The article is titled “Kindness, Compassion, Love, and Generosity at a Time of Mass Killing: The Musar Teachings of Rabbi Amy Eilberg.”

In the article, Claussen analyzes the musar (virtue/character-focused) teachings of Rabbi Amy Eilberg, the first woman ordained as a rabbi within Conservative Judaism. He focuses on how Eilberg’s work has emphasized kindness, compassion, love and generosity and how her writing has developed in response to extreme violence and suffering in Israel/Palestine since Oct. 7, 2023.

Six rising juniors have been named members of the tenth class of Multifaith Scholars, a two-year fellows program for juniors and seniors that offers a closely mentored, experientially rich and intellectually rigorous educational opportunity for students with significant potential.

After a highly selective application and interview process, students are awarded $5,000 annually to support research and study in global contexts connected with religious diversity and multi-religious societies. Students who show great potential as academically curious and socially engaged leaders committed to their own ongoing development and the enhancement of their local and global communities are selected each spring.

“I am delighted to welcome these six impressive rising juniors into the Multifaith Scholars program and look forward to supporting their compelling projects over the next two years,” said Amy Allocco, director of the Multifaith Scholars program. “Their research interests include music and Christian religious experience, linguistic anthropology and the vocabulary of faith, religious diversity in clinical settings, gender and religious roles in Asian art, the intersection of biomedicine and traditional healing practices and the history of Black churches here in Alamance County.”

In addition to pursuing their faculty-mentored undergraduate research projects and undertaking academic coursework in religious studies and interreligious studies, the scholars will extend the program’s ongoing community partnership with the Burlington Masjid. Through the partnership, scholars teach English classes, participate in youth and social events with the local Muslim community, join community garden workdays, volunteer with the food pantry and take part in potlucks and iftar meals during Ramadan.

“It is wonderful to welcome such a strong class with such diverse academic interests,” reflected Brian Pennington, director of the Center for the Study of Religion, Culture, and Society, which supports the Multifaith Scholars program. “As we approach the tenth anniversary of the MFS, it is gratifying to see so many clear signs of the program’s maturity and significance: our largest class ever, the inclusion of seven new faculty mentors, and students majoring in three disciplines never before represented in MFS.”

The 2026-2028 Multifaith Scholars

Addison Anderson

Majors: History, Sociology

Minors: Museum Studies, Public History, and Interreligious Studies

Mentor: Amanda Kleintop (History and Geography)

Project Title: History and Memory of Alamance County’s Black Churches

Proposed Research: Examine the relationship between Alamance County African American churches and local politics in North Carolina from Reconstruction through 1900.

Blair Berenson

Major: Anthropology

Minors: Jewish Studies, Sociology, Philosophy and Interreligious Studies

Mentors: Amy Allocco (Religious Studies) and Devin Proctor (Sociology & Anthropology)

Project Title: An Anthropological Approach to Cross-Generational Shifts in Hindu and Jewish Perspectives of Faith in the US

Proposed Research: Conduct fieldwork in Jewish and Hindu communities in Atlanta to understand how different generations articulate the concept of faith.

Katie Castelo

Major: Biochemistry

Minors: Neuroscience, Spanish, and Interreligious Studies

Mentor: Cathy Quay (Nursing)

Project Title: Bridging Faith and Medicine: Improving Cultural Awareness of Religious Practices in the Healthcare System

Proposed Research: Explore the healthcare industry’s approach to death and ways it can be more open to diverse religious practices.

Faith Elliott

Major: Neuroscience

Minors: Expressive Arts and Interreligious Studies

Mentors: Lynn Huber (Religious Studies) and Morgan Patrick (Music Theory)

Project Title: Neurotheology: An Interdisciplinary Study into Sacred Music and Feelings of Well-Being

Proposed Research: Examine the historical significance of music and understand and measure the behavioral impact associated with an emotional, transcendent spiritual experience and the well-being that results from listening.

Mariama Jalloh

Major: Public Health

Minors: Biology and Interreligious Studies

Mentor: Sandra Darfour-Oduro (Public Health)

Project Title: Faith, Healers, and Health: How Religious Beliefs and Community Trust Shape Healthcare Decisions in West African Communities

Proposed Research: Examine how religious leaders and traditional healers influence healthcare decisions in communities in Ghana, and how public health programs can partner with these practitioners to improve health education outcomes.

