89.
90.
Cohn-Sherbok ’s arguments, see Kenneth Jay Weiss, Solomon B. Freehof : Reforging the Links, DHL Dissertation, HUC-JIR (Cincinnati , 1980) and Scott Gurdin, The Halakhic Methodology of Solomon Freehof , Rabbinical Thesis, HUC-JIR , Cincinnati , 1991.
This criticism bears a striking parallel to that made by Herbert Wechsler of the ad hoc fashion in which some American courts during the 1950's decided constitutional questions;"Toward Neutral Principles of Constitutional Law", 73 Harvard Law Review 1 (1959).
It is sometimes argued that"Jewish normative thinking" includes the discipline of ethics as well as halakhah and that our normative thinking corresponds more closely with the former than with the latter. This argument rests upon the controversial presumption that there is such a thing as a normative"Jewish " ethics, as opposed to ethics in general. If that presumption is wrong, as I suspect, then those who make this argument have the burden of proving just what precisely is"Jewish " about their approach to normative thinking. See, in general, Menachem Kellner ,"Reflections on the Impossibility of Jewish Ethics," Sefer Bar-Ilan, vol. 22-23(1988), pp. 45-52.
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