Elliot N. Dorff

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Elliot N. Dorff is a Conservative rabbi, a professor of Jewish theology at the University of Judaism in California (where he is also Rector), author, and a bio-ethicist.

Dorff is an expert in the philosophy of Conservative Judaism, Bioethics, and acknowledged within the Conservative community as an expert decisor of Jewish law. Dorff was ordained as a rabbi from the Jewish Theological Seminary in 1970. He earned a Ph.D in philosophy from Columbia University in 1971.

Dorff is a prolific member of the Rabbinical Assembly's Committee on Jewish Law and Standards, and has written many responsa (opinion papers and legal rulings) on many aspects of Jewish law and philosophy. (There is a separate article on Conservative responsa.)

In the spring of 1993, Dorff served on the ethics committee of Hillary Rodham Clinton's Health Care Task Force, and in March 1997 and May 1999, he, along with other rabbis, testified on behalf on the Jewish tradition on the subjects of human cloning and stem cell research before the president's National Bioethics Advisory Commission.

In Los Angeles, he is a member of the Board of Jewish Family Service and has served as its vice president. He is also a member of the Institutional Review Board of Midway Hospital and the ethics committee at the Jewish Homes for the Aging and UCLA Medical Center. He is co-chairman of the "Priest-Rabbi Dialogue" sponsored by the Los Angeles Archdiocese and the Board of Rabbis of Southern California.

Dorff has written over one hundred articles on ethics, Jewish thought, Jewish law and custom, and bioethics.

One of the major trends in modern Jewish philosophy was the attempt to develop a theory of Judaism through existentialism. One of the primary players in this field was Franz Rosenzweig. Rozensweig's major work, Star of Redemption, gives a philosophy in which he portrays the relationships between God, humanity and world as they are connected by creation, revelation and redemption. Dorff takes the existentialist philosophy as Rosensweig as one of his primary starting points for understanding Jewish philosophy.

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Bibliography

  • Responsa 1991-2000: The Committee on Jewish Law and Standards, 2001, The Rabbinical Assembly
  • Proceedings of the Committee on Jewish Law and Standards of the Conservative Movement 1986 - 1990, The Rabbinical Assembly, 2001.
  • Life & Death Responsibilities in Jewish Biomedical Ethics, Aaron L. Mackler, JTS, 2000
  • Contemporary Jewish Theology: A Reader Oxford University Press, 1999
  • Matters of Life and Death: A Jewish Approach to Modern Medical Ethics Jewish Publication Society, 1998
  • Contemporary Jewish Ethics and Morality: A Reader Oxford University Press, 1995
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