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Elliot N. Dorff

 

 
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Elliot N. Dorff
 
 
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Elliot N. Dorff (born 24 June 1943) is a Conservative
Conservative Judaism

Conservative Judaism is a modern Jewish denominations of Judaism that arose out of intellectual currents in Germany in the mid-19th century and took institutional form in the United States in the early 1900s....
 rabbi, a professor of Jewish theology
Theology

Theology is the study of the existence or attributes of a deity or gods, or more generally the study of religion or spirituality. It is sometimes contrasted with religious studies: theology is understood as the study of religion from an internal perspective , and religious studies as the study of religion from an external perspective....
 at the American Jewish University (formerly the University of Judaism
University of Judaism

The American Jewish University, formerly the separate institutions University of Judaism and Brandeis-Bardin Institute, is a Jewish, non-denominational and highly eclectic institution....
) in California
California

California is a U.S. state on the West Coast of the United States of the United States, along the Pacific Ocean. It is bordered by Oregon to the north, Nevada to the east, Arizona to the southeast, and to the south the Mexico state of Baja California....
 (where he is also Rector
Rector

The word rector has a number of different meanings, but all of them indicate an academic, religious or political administrator.The word "rector" also appears in many modern languages, such as Albanian, Dutch language, Spanish language, Catalan language and Romanian language....
), author, and a bio-ethicist.

Dorff is an expert in the philosophy of Conservative Judaism
Conservative Judaism

Conservative Judaism is a modern Jewish denominations of Judaism that arose out of intellectual currents in Germany in the mid-19th century and took institutional form in the United States in the early 1900s....
, Bioethics
Bioethics

Bioethics is the philosophical study of the ethics controversies brought about by advances in biology and medicine. Bioethicists are concerned with the ethical questions that arise in the relationships among life sciences, biotechnology, medicine, politics, law, philosophy, and theology....
, and acknowledged within the Conservative community as an expert decisor of Jewish law
Halakha

Halakha ? also Hebrew transliteration Halocho and Halacha ? is the collective body of Judaism religious law, including biblical law and later talmudic and rabbinic law, as well as customs and traditions....
. Dorff was ordained as a rabbi
Rabbi

Rabbi , in Judaism, means a religious ?teacher?, or more literally, ?my great one?, when addressing any master. The word rabbi derives from the Hebrew root word , rav, which in biblical Hebrew means ?great?, used in many senses, including the sense of a ?master? and apprentice, whence someone who is a distinguished ?teacher?....
 from the Jewish Theological Seminary in 1970. He earned a Ph.D in philosophy
Philosophy

Philosophy is the study of general problems concerning matters such as existence, knowledge, truth, beauty, justice, validity, mind, and language....
 from Columbia University in 1971.

Dorff is the chairman of the Rabbinical Assembly
Rabbinical Assembly

The Rabbinical Assembly is the international association of Conservative Judaism rabbis. The RA was founded in 1901 to shape the ideology, programs, and practices of the Conservative movement....
's Committee on Jewish Law and Standards, and has written many responsa
Responsa

Responsa comprise a body of written decisions and rulings given by legal scholars in response to questions addressed to them....
 (opinion papers and legal rulings) on many aspects of Jewish law and philosophy.






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Elliot N. Dorff (born 24 June 1943) is a Conservative
Conservative Judaism

Conservative Judaism is a modern Jewish denominations of Judaism that arose out of intellectual currents in Germany in the mid-19th century and took institutional form in the United States in the early 1900s....
 rabbi, a professor of Jewish theology
Theology

Theology is the study of the existence or attributes of a deity or gods, or more generally the study of religion or spirituality. It is sometimes contrasted with religious studies: theology is understood as the study of religion from an internal perspective , and religious studies as the study of religion from an external perspective....
 at the American Jewish University (formerly the University of Judaism
University of Judaism

The American Jewish University, formerly the separate institutions University of Judaism and Brandeis-Bardin Institute, is a Jewish, non-denominational and highly eclectic institution....
) in California
California

California is a U.S. state on the West Coast of the United States of the United States, along the Pacific Ocean. It is bordered by Oregon to the north, Nevada to the east, Arizona to the southeast, and to the south the Mexico state of Baja California....
 (where he is also Rector
Rector

The word rector has a number of different meanings, but all of them indicate an academic, religious or political administrator.The word "rector" also appears in many modern languages, such as Albanian, Dutch language, Spanish language, Catalan language and Romanian language....
), author, and a bio-ethicist.