Ryleigh Rouse

Majors: Art History, Religious Studies

Minors: Museum Studies and Public History and Asian Studies

Mentor: Kirstin Ringelberg (Art History)

Project Title: Religion’s Impact on Japanese Women: Through an Art Historical Lens

Proposed Research: Employ art as a lens to examine how religion shaped gender perceptions and Japanese women’s roles.

Geoffrey Claussen, professor of religious studies, Lori and Eric Sklut Professor in Jewish Studies and chair of the Department of Religious Studies at ÂŇÂ×ĘÓƵ, edited a special issue of the Journal of Jewish Ethics honoring his long-time mentor, Louis Newman.

Newman, the John M. and Elizabeth W. Musser Professor of Religious Studies, Emeritus, at Carleton College and former dean of academic advising and associate vice provost for undergraduate education at Stanford University, is one of the world’s leading scholars of Jewish ethics and one of the founders of Jewish ethics as an academic field. He was the founding president of the Society of Jewish Ethics and founding coeditor of this journal.

In his editor’s introduction to the special issue, Claussen recounts how studying with Newman at Carleton College first kindled his interest in Religious Studies and Jewish Studies and eventually inspired him to also become a scholar of Jewish ethics.

In the issue, thirteen scholars engage, respond to and build on Newman’s work. Claussen’s article in the journal is titled “Lessons in Intellectual Honesty and Humility: Studying Jewish Ethics with the Guidance of Louis Newman.”

“It happened so long ago during my early childhood. It had no bearing on my present life. My parents almost never talked about it. Few of my friends were even aware,” said Silbiger. “But then I became aware it was happening again in Rwanda, Bosnia, Sudan, Myanmar, again, again and again. And eventually, as hatred and antisemitism certainly, began spreading, even in the United States, I decided I needed to come out and tell my story.”

And that’s what Silbiger did in a packed Turner Theatre on Feb. 12, part of ÂŇÂ×ĘÓƵ’s Holocaust Remembrance Day Speakers Series. ÂŇÂ×ĘÓƵ has hosted Holocaust survivors annually for more than nine years. Funding has enabled Professor Max Negin and his Holocaust Journey course to collaborate with Jewish Life, the Jewish Studies department, and the Truitt Center for Religious and Spiritual Life. The speaker event was made possible through sponsorship from the Levy Family P’26.

Benji Stern, co-president of ÂŇÂ×ĘÓƵ Hillel, introduced Silbiger by reflecting on his experience in the Holocaust Journey study abroad course, which takes students through tours of concentration/extermination camps, ghettos, and discussions with Holocaust scholars and survivors.

“It was a profound and emotional experience that brought me face to face with both the history and the human suffering of the Holocaust,” said Stern, who discussed reading the Mourner’s Kaddish prayer at a memorial during the experience. “With a slightly broken voice, I pulled up the words on my phone, and together, we recited them. In that moment, a shared moment, Jews and non-Jews standing shoulder to shoulder, I felt something that I’ll carry with me forever. The moment was special because all of us participated, not only Jewish people remembering, but that collective act of remembrance reminds us that we’re all connected.”

In May 1940, Silbiger, now in his 90s, was just 5 years old when Nazi Germany invaded the Netherlands.

“At first, the life of the Jews under the occupation, while certainly unpleasant, did not appear to be life-threatening,” said Silbiger, who said there was a false sense of security but also rumors of the mistreatment of Jews in Eastern Europe. “Jews had lived in Holland for many centuries, they had made important contributions to its economy and its culture and become a really valued part of the nation. Dutch people would never let their fellow citizens be mistreated in this manner. No one could begin to conceive the eventual role of the Nazis to extinguish the life of every Jew in Holland.”

Everything changed when Silbiger’s parents hatched a plan to escape from the Nazi-occupied territory. His mother woke him up and told him they were going on “a trip to the country.”

