Abstract

Nearly concurrent with the rise of feminist criticisms in recent decades was the emergence of post-modernism that both endorsed particularity yet critiqued the totalizing effects inhering in particularity. This chapter begins by tracing the complicated interrelationship of Jewish and secular philosophy in Emmanuel Levinas' thought. It then turns to the ethical philosophy of embodiment and self-mastery by Jonathan Schofer and Chaya Halberstam, to show that postmodern Jewish ethics is simultaneously intensely personal as it is also procedural and communal.