SOCIETY OF JEWISH ETHICS SCHEDULE
2007 Annual Meeting
Hyatt Regency Dallas

Friday January 5

9:00-10:30 a.m.
Society of Christian Ethics/Society of Jewish Ethics Plenary
Ethical Issues in Relation to Natural Disaster
Pullman - Union Station

11:00 a.m.-12:30 p.m.
Concurrent I:
PAPER: Toby Schonfeld, Ph.D., University of Nebraska Medical Center

Messages from the Margins: Jewish Bioethics and Lessons from Feminism
Cumberland L
SJE Convener: Laurie Zoloth
SJE Respondent: Aaron Mackler
SCE Respondent: Maura Ryan

In this paper, I will refute the charge of relativism levied against religious approaches to bioethics by using Jewish bioethics as a case study. I will demonstrate how an approach to ethics that includes particular spiritualities need not be essentialist, but instead can better respect a patient’s values, goals, and priorities. By demonstrating the value of listening to silenced voices, and by showing how the identification of a non-homogenous group can yield important insights into ethical issues, feminist approaches to ethics have paved the way for a reintroduction of religious approaches to ethics into the mainstream ethical discourse.

12:30-1:30 p.m.
SJE STUDENT PAPER:
Valerie Satkoske, MSW, LSSW, Duquesne University

Parental Request for Sterilization of Mentally Disabled Children
Cumberland L
SJE Convener: Aaron Mackler
SJE Respondent: Ron Green

Parents and guardians face unique challenges when their mentally disabled adolescent or adult children are sexually active. When attempts to encourage sexual abstinence, or contraception use, fail, parents often request sterilization procedures for their mentally disabled children. Involuntary sterilization of Jewish people during the Holocaust, the mitzvah to procreate and a duty to avoid unnecessary bodily harm would appear to render sterilization morally and halakhically prohibited. However, the commandment to care for the powerless and act compassionately toward one’s fellow human beings may be a duty which overshadows other concerns when considering sterilization for sexually active mentally disabled children.

2:00-3:30 p.m.
Concurrent II: SCE/SJE PANEL
Engaging Margaret Farley's Just Love
Cumberland FG

4:00-5:30 p.m.
Concurrent III:
PAPER: Catherine J. Lasser, Ph.D., World Union for Progressive Judaism

The Ethics of Disagreement
Cumberland A
SJE Convener: Dov Nelkin
SJE Respondent: David Novak
SCE Respondent: Glen Stassen

In this presentation, I explore an approach to moral decision-making that emerges out of the Jewish Talmudic tradition that values disagreement. Instead of consensus around a single principle or value, two or more standards are used to inform one’s moral decision in any one situation. Consequently, the process of coordinating principles becomes significant for morality. This model differentiates between moral decisions for the individual and for the social world, encouraging diversity while at the same time setting limits. This has repercussions for the relationship between law and morality. Examples will be used to demonstrate this model, its characteristics and implications.

5:45-6:45 p.m.
Society of Christian Ethics Presidential Address
Grand Hall - Union Station

7:00-9:30 p.m.
SJE Kabbalat Shabbat
Dealey - Union Station

Shabbat Dinner
Club Car - Union Station

Saturday January 6

7:15-8:45 a.m.
Society of Jewish Ethics Breakfast with an Author
Pullman - Union Station

9:00-10:30 a.m.
Concurrent IV
PAPER: Peggy J. Bowers, Ph.D., Clemson University

Can the Messenger be a Mensch?
Journalism Ethics' Reimagined Possibilities through Jewish Thought
Cumberland 1
SJE Convener: Martin Kavka
SJE Respondent: David Teutsch
SCE Respondent: David H. Smith

More than 75 years of media ethics scholarship has wrestled unsatisfactorily with the tensions between being human and being a journalist. Jewish ethics can make a significant contribution toward resolving that tension by providing a perspective on journalism ethics that western philosophical frameworks have been unable to supply. This essay will summarize journalism ethics, trace the relevant lines of thought in Jewish ethics from the Tanakh, rabbinical writings and contemporary strains of Jewish thought and use this to offer a beginning but necessarily incomplete portrait of what journalism ethics could look like if it took Jewish ethics seriously.

11:00 a.m.-12:30 p.m.
Concurrent V
Shabbat Service
Dealey - Union Station

12:30-2:00 p.m.
Shabbat Lunch
Club Car - Union Station

2:00-3:30 p.m.
Society of Christian Ethics Plenary
Reconciliation and Restoration
Pullman - Union Station

4:00-5:30 p.m.
Society of Christian Ethics
Business Meeting
Pullman - Union Station

Society of Jewish Ethics TEXT STUDY
Yevamot 69b and the Embryo as "Mere Fluid"
led by David Novak, Ph.D., and Jonathan Crane, University of Toronto
Comet - Union Station

8:00-9:30 p.m.
Society of Jewish Ethics Business Meeting and Socializing
Comet - Union Station

Sunday January 7

9:00-10:30 a.m.
Concurrent VI:
Society of Jewish Ethics Plenary
Baruch Brody, Ph.D., Baylor College of Medicine and Rice University

The Indeterminacy of Rabbinic Ethics
Pullman - Union Station
SJE Convener: Elliot Dorff
SJE Respondent: Louis Newman
SCE Respondent: Lisa Cahill

I intend to talk about the indeterminacy of rabbinic ethics--on every major topic, most of the plausible positions have significant support. The two questions I want to raise are why this is so and whether this is a good thing. The paper will be divided into 3 sections: the first will demonstrate the indeterminacy in a few crucial cases, and the second and third will deal with my two questions.

11:00 a.m.-12:30 p.m.
Concurrent VII:
PAPER: Aaron Saul Gross, University of California, Santa Barbara

Being a Mench and not an Animal: The Imagination of Ethics and the Question of the Animal
Cumberland E
SJE Convener: Jonathan Crane
SJE Respondent: Jonathan Schofer
SCE Respondent: Laura Hobgood-Oster

Reflecting on the work of Jacque Derrida on “the question of the animal,” this paper argues that a range of Jewish texts—including Genesis, associated Rashi commentary, and J. Albo’s Sefer Ha-‘Ikkarim—constructs what it means to be both human and ethical simultaneously through the imagination of animals and animality. These imaginings of an “ethical human subject” are embodied in the practice of kashrut. Indeed, this ethical human subject is shown to be operative today in ongoing rabbinic debates that have emerged in response to the 2004 high profile scandal of animal abuse at the world’s largest glatt kosher slaughterhouse, AgriProcessors.