Hyatt Regency, Chicago
January 8-11, 2009

Thursday, January 8

6:30 – 8:30 p.m.
SJE Board Meeting
Location: Picasso

Friday, January 9

9:00 – 10:30 a.m.
Plenary Session: "Where is the Moral Outrage?"

• Speaker: Jeremiah Wright, Trinity United Church of Christ, Chicago IL
• Respondent: Marcia Riggs, Columbia Theological Seminary
• J. Philip Wogaman, Wesley Theological Seminary
• Convener: Darryl Trimiew, Medgar Evers College

Location: Regency Ballroom CD

11:00 a.m. – 12:30 p.m.
Concurrent I: SJE Practical Ethics Deliberation
Moses Pava (Yeshiva University): "Loving the Stranger: A Diologue on Immigrant Labor"
The relationship between employers and employees has come under intense
scrutiny and examination in the American Jewish community in response to
allegations against one of the major kosher meatpacking companies. This
session will identify the salient issues concerning the rights and
obligations of labor both in this specific case and in other contexts as
well. Practically, how should we act as owners, managers, employees, etc.?
How has the Jewish community responded? How should the community respond?
These and other questions will be examined through discussion and text
study in light of Jewish ethical aspirations.

• SJE Convener: Jonathan Schofer, Harvard University

Location: Soldier Field

12:45 – 1:45 p.m.
Lunch – on your own

2:00 – 3:30 p.m.
Concurrent II: Paper
Mark Schwartz: “Contemporary Business Ethics and Jewish Business Ethics: A Comparative Analysis”
The paper attempts to compare secular or contemporary approaches to business ethics with Judaism’s approach to business ethics. Following a brief summary of each approach, strengths and weaknesses are examined. Comparisons as to how each approach would attempt to resolve two specific ethical issues, bribery and insider trading, are discussed. Finally, lessons are suggested as to what each approach can learn from the other.

• SJE Convener: Moses Pava, Yeshiva University
• SCE Respondent: Ann Gibson, Andrews University

Location: Picasso

4:00 – 5:30 p.m.
Concurrent III: Paper
Aaron Gross (University of California, Santa Barbara): “’Reverence for life’ and Pragmatism in Jewish Dietary Law: Judaism Responsibility for the Living and Kosher Certification Today”
This paper considers the ethical dimensions of the Jewish dietary laws in relation to arguments that they are, ideally, the practical correlate to a broader ethical sentiment we might call “reverence for life.” Particular attention will be given to the Conservative movement’s recent and high profile engagements with the ethics of kosher certification and the emergence of a new “ethical” certification for kosher food, Heksher Tzedek, run by the Conservative movement. With this contemporary frame in place, the paper begins its textual analysis with an examination of rabbinic conceptions of “reverence for life” in the Talmud (Bava Metzia 32a-33a and 85a). In the shadow of this text, the paper then moves back to modernity, considering the “pragmatic” responses to such reverence imagined by Joseph Soloveitchik’s Halakhic Man and three contemporary rabbis who have reflected seriously on the Jewish dietary laws and for whom conceptions of reverence for life are central to Jewish ethics: Samuel Dresner, Irving Greenberg, and Jacob Milgrom.

• SJE Convener: Elliot Dorff, American Jewish University
• SCE Respondent: John Pawilkowski, Catholic Theological Union, Chicago

Location: San Francisco

5:45 – 6:45 p.m.
Society of Christian Ethics Presidential Address

Location: Regency Ballroom CD

7:00 – 7:45 p.m.
Kabbalat Shabbat Services & Kiddush and Hamotzi – optional

Location: Haymarket

8:00 – 9:30 p.m.
Shabbat Dinner (Pre-registration required.)
Birkat Hamazon & Shirim – optional

Location: Soldier Field

Additional Information

Shabbat Times: Friday, 4:20pm, Candle Lighting
Saturday, 3:30pm, Minchah
Saturday, 5:21pm, Havdallah

Please bring your own siddur & bentcher if you use them.

