Peter J. Haas

Elliot Dorff. Love Your Neighbor and Yourself: A Jewish Approach to Modern Personal Ethics . Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 2003. xvii, 366 pp.

The subtitle tells it all: the book is not about bioethics, business ethics or communal ethics, but about the kind of ethics one should establish for ones personal life. Starting with issues of privacy, the book moves us through sexual ethics, relationships within families, forgiveness, and finally, hope. Although traditional Jewish sources are mined for their insights, in the end, this is one persons notion about what Jewish ethics can (and should) say about issues of personal ethics. Dorff acknowledges this right in his preface, “throughout the book, I present what I take to be an authentic reading and application of the Jewish tradition but surely not the only one. I therefore take care to use judgment [emphasis in the original] in assessing how the tradition should be best applied to modern circumstance, by providing arguments from the tradition and from modern sources and circumstance to justify [emphasis in the original] my reading of the tradition and arguing against alternative readings” (p. xii). In short, the book is not descriptive of the Jewish tradition but prescriptive, laying out how one should think about these issues as a modern American Jew who wants to think “Jewishly.”

Church Faith and Religious Belief: A Reading of Dominus Iesus

Dominus Iesus has sparked a wave of criticism for its exclusivistic message that salvation is available only through the Church. Although many Catholic theologians downplay the meaning or importance of the document and stress its inclusivistic language, a close reading shows that the text is in fact much less inclusivistic than it appears on the surface. Although there are various rhetorical nods toward inclusivism, the text not only undercuts inclusivism in its detail, but in substance reverts back to pre-Vatican II Catholic exclusivism. This dual nature of the text reflects the deep struggle within the Church as it tries to position itself in the twenty-first century.

Introducing Tosefta: Textual, Intratextual and Intertextual Studies (review)

Introducing Tosefta: Textual, Intratextual and Intertextual StudiesThe papers collected in this volume came out of a conference on Tosefta held at the University of Toronto in April 1993. Although the Conference was held on the tenth anniversary of the death of Saul Lieberman, whose Tosefta Kifshuta is a landmark in the study of this document, virtually no mention of this scholar or his work appears in the volume. Instead, the volume is dedicated to the memory of Menachem Rotman, a local Toronto personality, an excerpt of whose memoir opens the volume.The Tosefta has always been something of a puzzle to scholars of classical Rabbinic literature. On the one hand it is very similar to the Mishnah in style, language and overall theme, while on the other hand, it is clearly not Mishnah but a different and distinct compilation. Again, on the one hand, it and its materials are cited often in both Talmuds, the Jerusalem and the Babylonian, while on the other, the citations are often different from what appears in our Tosefta. And so arguments have swirled around the nature of this document, its relation to Mishnah, the date and reason for its publication, its connection to the Jerusalem and Babylonian Talmuds, and beyond these questions, to the broader issue of the very nature of the Tannaitic world and the Oral Torah it produced.The essays collected here are written by some of the most prominent names in the field: Harry Fox, Jacob Neusner, Reena Zeidman, Shamma Friedman, Yaakov Elman, Tirzah Meacham, Judith Hauptman, Herbert Basser, and Paul Heger. Given the subtitle of the volume, one would have hoped that a common theme or approach would emerge from the symposium to illuminate a new, perhaps post-modern, direction for answering questions about the origin, nature, and purpose of the Tosefta. This hope is frustrated. What we find instead is that each essay approaches the document with its own questions and with its own method. No common discourse, or even set of assumptions, is apparent. The result is that the collection says pretty much everything and its opposite about the document. For those readers looking for an overview of what it is possible to say about the Tosefta, this is the perfect book.The collection opens with a long and rambling essay by Harry Fox. Despite its farreaching argumentation and massive footnoting, it comes to surprisingly tame conclusions: the Mishnah and Tosefta do not have to be approached as oral texts (p. 21) or that these are related texts but the details of that relationship are still not known (p. 23). The essay ends on the rather strange metaphor, picked up only somewhat near the end of the collection, that the Mishnah and other documents are like buckets of water pulled from the sea of Torah and then frozen in one form or the other.Neusners essay follows, arguing that the Tosefta is in fact the first attempt at creating a Gemara. Using a set of exemplary texts, Neusner demonstrates that like the later gemaras, the Tosefta cites the mishnaic text and then comments upon and develops it. The presentation of the Neusnerian model is followed immediately by Zeidmans essay, which argues strenuously, with its own set of examples, that the Tosefta is not just a commentary on the Mishnah at all, but an independent work that interacts vigorously with the Mishnah, the two documents having come into being in conversation with each other. …

Jewish Social Ethics (review)

constitutes continuities rather than ruptures in the elaboration ofJewish civilization. As I have noted, Eisenstadt is interested in providing a vivid and usable past, and· in many ways he has succeeded. The struggles Eisenstadt denotes as crucial to the maintenance ofJewish civilization are intellectual and depend on familiarity with a textual tradition. Eisenstadt rarely mentions faith as an ingredient sustainingJudaism. Ironically, however, his emphasis on Judaisms texts issues from a faith that there will be sufficient support for sustainingJewish literacy. When peopledisagree about primary principles, consensus on the sacredness or relevance of any text cannot be taken for granted. Moreover, in an age committed to autonomy and free discussions, the fact that elites are engaged in debates over the predicates of]ewish survival may prove insufficient to the task. Still, Eisenstadts book is a reminder of the need to link religious principles to shrewd institutional arrangements. As Jewish leaders consider the status of the Jewish community in the United States and in Israel as well as their aspirations for the future, this is an important lesson to keep in mind. Donna Robinson Divine Department of Government Smith College

Textual Sources for the Study of Judaism (review)

movements. His plays, for example, have roots in Przybyszewski and Wyspianskis dramaturgy. Peretz was a kulturtrager bringing European modern trends into the Jewish world and domesticating them. Peretz mattered to his age as, say, a Voltaire in his own time. He embodied in his person and performance a role model for the modernizing Jew. His moral stance and communal service still elicit admiration. Unfortunately Peretzs oeuvre, like Voltaires, has mostly faded, as have most of his socio-political ~pirations. Like Voltaire, Peretz represents the best of his age, but his art and vision do not transcend it. This is why, the monograph only hints, Peretz is less compelling today. Seth 1. Wolitz Gale Professor ofJewish Studies University of Texas at Austin