“Someone is Wrong About Sex on the Internet”: Online Discourse and the Role of Public Scholarship on Jewish Sexual Ethics

Abstract

Regnant public accounts of Jewish sexual ethics—both external and internal—fall short of what they could accomplish. Using a Twitter thread on sexual ethics which falls into some key errors as a case study, I argue that Jewish ethicists are poised to address the thread's errors by offering sources for alternative moral frameworks. I examine how thinking with this Twitter thread can help us clarify what we mean by public scholarship more generally, what is wrong with some common public deployments of specifically Jewish sources, and some implications of this for both Jewish and non-Jewish publics. I conclude with some reflections about the role of traditional academic venues, such as the Journal of Religious Ethics, within this.