Eric Lawee's insightful reflection on engaging ethics in an introductory Jewish Studies course focuses on medieval Bible commentaries, texts that are rarely treated as key sources for Jewish ethics. Lawee's work offers evocative, enticing glimpses into suggestive, ethically potent controversies in the commentaries, giving us a vivid sense of the way medieval Jewish authors grapple with meaning. As someone who spends much of my teaching life engaging Talmud and other premodern texts, I found myself appreciating Lawee's attention to the pedagogical and intellectual challenges of “extracting ethics from exegesis.” The challenge, as Lawee's article so richly suggests, is a rewarding one, well repaid in the classroom.
While there is much one could say about the texts themselves, this response follows Lawee's lead and focuses on questions of pedagogy, highlighting also the ways in which his reflections on teaching raise methodological questions for ethics. Lawee argues that the neglect of biblical...