“I was surprised because I had not been told anything about this beforehand, and because of the (Nazi travel) restrictions, we had not been traveling anywhere,” he said. “We sneaked across the border to Belgium. Once we arrived there, I learned we were not going back home until the Germans were gone from Holland. Suddenly, without preparation, this 6-year-old was cut off from all of their friends, his stories, everything else.”

The family, including Silbiger’s older brother, adopted aliases and traveled through France across the demarcation line to southern France, down to Spain, before eventually traveling by boat to the Gibraltar Refugee Camp in Jamaica. His father used diamonds, hidden in an old smoking pipe, to help keep them afloat financially throughout the year-long journey.

“Conditions may not have been so much worse than in a summer camp, except you were forced to stay there for an indefinite length of time, perhaps even several years,” said Silbiger of the refugee camp. “On the other hand, our lives were no longer in danger and, for that, we were grateful.”

Silbiger’s father’s engineering skills eventually helped the family get to the Dutch Carribean island of Curaçao and, following the end of the war a few months later, they were able to return to Holland – but it looked much different. Their home in The Hague was still standing, but had been gutted, and his grandparents were taken to a concentration camp in Poland, where they were murdered.

“I still have fond memories of my grandparents, who lived only a few blocks from us,” said Silbiger. “The thoughts of their last days and final moments continue to haunt me.”

His parents decided to return to Curaçao, where Silbiger finished high school before attending college in the United States. He later married a U.S. citizen, relocated to Germany for a time, and eventually resettled in Durham, North Carolina, where he was a professor at Duke University. Silbiger has since worked to spread awareness of the danger of religious hatred, including in “Our Great Escape: The story of a Dutch family’s flight from persecution (1942-1943).” He encouraged the audience on Thursday night to have compassion for anyone escaping their homeland in search of a better life.

“They have the same hopes, the same desires, same needs, they are like you and me,” he said. “We must open our hearts (…for) these people, some who entered the country illegally because they didn’t have proper papers. Then again, neither did we. We entered France illegally. If we hadn’t done that, I wouldn’t be here to tell my story.”

The collection, edited by Jonathan K. Crane, Emily Filler, and Mira Beth Wasserman, is titled “Modern Jewish Ethics Since 1970: Writings on Methods, Sources, and Issues” and published by Brandeis University Press as part of the Brandeis Library of Modern Jewish Thought.

Claussen’s article, “Musar in a White Supremacist Society: Arrogance, Self-Examination, and Systemic Change,” was first published in 2021 in “No Time for Neutrality: American Rabbinic Voices from an Era of Upheaval,” edited by Michael Rose Knopf with Miriam Aniel.

Judaism in Five Minutes provides an accessible and lively introduction to common questions about Jews and Judaism. Claussen’s chapter, titled “What Does Jewish Tradition Say About War?” explains how “Jews in diverse historical contexts have constructed a wide range of Jewish traditions about war, framing their ideas with reference to Jewish identities, histories, and texts.”

The volume was published by Equinox Publishing as part of the “Religion in 5 Minutes” series. More information about the volume can be found .

The chapter is titled “Character and Musar,” and explores diverse Jewish approaches to questions about moral character, especially within the genre of “musar literature” focused on character and virtue.

Claussen is the author of books focused on moral character, including Modern Musar: Contested Virtues in Jewish Thought and Sharing the Burden: Rabbi Simhah Zissel Ziv and the Path of Musar. Miller is the author of books focused on character including Moral Character: An Empirical Theory and Character and Moral Psychology.

“The Routledge Companion to Jewish Philosophy” brings diverse perspectives to bear on the key topics, problems, and debates in Jewish philosophy and philosophical theology. The 37 chapters were written by an international team of experts from different traditions in philosophy and beyond.

The Journal is the scholarly journal of the Society of Jewish Ethics, of which Claussen is a past president. Published biannually by the Penn State University Press, the journal publishes outstanding scholarship in Jewish ethics, broadly conceived. It serves as a location for the exchange of ideas among those interested in understanding, articulating and promoting descriptive and normative Jewish ethics. It aspires to advance dialogue between Jewish ethicists and ethicists working through other religious and secular traditions.

Claussen joins Emily Filler of Drew University as co-editor of the journal. He previously served as an associate editor and has been a member of the journal’s editorial board since 2015.

