Narratives And Jewish Bioethics

Narratives and Jewish Bioethics searches for answers to the critical question of what roles ancient narratives play in creating modern norms by Jewish bioethicists utilizing the Jewish textual tradition.

Narratives and Jewish Bioethics searches for answers to the critical question of what roles ancient narratives play in creating modern norms by Jewish bioethicists utilizing the Jewish textual tradition.

This anthology of original essays by leading thinkers in the field gathers together in one place voices from diverse theological and practical commitments. Unlike other publications on Jewish bioethics, it adopts an explicitly pluralistic stance. The book addresses tension between the 'quality of life' and the 'sanctity of life' issues, and will be of interest to lay readers, graduate students of bioethics, and rabbis.

This book takes as its subject the intensely private discussions that arise when ordinary people confront life and death choices and struggle with decisions in a world of medical and scientific complexity. Laurie Zoloth began her work in bioethics in a large public California hospital system, where she was part of a group tasked with the creation of an ethics committee in every hospital in the system, that would hear hundreds of cases every year, including pediatric cases from the hospital's intensive care, neonatal intensive care, burn, and oncology units. The book explores the dilemmas presented in these cases and reflects on the competing, often incommensurate moral appeals offered by the participants. It then analyzes the cases against and with similar concepts within Jewish thought, using rabbinic texts to make legible the factors at play as one makes ethical judgments. This philosophical position is feminist as it considers and at times advocates for the inclusion of family and community in the rationale of the clinical setting. Intertwined with legal statements in the Talmud are aggadot, or midrashic texts, literary narratives used to argue a point, or to complicate a point, or to deepen the meaning of the communal discourse, adding history, case studies, or fictive tales to the discussion. Zoloth argues that these texts can be usefully applied to problems in bioethics. She develops the case for a textual turn that is fully imagined and enriched by the many possible re-interpretations of narrative: biblical, rabbinic, medieval, modern, and post-modern.

First published in 2002. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Scholars of ethics, law, religion, and other disciplines gathered in New York City in the spring of 2002, for the first of a planned series of conferences on Jewish bioethics. The theme was the quality of life and its interpretation in light of fundamental Jewish values. From that conference, these 10 essays discuss the quality versus the sanctity

Although the ideas of “tradition” and “modernity” may seem to be directly opposed, David Ellenson, a leading contemporary scholar of modern Jewish thought, understood that these concepts can also enjoy a more fluid relationship. In honor of Ellenson, editors Michael A. Meyer and David N. Myers have gathered contributors for Between Jewish Tradition and Modernity: Rethinking an Old Opposition to examine the permutations and adaptations of these intertwined forms of Jewish expression. Contributions draw from a range of disciplines and scholarly interests and vary in subject from the theological to the liturgical, sociological, and literary. The geographic and historical focus of the volume is on the United States and the State of Israel, both of which have been major sites of inquiry in Ellenson’s work. In twenty-one essays, contributors demonstrate that modernity did not simply replace tradition in Judaism, but rather entered into a variety of relationships with it: adopting or adapting certain elements, repossessing rituals that had once been abandoned, or struggling with its continuing influence. In four parts—Law, Ritual, Thought, and Culture—contributors explore a variety of subjects, including the role of reform in Israeli Orthodoxy, traditions of twentieth-century bar/bat mitzvah, end-of-life ethics, tensions between Zionism and American Jewry, and the rise of a 1960s New York Jewish counterculture. An introductory essay also presents an appreciation of Ellenson's scholarly contribution. Bringing together leading Jewish historians, anthropologists, sociologists, philosophers and liturgists, Between Jewish Tradition and Modernity offers a collective view of a historically and culturally significant issue that will be of interest to Jewish scholars of many disciplines.

What does religion or the religious traditions have to contribute to the discussion and resolution of contemporary bioethical issues? Each of the fifteen essays written for this volume addresses this question by treating a limited area within the volume's title area, Religious Methods and Resources in Bioethics. The essays keep in touch with the very concrete and specific nature of bioethics by illustrating their points with selected bioethical problems or cases. Some discuss the basic resources, methods and/or presuppositions which characterize the approach to bioethical issues of an entire tradition or a significant element thereof. Traditions represented include Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism, Islam and Judaism. Other authors, while working primarily within their own traditions - most frequently in this section in Christian thought and practice - address methodological issues which arise in a number of traditions. Such matters include casuistry, feminism, principalism and its rivals, virtue ethics, and the issue of ethics' impartial rationality. A final group addresses methodological questions within a given tradition. These include the use of scripture, and of non-canonical authoritative documents, and the role of religious practices in Christian bioethical thinking, and the use of responsa in the Jewish tradition. This volume will be of interest to any persons, beyond beginning undergraduate levels, concerned about religious contributions to bioethical issues.