Personhood in Jewish Thought

Session Submission Type: Roundtable

Abstract

In the age of Dobbs and emerging artificial intelligence, questions of legal and ethical personhood have taken on new resonance. Given the increasing significance of this term for ethical and political discourse that touches on central facets of our lives, it is important to lay the ground for scholarly conversations that are nuanced, holistic, and clear about interdisciplinary definitions and usages of conceptions of personhood. This roundtable will gather scholars working on aspects of human, fetal, animal, and artificial personhood to explore the convergences and divergences of our research, as a step toward such a grounding of an improved discourse on personhood.

Among the questions to be addressed are: What constitutes personhood? To what extent is personhood a concept external to Jewish thought, and are there alternatives? Given the significant legal implications often associated with personhood, can personhood be distinguished as a meaningful ontological category? How do the concepts of being created "in God's image" and medieval Jewish understanding of the soul influence the extension of personhood to new entities? And finally, how do emerging discussions of fetal, animal, and AI personhood intersect with ideas of human value in disability studies, feminist Jewish thought, and Jewish perspectives on gentiles, and Jewish ethics more broadly? Sara Ronis will offer insights from her work on the complexities of fetal personhood in the Babylonian Talmud, proposing a model of fetal personhood that is shaped by literary and legal contexts. David Zvi Kalman will address the question of AI personhood and suggest how Jewish sources might be brought to bear on it. Shira Billet will examine modern Jewish ethical discourse on the creation of the human being in the image of God, and the significance of human personhood within Jewish ethics more broadly. Rafael Neis will challenge "personhood" as means for quantifying and qualifying units of being from the perspective of rabbinic literature. Together, these scholars will delve into how Jewish thought can offer valuable insights into the evolving concept of personhood in our rapidly changing world, particularly in understanding how new entities fit within existing frameworks and where these frameworks need re-examining.

Sub Unit

• Interdisciplinary Approaches

Moderator

• Jonathan Crane, Emory University

Discussants

• Sara Ronis, St. Mary's University, Texas

• David Zvi Kalman, Shalom Hartman Institute of North America

• Rafael Neis, University of Michigan

• Shira Billet, Jewish Theological Seminary

Zoom Host

• Zoom Host 12