Claussen joined the ÂŇÂ×ĘÓƵ faculty in 2011 and was named Lori and Eric Sklut Emerging Scholar in Jewish Studies in 2012. He has served as chair of the Department of Religious Studies since 2018 and was named Lori and Eric Sklut Professor in Jewish Studies in 2023.

In the Jewish calendar, we are well into the season of teshuvah, translated both as “repentance” and “turning back.” It is a heartbreaking time for deep reflection on our individual and collective moral failures.

In this week’s parsha, Ki Tavo, Moses instructs the Israelites on the curses and blessings that God will bestow upon them based on whether they follow God’s commands. These passages present a system of spiritual physics based upon our behavior. If we do x, we will receive y. If we obey God’s commands, we will be blessed (). If we sin, we will be cursed ().

Those of us with lived experience know that the reality of sin, punishment, merit, and reward is more complicated than our parsha’s formula. First, it does not explain how those who commit egregious moral transgressions still prosper in this world. Second, it implies that any evil that befalls the faithful is a natural consequence of immoral behavior, rather than the inexplicable tragedy we know it to be. Finally, this formula can give us a false sense of control over our lives, leading us to disappointment.

Rashi points to a more complicated way of understanding our parsha. One of the blessings the Israelites will receive for obedience is in : “Blessed shall you be in your comings and blessed shall you be in your goings.” teaches that this verse means that your exit (goings) from this world should be like your entry (comings) into this world – without sin, belo’ cheit (cf. ).

This interpretation raises two important questions. First, Biblical Hebrew has a rich vocabulary for describing sin. Cheit does not describe a severe transgression or rebellion – instead it connotes missing the mark. How can it be that any human being can live without sometimes falling short?

Second, this interpretation reveals a logical contradiction. The reward for following God’s commands is sinlessness. How can it be that the reward, sinlessness, precedes the behavior that merits the reward?

This week’s parsha presents an incomplete picture of sin, punishment, merit, and reward because it does not include teshuvah. If the blessings and curses from our parsha describe spiritual physics, teshuvah is all about spiritual metaphysics.

Engaging in the practice of teshuvah is not simply acknowledging our wrongdoings, making amends with those we have harmed, and committing to live differently in the future. These actions are fundamental components of teshuvah, but there is something much deeper going on.

Millennia ago, David modeled for us the heart-transforming nature of teshuvah. In Psalm 51, he acknowledges his sins, transgressions, and iniquities in a litany of confessions. He asks that God give his soul a good scrub: “Wash me thoroughly of my iniquity, and purify me of my sin” (). He then asks God to create his heart anew, much like a newborn: “Fashion a pure heart for me, O God; create in me a steadfast spirit” (). He then teaches that “True sacrifice to God is a contrite spirit; God, You will not despise a contrite and crushed heart” ().

David teaches that the most important component of teshuvah is a broken heart. The breaking of our heart center is what allows the divine flow to wash over us from within and purify us from sin. Teshuvah is heart-breaking and ego-busting. We have limited to no control over this aspect of the process – we cannot purify our own hearts.

Despite our lack of control, our divine bath doesn’t end with our feeling refreshed. Instead, we must become active participants in our own teshuvah, working to repair relationships with those we have harmed and committing to live differently in the future.

For Ashkenazi communities, the prayers of start this Saturday night. Sephardic communities have already been saying these prayers since the beginning of the Hebrew month of Elul. These prayers are an invitation to go deeper and let our hearts break with our pain for the world and our own individual and collective culpability.

My prayer for us all this year is that we experience the mystical power of teshuvah purifying us from within. And I pray that our purified hearts strengthen us in our renewed commitment to work for a better world in the coming year.

Views expressed in this column are the author’s own and not necessarily those of ÂŇÂ×ĘÓƵ. The original article appears in .

Both articles consider how virtue-centered Jewish traditions (musar) may provide resources for responding to calls to justify the mass killings of innocent civilians.

The first article was published in the “Journal of Jewish Ethics” (vol. 9, no. 2). The article is titled and focuses on those four virtues.

The second article,  focuses more narrowly on virtues of justice and compassion. It was published in “Sources: A Journal of Jewish Ideas” (vol. 5, no. 1), the journal of the Shalom Hartman Institute.