncontrollable pain.”
In the 2020 responsum, Rabbi Dorff discusses how the nomenclature he used in the earlier responsum, “assisted suicide,” was part of what obscured for him the ethical nuances of the issue. The more neutral term, “aid in dying,” as well as developments in US and Canadian law since the 1997 responsum concerning “death with dignity,” helped him to appreciate the ethical stakes with greater complexity and nuance. In contrast to his 1997 responsum, Rabbi Dorff understands his 2020 responsum, which gives greater weight to the interests of those suffering with late-stage disease, to put an emphasis on the notion that “God’s compassion embraces all God’s creations” (Psalm 145:9).
A secular ethicist might understand this evolution in thought as striking a different balance between the sometimes competing values of promoting human life and compassion for individual suffering based upon evolving societal understandings. But as Rabbi Dorff conceptualizes his own life’s project, as a religious Jew, he sees himself as rebalancing values that are all contained within God’s revelation in order to arrive at a truer expression of that revelation. In most of the varied and wide-ranging topics covered in the volume—abortion, war, sexual identity, and more—Rabbi Dorff shows us how he discerns moral principles in the biblical and rabbinic textual traditions and then brings those principles into dialogue with contemporary circumstances and his own moral insight to arrive at a coherent Jewish ethical perspective, if not necessarily a normative pronouncement.
Although Rabbi Dorff asserts that God is the source of moral norms and explores his concept of God in the book’s early chapters, it is not at all clear how much his ethics actually are reliant on any specific metaphysical claims. On topic after topic, he admirably “shows his work,” putting his own positionality and personal intuitions into dialogue with the Jewish tradition. Yet it seems important to him to maintain some deniability around this practice, as he wishes to retain a sense that the source of Jewish ethics lies outside of human agency in an authoritative tradition based on divine revelation.
In this regard, Rabbi Dorff includes in the book an interesting series of exchanges with Eugene Borowitz (1924–2016), a leading liberal theologian and ethicist associated with Reform Judaism, about the extent to which the moral judgments of individual Jews are a basis for ethical decision-making (76-90). Throughout the exchange, Rabbi Dorff resists Dr. Borowitz’s arguments about the importance to be afforded to the ethical reasoning of individual Jews. One senses that Rabbi Dorff is reinforcing a denominational boundary, seeking to draw a sharp distinction between Conservative and Reform Judaism based upon the former’s professed commitment to Jewish law as normative and authoritative. But if the exchange is included in the volume to highlight a distinction between Rabbi Dorff’s approach to Jewish ethics and that of Dr. Borowitz, the reader comes away from the exchange with a sense that the approaches are much more similar than they are different. As Dr. Borowitz explains, both he and Rabbi Dorff acknowledge that “there is a significant human factor in revelation” (p. 83), so they are in much the same situation of using their individual abilities to reason morally in light of the tradition in order to arrive at Jewish responses to ethical issues.
Speaking with admiration for Rabbi Dorff, Dr. Borowitz explains that he finds Rabbi Dorff’s writing about Jewish ethics “persuasive” precisely because of Rabbi Dorff’s qualities as a person. The “self makes itself felt even in legal decision-making. One factor in decision-making is simply who you are as a person and how you act on that individuality. Were you a different person, you would not be the posek (decisor) we know you to be, the author of your shitah (approach)” (84). Readers of this volume will come away with a sense of deep appreciation for Rabbi Dorff’s shitah, which involves epistemological humility and a willingness to work and rework the often conflicting ethical insights of the Jewish tradition until they reach, at least provisionally, reflective equilibrium.
Eric B. Fisher, an attorney practicing in the field of commercial litigation and a rabbinical student at the Academy for Jewish Religion, is passionate about Jewish text study.