Dorff is an expert in the philosophy of Conservative Judaism
Conservative Judaism

Conservative Judaism is a modern Jewish denominations of Judaism that arose out of intellectual currents in Germany in the mid-19th century and took institutional form in the United States in the early 1900s....
, Bioethics
Bioethics

Bioethics is the philosophical study of the ethics controversies brought about by advances in biology and medicine. Bioethicists are concerned with the ethical questions that arise in the relationships among life sciences, biotechnology, medicine, politics, law, philosophy, and theology....
, and acknowledged within the Conservative community as an expert decisor of Jewish law
Halakha

Halakha ? also Hebrew transliteration Halocho and Halacha ? is the collective body of Judaism religious law, including biblical law and later talmudic and rabbinic law, as well as customs and traditions....
. Dorff was ordained as a rabbi
Rabbi

Rabbi , in Judaism, means a religious ?teacher?, or more literally, ?my great one?, when addressing any master. The word rabbi derives from the Hebrew root word , rav, which in biblical Hebrew means ?great?, used in many senses, including the sense of a ?master? and apprentice, whence someone who is a distinguished ?teacher?....
 from the Jewish Theological Seminary in 1970. He earned a Ph.D in philosophy
Philosophy

Philosophy is the study of general problems concerning matters such as existence, knowledge, truth, beauty, justice, validity, mind, and language....
 from Columbia University in 1971.

Dorff is the chairman of the Rabbinical Assembly
Rabbinical Assembly

The Rabbinical Assembly is the international association of Conservative Judaism rabbis. The RA was founded in 1901 to shape the ideology, programs, and practices of the Conservative movement....
's Committee on Jewish Law and Standards, and has written many responsa
Responsa

Responsa comprise a body of written decisions and rulings given by legal scholars in response to questions addressed to them....
 (opinion papers and legal rulings) on many aspects of Jewish law and philosophy. (There is a separate article on Conservative responsa
Conservative responsa

Conservative responsa are the body of responsa literature of Conservative Judaism . Most Conservative responsa have been written by the Committee on Jewish Law and Standards....
.)

Dorff's philosophy of religion

Among other topics, Rabbi Dorff is interested in Jewish philosophy
Jewish philosophy

Jewish philosophy refers to the conjunction between serious study of philosophy and Jewish theology. In a broad sense, it refers to all philosophical activity carried out by Jews or in relation to the religion of Judaism....
. Epistemology is the branch of philosophy that addresses questions such as: "What is knowledge?", "How is knowledge acquired?", and "How do we know what we know?" In addressing this subject the first issue to note is that the terms "knowledge" and "belief" are often used interchangeably by religious believers, but technically these are very distinct terms.

As a philosopher, Dorff asks about the difference between belief and knowledge. Given the philosophical definition that knowledge differs from belief (knowledge is often defined as a justified, true belief), Dorff's works explicitly analyze epistemological questions
Epistemology

Epistemology or theory of knowledge is the branch of philosophy concerned with the nature and scope of knowledge. It addresses the questions:...
.

In the 20th century, religious existentialists proposed that revelation held no content in of itself; rather, they hold that God inspired people with His presence by coming into contact with them. In this view the Bible is a human response that records how we responded to God. One of the major trends in modern Jewish philosophy was the attempt to develop a theory of Judaism through existentialism
Existentialism

Existentialism is a term that has been applied to the work of a number of nineteenth and twentieth century philosophers who, despite profound doctrinal differences, took the human subject — not merely the thinking subject, but the acting, feeling, living human individual and his or her conditions of existence — as a starting point...
. One of the primary players in this field was Franz Rosenzweig
Franz Rosenzweig

Franz Rosenzweig was an influential Jewish theology and philosophy....
. His major work, Star of Redemption, gives a philosophy in which he portrays the relationships between God, humanity and world as they are connected by creation, revelation and redemption. Rabbi Dorff takes the existentialist philosophy as Rosensweig as one of his starting points for understanding Jewish philosophy. Another influential philosopher in the Conservative movement
Conservative movement

Conservative movement may refer to:*Conservatism - Political philosophy*Conservative Judaism - The Conservative movement in Judaism ...
, Rabbi Neil Gillman
Neil Gillman

Neil Gillman is an USA rabbi and philosopher, affiliated with Conservative Judaism....
, also bases his views on existentialism, and the works of Franz Rosenzweig. (Dorff and Gillman come to somewhat different conclusions, as is normal in philosophy, and religion in general.)

