Geoffrey Claussen
Musar for a Divided Jewish Community
Wednesday, February 5th, 2025 - 7:00-8:30pm EST
Wednesday, February 5th, 7:00-8:30pm EST
Presented in partnership with the Jewish Publication Society
What does it mean to be honest, courageous, and compassionate? What does it mean to act with justice and to show appropriate solidarity and forgiveness to others? In recent months, Jewish communal disagreements about musar—about what constitutes virtue and moral character—have been on public display. How can the study of musar traditions help us to understand and respond to these disagreements?
Geoffrey Claussen is the Lori and Eric Sklut Professor in Jewish Studies, Professor of Religious Studies, and Chair of the Department of Religious Studies at Elon University. His scholarship focuses on Jewish ethics and theology, and he has particular interests in questions of love and justice, war and violence, animal ethics, virtue and character, the Musar movement, and the diversity of modern Jewish ethics. He received his Ph.D. and rabbinic ordination from the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, and he is a past president of the Society of Jewish Ethics.
His books include Sharing the Burden: Rabbi Simhah Zissel Ziv and the Path of Musar (2015),
Modern Musar: Contested Virtues in Jewish Thought (2022), Jewish Virtue Ethics (2023), and
Jewish Ethics: The Basics (2024).
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