Go and Tend the Earth: A Jewish View on an Enhanced World

McNeil D. , “Insouciance Recaptured,” New York Times, December 18, 2007, at Health, available at <http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/18/health/research/18face.html?scp=2&sq=face+transplant> (last visited January 23, 2008); Macur J. , “Scientists Move Closer to Reliable H.G.H. Test,” New York Times, December 15, 2007, at Sports, available at <http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/15/sports/baseball/15hgh.html?scp=4&sq=human+growth+hormone+baseball> (last visited January 23, 2008).

Chapman A. Frankel M. , Designing our Descendents: The Promises and Perils of Genetic Modification (Bethesda, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003).

Peters T. , Playing God?: Genetic Determinism and Human Freedom (Routledge: New York, 1997). Peters is not unique in this nearly ubiquitous use of the term.

See, for example, Chapman Frankel , Designing our Descendents; Kass L. , The Beginning of Wisdom (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006) and Fukamaya F. , The End of History and the Last Man (New York: Avon Books, 2006).

National Human Genome Research Institute, “Genetic Enhancement,” 2000, available at <http://www.genome.gov/10004767> (last visited January 23, 2008).

Walters L. , speech presented at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, fall 2006.

Churchill M. , Visions of a New Earth, Religious Consultation Report, October 1999, available at <http://religiousconsultation.org/newsletters/October_1999.htm> (last visited January 23, 2008).

Kass L. , The Beginning of Wisdom (New York: Free Press, 2003).

Peters T. , “Stem Cells: The Scientific Frontier and the Ethical Debate,” presentation at the American Academy of Religion, Washington, D.C., November 2006.

LaFleur W. , “Comments,” Harvard University Forum, Center for World Religions, November 8, 2007.

Brock D. , “Comments,” Harvard University Forum, Center for World Religions, November 8, 2007.

Muller H. J. , “The Guidance of Human Evolution,” Perspectives in Biology and Medicine 3 (1959): 1–43.

See, Bleich J. D. , Bioethical Dilemmas: A Jewish Perspective (Southfield, MI: Targum Press, 2006); Dorff E. , a series of books and articles, representatively, Contemporary Jewish Ethics and Morality: A Reader (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995); and Mackler A. , Introduction to Jewish and Catholic Bioethics: A Comparative Analysis (Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press, 2003). Other scholars include the following: Moshe Tendler, Fred Rosner, Rachel Biale, Rachel Adler, Laurie Zoloth, and Paul Wolpe.

Id. (Bleich), at 134.

Id., at 136–7.

Dorff E. , Love Your Neighbor and Yourself: A Jewish Approach to Modern Personal Ethics (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 2003.)

Mackler A. , “Genetic Enhancement,” in Jews and Genes, submitted for John's Hopkins University Press.

E.g., Maimonides , trans. Pines S. , Guide for the Perplexed I: 1 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1963): At 1:23; Rashi on Genesis 1:26.

Novak D. , Natural Law in Judaism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998): At 167–173.

Glick S. , “Jewish Enhancement,” in Zoloth L. Dorff E. , eds., Jews and Genes, submitted for publication, 2007.

Steinberg A. , “Human Cloning – Scientific, Moral, and Jewish Perspectives,” Torah U'Maddah Journal 9 (2000): 199–205.

Glick S. , “Jewish Enhancement,” in Zoloth L. Dorff E. , eds., Jews and Genes, submitted for publication, 2007.

Gilman S. , The Jew's Body (New York: Routledge, 1991).

See, for example, the Center for Jewish Genetic Disorders, available at <http://www.jewishgeneticscenter.org/> (last visited January 23, 2008).

The rabbinic discourse on medicine raises substantively different concerns, and hence, particular responses, than secular ones. Since germ line research has not been the focus of medical questions that have arisen for patients, and since Jewish law is case-driven (i.e., no cases, no responsa), the literature is yet thin. The intent of this work is to direct specific attention to this emerging issue and to stimulate serious inquiry in this direction.

Of importance to note is that Jewish law, unlike American secular law in which something is permitted or prohibited, describes four categories for possible action. An action may be permitted, or unpunishable under the halachic code, but morally undesirable; an action may be permitted and desirable; an action may be prohibited (even if desirable); and an action may be permitted by Jewish law, but prohibited by the secular state (and thus be permitted, since “the law is the law of the land,” or dinah d'malchut dinah.)

In general, unless the act in question involves idolatry, adultery, or murder, any moral gesture can be evaluated, including the permanent alteration of the genome.

Waxman K. , “Creativity and Catharis: A Theological Framework for Evaluating Cloning,” Torah U'Maddah Journal 9 (2000): 188–193.

Talmud Balvid Sanhedren 65a.

It is a subject of a current novel by Piercy M. , He, She, and It (New York: Fawcett, 1992). The tales reoccur in the 18th century, and in the texts of the responsa literature (Zevi Ashkenazi, She'elot u-Teshuvot, no. 93). In one such text, the question is raised about whether the Golem can be included in a prayer quorum, minyon. At stake is the issue of murder. If the Golem is a man, then is it not killing to “return him to dust?” (One thinks here of the legal cases involving the destruction of embryos.) The text resolves this in an odd way, not by claiming the humanity or countable status of the Golem, but of decrying the waste of a creature with “a purpose.” Sherwin also comments on this text, and notes that Askenazi's son, Jacob Emden, argues with this distinction. Emden is an important commentator on other issues in medical ethics.

Loike J. , “Is the Human Clone a Golem?” Torah U'Maddah Journal 9 (2000): at 238.

This entire section from Zoloth-Dorfman L. , “Mapping the Normal Human Self,” in Peters T. , ed., Genetics: Issues of Social Justice (Cleveland: Pilgrim Press, 1998.)

Soloveitchik J. , Halachic Man, trans. Kaplan L. (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1983): at 99.

Id., at 99.

See Waxman , supra note 30, at 191.

Baylonian Talmud, Babba Kamma 85A

Bleich J. D. , “Genetic Screening,” Tradition 34, no. 1 (Spring 2000): 63–68.

Midrach Rabbah 46.2

See Bleich , supra note 15.

Glick S. , “Jewish Enhancement,” in Zoloth L. Dorff E. , eds., Jews and Genes, ed. submitted for publication 2007.

See supra note 20.

M. Nahmanides on Genesis 1:26. Nahmanides understands the plural form of “Let us make man in our image” as God's addressing the earth. The earth is responsible for the body of humans, as it is for the body of all animals, but God is directly responsible for the soul, and so the human is in the image of both. See similarly Sifre Deuteronomy 306.

O. ben Jacob Sforno on Genesis 1:26. On this and other views noted in this paragraph, see also Dorff E. N. , Matters of Life and Death: A Jewish Approach to Modern Medical Ethics (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1998): at 19.

Heschel A. J. , Man Is Not Alone: A Philosophy of Religion (New York: Farrar, Straus and Young, 1951): At 136–44; see also Mackler A. L. , “Symbols, Reality, and God: Heschel's Rejection of a Tillichian Understanding of Religious Symbols,” Judaism 40, no. 3 (Summer 1991): At 294, 290–301.

Leviticus Rabbah 34:3, quoting Genesis 9:6.

Mekhilta Bahodesh, ch. 8, as cited in Zohar N. J. , Alternatives in Jewish Bioethics (Albany: State University of New York, 1997): at 92.