Bioethics

In the spring of 1993, Dorff served on the ethics committee of Hillary Rodham Clinton
Hillary Rodham Clinton

Hillary Diane Rodham Clinton is the List of Secretaries of State of the United States United States Secretary of State, serving in the administration of President of the United States Barack Obama....
's Health Care Task Force, and in March 1997 and May 1999, he, along with other rabbis, testified on behalf on the Jewish tradition on the subjects of human cloning and stem cell research before the president's National Bioethics Advisory Commission. In 1999-2000, he served on the U.S. Surgeon General's Task Force to create a Call to Action for responsible sexual behavior, and between 2000-2002 he served on the National Human Resources Protections Advisory Commission, charged with reviewing and revising the federal guidelines on research on human beings. He is now on the California Ethics Advisory Commission for embryonic stem cell research done within the state.

Dorff has written several anthologies on Jewish ethics and theologies with his co-author, Carleton College
Carleton College

Carleton College is an independent Sectarianism, coeducational, Liberal arts colleges in the United States in Northfield, Minnesota, Minnesota, United States....
 religion professor Louis E. Newman.

In Los Angeles
Los Angeles, California

Los Angeles is the largest city in the U.S. state of California and the List of United States cities by population in the United States. Often abbreviated as L.A. and nicknamed The City of Angels, Los Angeles is rated as a beta global city, has an estimated population of 3.8 million and spans over in Southern California....
, he is a member of the Board of Jewish Family Service and has served as its president (2004-2006). He is also a member of the Ethics Committee of UCLA Medical Center and the Jewish Homes for the Aging. He is co-chairman of the "Priest-Rabbi Dialogue" sponsored by the Los Angeles Archdiocese and the Board of Rabbis of Southern California.

Dorff has written over two hundred articles on Jewish ethics, Jewish thought, Jewish law and custom (halakhah), and bioethics.

Responsa

On December 6, 2006, the law committee accepted a paper by Rabbis Elliot Dorff, Daniel Nevins and Avram Reisner on homosexual marriage and ordination of homosexual rabbis, while it upheld the biblical prohibition on male intercourse.

Bibliography

  • Jewish Law and Modern Ideology: A Confrontation Based on Source Materials: United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism, 1971.
  • Conservative Judaism: Our Ancestors to Our Descendants: United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism, 1977; second, revised edition, 1996.
  • A Living Tree: The Roots and Growth of Jewish Law (with Arthur Rosett): State University of New York Press, 1988.
  • Knowing God: Jewish Journeys to the Unknowable: Jason Aronson Press, now Rowman and Littlefield.
  • Contemporary Jewish Ethics and Morality: A Reader (With Louis Newman): Oxford University Press, 1995
  • Matters of Life and Death: A Jewish Approach to Modern Medical Ethics: Jewish Publication Society, 1998
  • Contemporary Jewish Theology: A Reader (with Louis Newman): Oxford University Press, 1999
  • To Do the Right and the Good: A Jewish Approach to Modern Social Ethics: Jewish Publication Society, 2002.
  • Love Your Neighbor and Yourself: A Jewish Approach to Modern Personal Ethics: Jewish Publication Society, 2003.
  • The Way Into Tikkun Olam (Fixing the World) (Jewish Lights Publishing, 2005).
  • The Unfolding Tradition: Jewish Law After Sinai (Aviv Press, Rabbinical Assembly, 2005.
  • For Love of God and People: A Philosophy of Jewish Law (forthcoming in November, 2007): Jewish Publication Society.


For his responsa:
  • http://rabbinicalassembly.org/law/teshuvot_public.html
  • Responsa 1991-2000: The Committee on Jewish Law and Standards, 2001, The Rabbinical Assembly
  • Proceedings of the Committee on Jewish Law and Standards of the Conservative Movement 1986 - 1990, The Rabbinical Assembly, 2001.
  • Life & Death Responsibilities in Jewish Biomedical Ethics, Aaron L. Mackler
    Aaron L. Mackler

    Aaron L. Mackler is Associate Professor of Theology at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and an ordained Conservative Judaism Rabbi....
    , JTS, 2000


External links