Rhetoric of Modern Jewish Ethics

• Main Author: Crane, Jonathan Kadane
• Other Authors: Novak, David
• Language: en_ca
• Published: 2009
• Subjects: Religion; Philosophy of Religion; Ethics; Rhetoric; Jewish Ethics; Religious Ethics; Discourse Analysis; Jewish Studies
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/1807/17748

Jewish ethicists face a twofold task of persuading audiences that (a) their proposal for an issue of social concern and justice is the right and good thing to do, and (b) their proposal fits within the Judaic tradition writ large. Whereas most scholarship in the field focuses on how Jewish ethicists argue by dividing arguments into halakhic formalist, covenantalist and narrativist categories, these efforts fail both to reflect the diverse ways ethicists actually argue and to explain why they argue in these ways. My project proposes a new methodology to understand how and why Jewish ethicists argue as they do on issues of justice and concern. My project combines philosophical theology and discourse analysis. The first examines an ethicist’s notion of covenant (brit) in light of theories found in the Jewish textual tradition. Clarifying an ethicist’s notion of covenant uncovers that person’s assumptions about the scope and binding nature of elements in the Judaic tradition, and that person’s conception of an audience’s responsibilities to the normative argument s/he articulates. Certain themes come to the fore for each ethicist that, when mapped, reveal striking relationships between an ethicist’s notion of covenant and anticipated ethical rhetoric. These maps begin to show why certain ethicists argue as they do. Discourse analysis then identifies the interrelationships between the speaker, the spoken and the audience – as they are actually articulated in Jewish ethicists’ practical arguments. These relationships form the how of Jewish ethical arguments insofar as they reflect an author’s rhetorical choices. My project applies discourse analysis to the rhetoric of a sample of living Jewish ethicists (J. David Bleich, Elliot Dorff, Eugene Borowitz) who speak out on issues of social concern and justice. As will be seen, a rich and complex relationship exists between an ethicist’s theory of covenant and his subsequent moral rhetoric. This twofold methodology enables the student of Jewish ethics to understand how and why seemingly disparate styles of normative speech are nonetheless participating in a common endeavor and discourse. And it supports the theologically-based rhetoric of religious ethical discourse in shaping justice in multi-cultural societies.