Judaism and Care Ethics: Possibilities and Challenges

This talk will explore the potential challenges faced by efforts to develop a Jewish approach to the ethics of care. In particular, Sarah Zager will focus on the role that critiques of abstraction have played in both core texts in care ethics and in Jewish efforts to engage with these texts. She will begin by exploring the way anti-Judaism has shaped critiques of abstraction in care ethics, before turning to how modifying or rejecting the critique of abstraction could be useful for Jewish engagements with care ethics.

Sarah Zager is a Ph.D. candidate in religious studies and philosophy at Yale University. Her dissertation, titled “I Will Sing of Love and Justice: Jewish Responses to Virtue Ethics,” explores how Jewish philosophers have combined deontological and virtue ethical approaches to morality. Her second book project, tentatively titled “The Pain of Imagining Others: Infertility and Care,” explores how Jewish sources can help us theorize experiences of infertility.

The Salo Baron New Voices in Jewish Studies lecture is supported by the generosity of the Salo W. and Jeannette M. Baron Foundation. Presented jointly by Fordham University’s Center for Jewish Studies and Columbia University’s Institute for Israel and Jewish Studies.