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A Philosophic Basis for Halakhic Plurali

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Can multiple, contradictory positions coexist as equally valid within Jewish law? Conservative Judaism's embrace of halakhic pluralism—allowing opposing views on issues like women receiving aliyot or end-of-life care—has lacked robust philosophical grounding, as Elliot Dorff notably observed. By distinguishing halakhic pluralism from cultural, interpretive, and pre-halakhic variants, and examining its operation at the societal rather than state level, a compelling justification emerges through Isaiah Berlin's concept of "objective pluralism." While Joel Roth's Legal Positivist defense proves vulnerable to Ronald Dworkin's critiques, Berlin's value-pluralism framework recognizes that genuine goods can be simultaneously rivalrous, conflictual, and incommensurable. This philosophical foundation validates Conservative Judaism's pluralistic approach by demonstrating how halakhic decision-making, unconstrained by state-level legal systems' focus on principle-based arguments, legitimately incorporates policy considerations and community welfare. The resulting domain of moral complexity allows multiple valid but contradictory positions to coexist without logical incoherence, providing Conservative Judaism with a philosophically sound basis for maintaining diverse halakhic interpretations.

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    Published 2001

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    Richard Claman