ABSTRACT Louis Newman has persuasively argued that readers of Jewish legal texts make “interpretive assumptions” as they arrive at legal rulings that accord “with their moral judgments.” This article analyzes selected legal decisions of Rabbi David Zevi Hoffmann (1843–1921) of Berlin within the framework that Newman has provided for understanding the ethical character and moral dynamics that often inform Jewish legal decision-making. Specifically, it emphasizes how the desire to render “moral judgments” in accord with his personal ethical sensibilities guides Hoffmann’s understandings of Jewish legal precedents and how the quality of empathy that marks him as a person often finds expression in the judgments he renders.

ABSTRACT This article argues that although we should do everything we can to know more, epistemological humility must characterize our assertions about everything, including what we think is true, good, and wise because we humans have historically made multiple mistakes and still do. This argues for genuine pluralism, in which one understands one’s own convictions better by learning about competing ways of thought and action. This article then applies this principle to Jewish modes of interpreting texts, with comparative glances at how texts are interpreted in other traditions, and to Jewish law, with an extended discussion of how epistemological humility should affect our definitions of death in medical ethics. Finally, this article argues that epistemological humility should be seen as a virtue in its own right.

ABSTRACT Louis Newman’s work on methodologies by which Jewish ethicists derive their ethical guidance from texts is foundational to the examination of modern ethical exegesis. He questions the “legalistic” assumptions that the choice of appropriate texts can ultimately be determined, and that definitive answers lie within the texts themselves. However, while making problematic the assumption that the interpreter derives their answers solely from the text, Newman does not deeply engage with the question of how changing social and cultural currents might profoundly influence the activity of Jewish ethical inquiry. This article, as homage to Newman’s important and thoughtful work, offers a sociological reflection on the power of social forces in ethical exegesis.

ABSTRACT Analogies and metaphors connect two ideas, albeit in different ways. Louis Newman deploys both devices in his now classic tripartite typology of modern Jewish ethics: legal, covenantal, narrative. Drawing from the scholarship of rhetoric, this article studies how analogies and metaphors function in Newman’s work and assesses their potency.

ABSTRACT This article addresses the psychological and moral dimensions of offering an apology for offending another individual. An apology repairs a relationship by removing what this article will call a tribunal interruption and restoring the moral foundations of that relationship to one of equality, trust, and mutual goodwill. “Tribunal interruption” here means an episode in the narrative arc of relationship that the arrival of justice brings about. Apologizing can work to restore a bruised friendship to one that can subordinate the value of justice to one of affection and good will. An apology can also reshape how a friendship can envision a shared and promising future. Drawing from Louis Newman on forgiveness, Aristotle on friendship, and Peter Strawson on reactive feelings of resentment in response to ill will, this article offers an ethics of apologizing that is structured by memory, accountability, and hope.

ABSTRACT This article considers Louis Newman’s important essay “Woodchoppers and Respirators” and Newman’s argument that contemporary Jewish ethicists must be far more cautious in their appeals to classical Jewish texts. In response, this article argues that Newman himself has also neither entirely grappled with the implications of his critique nor recognized its potential as an invitation to a less conventional ethical and intellectual orientation. It suggests that the constraints he identifies ought to be understood as potential virtues of a different approach to the texts, not simply limitations on conventional textual interpretation.

ABSTRACT In the forty years since The Sanctity of the Seventh Year: A Study of Mishnah Tractate Shebiit was published, Louis Newman established himself as a prominent Jewish ethicist. The book’s subject, shmita, is a set of laws that provide the framework for the agricultural sabbatical year. Interestingly, in recent decades Jewish farmers, scholars, and thinkers are revisiting and revitalizing shmita as an aspirational Jewish model for environmental and economic justice. This article will build on Newman’s argument in The Sanctity of the Seventh Year as it argues that the transformative potential of shmita enticed both the Mishnah’s framers and Jewish farmers, scholars, and thinkers today in large part because their historical context was in tumult and the future felt uncertain. Shmita stimulates Jews in the moments when Jews feel less in control of their fate than usual and provides a pathway to help them begin to transform the world.

ABSTRACT This article engages Louis Newman’s work on methodology in contemporary Jewish ethics with particular attention to the issue of whether euthanasia is acceptable. The article suggests that discussion of the woodchopper case is especially useful for understanding methodological difficulties facing Jews and non-Jews alike.

ABSTRACT This article explores how Louis Newman’s scholarship teaches scholars of Jewish ethics to approach their work with the virtues of intellectual honesty and humility. In particular, Newman’s work can help scholars to recognize the problems with claims about “what Judaism teaches,” claims about how certain texts or certain models of authority are essential for Jewish ethics, and efforts to whitewash the history of Jewish literature and the history of the State of Israel.

ABSTRACT For halakhic norms to be recognized as a significant component of Jewish ethics, we must discern their inherent reasons and values. Yet regarding the Mishnah—the core document of Rabbinic Judaism—this poses a serious challenge, as its collections of rules rarely provide reasons, and appear to lack any explicit value dimension. A vital key to deciphering the Mishnah’s values lies in studying its chapters as literary compositions. The ways in which the redactor selected and arranged the clauses, as well as the terms and phrases chosen to transmit the teachings, convey the deeper significance of the halakhic details. This article demonstrates this approach to understanding the Mishnah through exploring the chapter that deals with assault and battery, revealing its deep focus on interpersonal ethics. The values taught by this chapter involve balancing two distinct, complimentary elements of equality, which in turn is one of the moral foundations of the democratic ideal.