Sexuality, Autonomy, and Community in the Writings of Eugene Borowitz

Abstract

Abstract Eugene Borowitz's treatment of sexuality correlates with his developing thought on what covenant demands of liberal Jews. Borowitz's understanding of the Jewish self is expressed as a kind of dynamic equilibrium, a “dialectic” between the promptings of the (historically constituted) individual conscience and the demands of the covenant between God and Israel. Questions around sexuality make the tensions inherent in the Borowitzian dialectic especially acute, because they involve both urgent questions of social duty and equally urgent personal desires and commitments. Borowitz's thought undergoes a protracted, complicated evolution on these intertwined questions of sexuality, autonomy, and community.