Rabbinic Ethics

Abstract Some modern and postmodern readers consider ethics to be at the heart of Judaism, perhaps its essence. This view appears, in very different ways, through formulations of “ethical monotheism” and through the primacy that Emmanuel Levinas gives to ethics in his phenomenology. Other modern and postmodern readers contrast ethics with Jewish law, attributing lesser significance to ethics or even questioning whether the category of ethics is appropriate for classical Judaism at all. Given this opposition, two approaches to studying rabbinic ethics are, first, identifying rabbinic sources that speak to ethical needs today and, second, identifying rabbinic sources that convey “ethics” in a sense that is similar in a meaningful way to the usage in the contemporary Greco‐Roman philosophical schools of late antiquity. Historically speaking, the most appropriate way to begin a study of rabbinic ethics is to examine the anthology of Mishnah Avot and similar collections of sayings and maxims. These anthologies of “rabbinic wisdom literature” have similarities both with ancient Near Eastern wisdom literature and with the rhetoric and ethical philosophy of the Roman Empire. Study of this literature effectively can engage and employ the language of modern virtue ethics as well as the study of spiritual exercises and the care of the self. In addition, the themes and pedagogical goals of rabbinic ethical literature appear throughout rabbinic literature broadly construed, revealing a widespread interest among rabbinic sages and their studies in the ethical transformation of a student through the instruction of their teachers.