The Obligated Self

In this elegantly written, provocative, scholarly, and accessible work, Mara Benjamin contributes to the growing body of literature using maternal experience as a source for theology and religious ethics. In particular, Benjamin argues that maternal experience is a rich but under-tapped source of Jewish thought, or at least one that is submerged and can fruitfully be excavated. Benjamin organizes each chapter around a “keyword,” naming a concept with resonance both in her Jewish sources (biblical narratives, rabbinic midrash, legal texts, and twentieth-century Jewish philosophers of intersubjective relationality) and in maternal experience. She uses the sources in a process of mutual interpretation to reflect on the keyword concepts, showing that maternal experience can illuminate contemporary Jewish thought and practice. In Part I, these keywords include Obligation, Love, Power, and Teaching; in Part II, they are the Other, the Third, and the Neighbor. Benjamin’s reflections on obligation are particularly generative for philosophical and theological anthropology. She opens her book with the statement, “To be a Jew is to be obligated” (3). But in much Jewish tradition, the recognized mode of response to this primordial obligation has been the province of men: intensive study of Torah with the goal of embodying Torah. Benjamin contends that Jewish thought has been impoverished by its neglect of another locus for the experience of obligation: response to “the dynamic Torah of [one’s] child” (xiv).

Art · Epistemology · Judaism · Literature · Narrative · Obligation · Sociology · Subjectivity · Theology · Torah · Jewish and Middle Eastern Studies · Law · Philosophy · Philosophy, Ethics, and Existentialism · Violence, Religion, and Philosophy