Woodchopper Revisited 19

produced by scholars who work self-consciously within the framework of Jewish law, who see themselves as“halakhists” addressing a community of readers with a similar interest, rather than as “ethicists.” By halakhah, moreover, mean Jewish legal thought of the liberal as well as the traditional variety; hence, I will survey five such statements produced by Orthodox writers as well as the Cenral Conference of American Rabbis Responsa Committee’s 1994 teshuvah “The Treatment of the Terminally Ill.” I choose this halakhic focus— both because of my own interest in halakhic literature and because Newman largely ignores this genre in his article.”® Analogical reasoning, in addition, figures prominently in these halakhic writings, and this will afford us sufficient data with which to consider how(and how well) analogy functions within both Orthodox and progressive halakhic discussion of this critical issue of medical ethics.

I want specifically to explore two questions, the first procedural and the second somewhat more substantive. The procedural question is one that I have already indicated: I want to know whether those who make these analogies display an awareness of the technological gap and, if so, do they inform us of the“interpretive assumptions” that enable them to overcome that gap and use the traditional texts as analogical sources for bioethical guidance. That is, I want to know how well halakhic writers succeed in meeting the challenge that Newman poses to Jewish bioethicists. The substantive question asks whether these analogies work: Do the authors who use them make a plausible case on behalf of their argument? Do they solve, or at least come close to solving, the “problem of importance” that attaches to analogies in general and to the“woodchopper” analogy in particular? Or, as the liberal critics charge, is the gap between the source and the target cases so wide as to render the analogies irremediably forced and artificial? The substantive question, of course, requires an evaluative judgment, which means that it lies beyond the realm of objectivity and is not subject to demonstrable proof. Still, we have no choice but to attempt