Woodchopper Revisited 47

Our task, therefore, is to continue to emphasize the value of our work and the purposes behind it. We work in this field in the knowledge that one cannot do Jewish bioethics(or“ethics,” for that matter) in any convincingly Jewish sense of the term without engaging in the study of classic Jewish texts, that provide the material with which we draw analogies to our own experience. And the fact remains that the texts one must study to this end are halakhic texts, sources that have served for centuries as grist for the mill of Jewish legal thought. Since we are liberal Jews , who necessarily read the halakhic texts from a liberal perspective, the conclusions we draw from them will often differ from the conclusions of Orthodox poskim, who necessarily interpret the texts from their angle of vision. But then, disagreement(machloket) has always been an endemic feature of halakhic discourse, and the fact that we disagree with Orthodox authorities over any number of conclusions does not mean that we have abandoned the field of halakhah to their exclusive control. On the contrary: it means that we are committed to intellectual openness, to the existence of a plurality of legitimate interpretations, and to the preservation of a halakhah that can continue to grow and develop and respond to the needs of every generation.

Notes

1. Louis E. Newman,“Woodchoppers and Respirators: The Problem of Interpretation in Contemporary Jewish Ethics,” Modern Judaism 10:1(1990), pp. 17-42.

2. Terrance Sandalow,“Constitutional Interpretation,” Michigan Law Review 79 (1981), pp. 1033-1072. Newman might well have quoted Sandalow’s words at p. 1068:“Constitutional law thus emerges not as exegesis, but as a process by which each generation gives formal expression to the values it holds fundamental in the

operations of government.”

3. Paul Brest,“The Misconceived Quest for the Original Understanding,” Boston University Law Review 60(1980), pp. 204-238.