Arnold Eisen, Seeking the Hiding God: A Personal Theological Essay. Ben Yehuda Press, 2024
Jews often do not feel comfortable talking about God. We are stereotypically more comfortable talking about history, law, and Jewish texts. Professor Arnold Eisen, in his new book Seeking the Hiding God: A Personal Theological Essay, encourages us to dive into our personal theologies to see what we find. In the beginning of the book, he writes: “Jews rarely pause to take stock of the big questions of life, and almost never discuss them with our children…. I gladly seize the chance to face them” (45). He models this quest for theological answers by tackling many difficult subjects in the book and how he has approached God and religious belief throughout his life.
Professor Eisen writes the book as if the reader were his ḥevruta, study partner. It is meant to be a dialogue and an exchange of ideas. He writes that “nothing truly important in life can be learned alone and nothing significant can be learned without questioning and challenge.” He models this mode of learning by including imaginary letters between himself and different friends about their differing approaches to Judaism and theology. They disagree and challenge each other in the letters with love and respect. It is a different modality to approach theology, one I found to be very engaging.
As a graduate of the rabbinical school of the Jewish Theological Seminary, I have had many opportunities to engage with the scholarly work of Dr. Eisen. He was the chancellor when I was in school, and we read many of his articles and books and got the chance to hear him speak on many occasions. Seeking the Hiding God is the most accessible and personal piece of writing I have encountered. It is not esoteric and full of academic jargon. On the contrary, it is full of Eisen’s embodied lived experience. There is mention of laughter, crying, and feeling unmoored. He shares many deeply personal stories, including the death of his siblings, dancing with overflowing gratitude when his daughter was born, and an ecstatic experience he had while viewing the Webb telescope images. Eisen ends the book with a beautiful love letter to his wife, the scholar Ace Leveen, in which he writes that just as Shabbat has anchored his weeks, she has anchored his life.
A recurring theme in the book is love and how it brings transcendence. He talks about love for his parents, his wife, his kids, and his grandkids. And over and over he talks about his love for God. He writes that “Love is the connective tissue linking us to God—and via God, to one another. One can imagine it as some sort of umbilical cord that has nourished humanity from the infancy of the race and continues to do so ever after” (134). I found the image of God as a mother who has birthed us to be striking and resonant. Eisen rereads the first sentence of the Veʾahavta prayer to read not “love the Lord your God” but “love with the Lord your God.” When we love our neighbor it is because God loves our neighbor and God loves us. It is God’s love that transcends all differences.
I found one of Eisen’s stories particularly moving. When he went to Jerusalem for the first time, he was struck by the fact that the city seemed extremely religious. Yet, at the Western Wall, he did not find himself particularly moved, so he prayed for God to give him a prayer. Seconds later, a piece of a siddur flew toward him with the Ashrei prayer on it, specifically the line “Happy are those who dwell in Your house. They will praise You forever.” He has kept the piece of paper with him ever since. This story seems to resonate with Eisen’s idea of God loving us. Eisen is not sure that the prayer was from God, but one way to read that experience is that God sent him the gift of that prayer. As he writes “some verses, on some days, know me better than I know myself” (177).
Eisen does not shy away from the more complicated and difficult aspects of theology. He writes about yearning for God, who is constantly hiding. Eisen describes this experience as painful and at the same time a creative gift. He also addresses in his epilogue how much harder all these conversations and ideas are in a post–October 7th world. There are days when God feels absent, and it is hard to see how redemption will come from this bloody and horrific time. He writes that the answer is “do as much good as you can, for as long as you live…there will be blessing and not just curse, there will be life fighting death, if we choose life as best as we can” (215). He acknowledges that there are days when this wisdom will seem utterly inadequate and others when it will seem like the ultimate wisdom.
The book is an invitation into a conversation with yourself and those you love around what your theological beliefs are. It is not meant to sit on an academic shelf. It is meant to be used as a catalyst for discussions we do not often have the emotional courage to engage in. Eisen encourages us, through his own lived reality and experiences, to examine our own stories and see what theological nuggets we can find and then share them with others.
Rabbi Katie Greenberg is the Rabbi-Director of Engagement and Programming at CSAIR in Bronx, New York. She was ordained from the Jewish Theological Seminary, where she received a master’s degree in education as well as a certificate in pastoral care.