Saturday January 10

7:15 – 8:45 a.m.
SJE/SCE Breakfast with an Author (Pre-registration is required.)
SJE authors: Louis Newman & Elliot Dorff: Jewish Choices, Jewish Voices

Location: Regency Ballroom CD

9:00 – 10:30 a.m.
Concurrent IV: Paper
ElizaBeth Beyer (University of Nevada, Reno): “Pass the Gefilte Fish: A Guide To Ethical Eating”
In the United States, poor diet and a lack of physical activity will soon become the leading cause of preventable death. Obesity is a health care crisis, not only in our country, but in many places around the world. This paper examines the Jewish and Christian thought regarding ethical eating. Jewish sources, which include Biblical, Talmud, Halachic (Jewish law) and Chassidic sources are reviewed, along with Christian sources. An ethical analysis of autonomy in this context is presented. Finally, implications for a future constructive ethic will be proposed.

• SJE Convener: Adrienne Asch, Yeshiva University
• SCE Respondent: Shannon Jung, St. Paul School of Theology

Location: Haymarket

11:00 a.m. – 12:30 p.m
Shabbat Service (Parashat Vayechi – Genesis 47:28 – 50:26) – optional
(Please bring your own siddur)

Location: Picasso

12:30 – 2:00 p.m.
Shabbat Lunch (Pre-registration required.)

Location: Soldier Field (3rd floor, silver level)

2:00 – 3:30 p.m.
Concurrent V: SJE Text Study

• Laurie Zoloth, (Northwestern University) and friends

Location: Soldier Field

4:00 – 5:30 p.m.
SCE Plenary: "Ethics of Government Power"

• Speaker: Bob Edgar, President of Common Cause
• Respondents: Stacey Floyd-Thomas, Vanderbilt University, Howard Vogel, Hamline University School of Law
• Convener: Darryl Trimiew, Medgar Evers College

Location: Regency Ballroom CD

5:30 – 7:30 p.m.
Dinner – on your own

7:30 – 9:00 p.m.
SJE Plenary: Jewish Political Ethics

• Panelists: David Novak, University of Toronto, Rabbi Arnold J. Wolf, (KAM Isaiah Israel), Noam Zohar, Bar-Ilan University and Shalom Hartman University
• Moderator: David Teutsch, Reconstructionist Rabbinical College

Location: Regency Ballroom CD

9:00 – 10:30 p.m.
SJE Presidential Reception
(Sponsored by the Reconstructionist Rabbinical School)

Location: Regency Ballroom D

Sunday January 11

7:15 – 8:45 a.m.
SCE/SJE Breakfast with an Author (Pre-registration required.)
SJE Author: Elliot Dorff: For the Love of God and People: A Philosophy of Jewish Law

Location: Regency Ballroom CD

9:00 – 10:30 a.m.
Concurrent VI: SJE Business Meeting

Location: Picasso

11:00 a.m. – 12:30 p.m.
Concurrent VII: Paper
Greg Dober (Duquesne University): “Human Experimentation, Halakhah and the Jewish Tradition”
Despite secular ethical research laws and codes being created from the aftermath of the Holocaust, it appears that very little commentary is written about the relationship of human experimentation, Halachah and the Jewish tradition. Halachah and traditional Jewish concepts regarding medicine, physician and patient appears valid in formulating a response to human experimentation, researcher and subject. This presentation will review such concepts in research as informed consent, risk and harm, obligation to seek treatments from research, placebos and volunteering for therapeutic and non-therapeutic clinical trials and how they relate to Halachah and the Jewish tradition. We will present conflicting opinions on the use of research data obtained from the Holocaust and attempt to produce our own analogous determination on the use of this type of data in research.

• SJE Convener: Aaron Mackler, Duquesne University
• SCE Respondent: Audrey Chapman, University of Connecticut Health Center

Location: Haymarket