Jewish Studies and Jewish Ethics

This essay considers the major arguments of Adam Zachary Newton's Jewish Studies as Counterlife in light of the burgeoning subfield of Jewish ethics. Although in my view the book has a number of foundational flaws, I nevertheless see the book as contributing to a broader project in interdisciplinary critique and collaboration. Newton's diagnosis–that the academic field of Jewish studies has a largely impoverished notion of interdisciplinarity–invites a more expansive idea of this academic work across different geographical regions, time periods, academic specialties, and institutional categories. I argue that this vision may be particularly relevant for the field of Jewish ethics, which employs multiple modes of reasoning in service of urgent contemporary ethical questions.