Theorizing Jewish Ethics

Abstract

The concept of Jewish ethics is elusive. Law occupies a prominent place in the phenomenology of traditional Judaism. What room is left for ethics? This paper argues that the dichotomy between law and ethics, with regard to Judaism, is misleading. The fixity of these categories presumes too much, both about normativity per se and about Judaism. Rather than naming categories “law” and “ethics” should be seen as contrastive terms that play a role in fundamental arguments about how to characterize Judaism.