Second Texts and Second Opinions

Laurie Zoloth’s Second Texts and Second Opinions: Essays Towards a Jewish Bioethics is a profound and helpful intervention for both bioethics and Jewish studies. It is also a model and reminder of the possibility of finding ways to mine and apply wisdom from our lineages to the ongoing and unsettling challenges of an all-too-broken world. The far-reaching “phenomenological account of the clinical ethics encounter” (1) is a set of reflections on the multifaceted practice of contemporary bioethics, the discursive world of the Jewish textual tradition, and the lived experience of the author, a religious and feminist philosopher working in a secular medical setting on cases with existential, practical stakes for families and communities. The work will be of interest to bioethics and Jewish studies academics, as well as intellectually curious members of the public who want to explore the terrain of the aforementioned fields.

The book does not set out to resolve irresolvable ethical dilemmas in medicine, but rather to influence and deepen thinking towards “an expansion of the narrative method of Jewish bioethics” (13) and a “midrashic turn” (13) for the field. The model of the work is to juxtapose texts from modern-day cases alongside traditional Jewish texts, soliciting insight from the latter, as well as from a diverse set of other sources (Jewish and otherwise), to shed light on given cases.

Individual chapters explore issues such as how to practice responsibility towards unknown strangers to whom we may be obligated (chapter 1), how to look to and engage Jewish tradition as a resource in contemporary ethical decision-making (chapter 2), how to relate to and reject theodicy amidst tragedy (chapter 3), how to engage with ideological pluralism in a postmodern age (chapter 4), how to contend with poverty and center justice in the work of medicine (chapter 5), and more.

I found Zoloth’s qualitative accounts of on-the-ground cases to be particularly startling and powerful, awakening my sense of awareness, care, and empathy. As but one example, Zoloth peels back the medical curtain as she writes up a case of how a six-year-old’s family was murdered and he escaped with severe, life-threatening wounds; in light of the severity of his burns and his questionable prospects in the foster care system if he survives, she reflects on how the committee ought to approach the case in an ethical manner. It is hard not to feel invested in the details, dynamics, and fate of the case, knowing that it really (tragically) happened.

Moments in which Zoloth peels back the curtain of her experience engender interest as well, as she recalls momentary childhood fascination with and admiration for a nun’s public expression of care for a parishioner (chapter 1), uncertainty at how to help her colleagues relate to immigrants who are skeptical about the ability of secular medicine to heal their child (chapter 3), and the feeling of being regarded by colleagues as primitive when she respects a traditional Jewish couple’s resistance to (ostensibly) reasonable recommendations concerning their unresponsive baby (chapter 8). Zoloth also peels back the curtain of Jewish texts, finding in Talmudic texts an affirmation of relational presence and rejection of suffering’s “usefulness” for some sort of redemption (in chapter 3); in her understanding of Judaism, “suffering does not purify or redeem the world” (66). Rather, “the ill are us” (82)—humans are vulnerable and finite creatures in need of one another’s care, and healers, furthermore, engage with pain and potentially need healing as well. 

One underlying claim at the heart of Second Texts and Second Opinions is that there is a Jewish bioethics and that it might inform the broader practice of bioethics (see 60 for more on this). Zoloth positions so-called “religious arguments” (17) as retaining deep importance for the bioethics field, all the more so because they make reference to texts that possess cultural weight among publics, and are able to help make legible the “largest questions of human life” (59) concerning healing. She celebrates such arguments. Zoloth’s contention harnesses traditional texts and modern, philosophical texts to point to an approach to the work of healing beyond regnant paradigms. This approach stems from an awareness of the possibility of enhanced and greater justice, empathic care, and authentic encounter in the work of healing. This multi-dimensional claim holds: 1) the practice of bioethics suffers from following the rules of an ideologically faulty capitalist, individualistic paradigm; and 2) the Jewish tradition offers a particular, religious language that can engender thought and thereby trouble, if not tame, ideological excesses latent in the existing medical industrial complex.

In general, Zoloth’s contentions about the potential of a more deeply grounded practice of bioethics, and her intentional meaning-making of texts in her narration, buttress her points about the productive potential of different ways for bioethics. At moments, however, Zoloth veers into caricatures of contemporary bioethics; she renders the field needlessly and troublingly “Christian” and “male.” In her words, the field respectively “has been concerned, nearly obsessively concerned with the things that Christianity is concerned with” and “not concerned with women, or the needs of the children” (11). Such remarks may have merit, but they seem, at first glance to this reader, essentializing, and, more importantly, only so relevant to forwarding the book’s main claims.

Two separate matters also engender wondering. First, Zoloth leaves largely unaddressed the question of how the particular Jewish, narrative, philosophical mode that she pioneers for bioethics can be put to practical use. Can it engage and interact with the training, expectations, and norms of bioethicists on the ground, given their status as working professionals in the field? Additionally, the book centers the thought of Emmanuel Levinas more than that of other modern Jewish thinkers. It is unclear why Zoloth treats Levinas as one thinker among many, given his especially prolific role throughout. She could more explicitly explore Levinas’ apparently special (potential) role for the field of Jewish bioethics, as understood and envisioned by her.  

Although Second Texts and Second Opinions does not provide silver-bullet (dare I say silver-pill) prescriptions for solving gargantuan challenges concerning medicine and healing in our time, it effectively does what it sets out to do. It becomes an inspiring and rich resource with which readers can better think for themselves about medical choices—now and into the future. 

Joshua Krug is the Sommerfreund Visiting Professor of Jewish Studies at the Hochschule für Jüdische Studien.

Joshua Krug

Date Of Review:

October 1, 2023