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Scholar in Residence:
Rabbi Elliott Dorff
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Elliot Dorff, Rector and Distinguished Professor of
Philosophy at American Jewish University, earned
his Ph.D. in philosophy with a dissertation
in moral theory. Since then he has directed
the rabbinical and Masters programs at American
Jewish University for 23 years. For 30 years,
he also taught a course on Jewish law at UCLA
School of Law as a Visiting Professor. He was
awarded the Journal of Law and Religion’s
Lifetime Achievement Award, and he holds three
honorary doctoral degrees.
Rabbi Dorff is Vice-Chair of the Conservative Movement’s
Committee on Jewish Law and Standards and served on
the
editorial committee of Etz Hayim, the new Torah commentary
for the Conservative Movement. His papers have formulated
the validated stance of the Conservative Movement on
infertility
treatments and on end-of-life issues and his Rabbinic
Letters on
human sexuality and on poverty have become the voice
of the
Conservative Movement on those topics.
He has chaired three
scholarly organizations: the Academy of
Jewish Philosophy, the Jewish Law Association, the
Society
of Jewish Ethics. In Spring, 1993, he served on the
Ethics
Committee of Hillary Rodham Clinton’s Health
Care Task Force.
In March, 1997 and May, 1999, he testified on behalf
of the
Jewish tradition on the subjects of human cloning and
stem
cell research before the President’s National
Bioethics Advisory
Commission. In 1999 and 2000 he was part of the Surgeon
General’s commission to draft a Call to Action
for Responsible
Sexual Behavior; and from 2000 to 2002 he served on
the
National Human Resources Protections Advisory Commission,
charged with reviewing and revising the federal guidelines
for
protecting human subjects in research projects. He
is currently
working on a project on Judaism and genetics for the
American
Association for the Advancement of Science, and he
is a
member of that organization’s Dialogue on Science,
Ethics,
and Religion Advisory Committee. He is also a member
of the
Ethics Committee charged with establishing the moral
norms
that govern stem cell research in the State of California.
In Los Angeles, he is
Immediate Past President of Jewish Family Service,
and he is a member of the Ethics committees at
the Jewish Homes for the Aging and UCLA Medical
Center.
He serves as Co-Chair of the Priest-Rabbi Dialogue
of the Los
Angeles Archdiocese and the Board of Rabbis of Southern
California, and he is a Vice-President of the Academy
for
Jewish, Christian, and Muslim Studies.
Rabbi Dorff’s publications include over 200 articles
on Jewish
thought, law, and ethics, together with 13 books. Rabbi
Dorff is
married and has four children and five grandchildren. |
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