“The Pain of Raising Children” Using Care Ethics to Understand Jewish Leadership
Sarah Zager
Sarah Zager received her PhD from Yale University in 2022, where her research focused on the influence of Judaism and Christianity on moral philosophy. Originally from Albuquerque, New Mexico, Sarah earned an MA in Religion from the University of Chicago Divinity School and a BA from Williams College. She was awarded the Leo Baeck Fellowship for the study of German Jewry, and was a David Hartman Center Fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute of North America. She has also learned at Yeshivat Hadar. She has written for The Lehrhaus, JewSchool, The Journal of Jewish Ethics, and Nashim.
In this session, we’ll explore how recent shifts in moral philosophy can help us understand why the rabbis require that a judge on a Sanhedrin be a parent. What do the rabbis think that the experience of parenting teaches a potential judge? How does this help us understand what it means to be a halakhic thinker and leader?
Ms. Zager suggests that these texts imagine halakhic leadership as requiring both specific experiences of caring for others as well as relevant technical expertise.