I am a Jewish Christian ethicist. I realise that this professional self-description admits of multiple interpretations, so let me explain. Both my parents were Jewish and I was raised in a home steeped in Jewish values. At the same time, neither parent was particularly devout in terms of religious practice. Hence, the word 'Jewish' in my self-description should be understood in broad cultural rather than explicitly religious terms. At university I studied moral philosophy and Christian ethics, continuing both emphases in my graduate work. As a result, I probably know more about the ethics of Thomas Aquinas, Reinhold Niebuhr, and Henry Sidgwick than I do about Solomon ibn Gabirol and Moses Maimonides.

Nevertheless,my Jewish background remains a permanent influence inmy life. Over the years, it has led me back to issues or questions in Jewish ethics and has resulted in numerous publications in which I have tried to interpret Jewish ethics to a non-Jewish audience or apply Jewish ethical thinking to emergent issues in applied ethics. Although I certainly lack the intense formal training in Jewish thought and philosophy of some who are professionally identified as Jewish ethicists, I am perhaps better qualified than many of them to think about Christian ethics from a philosophically informed Jewish perspective.