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Jewish Studies and Jewish Ethics
- Studies in American Jewish Literature
- Penn State University Press
- Volume 40, Number 1, 2021
- pp. 101-108
- Article
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ABSTRACT:
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.