Back to 2005 Annual Meeting Agenda

October 29, 2004


Dear Colleagues,

Enclosed you will find materials and information on the upcoming Annual Meeting of the Society of Jewish Ethics (SJE), which will be held at the Hyatt Regency Miami hotel in Miami, FL from January 7-9, 2005.

We have assembled a rich and diverse program that we hope you will find of interest. As in the past, we have created a format that maximizes the opportunities for us to have significant conversation with the presenters and with one another. Presentations this year include a keynote address by Michael Walzer on "Morality and Universality in Jewish Thought," as well as papers on bioethics, post-Holocaust ethics and ethical theory. Please see the enclosed program for complete details.

This year we will again be meeting in conjunction with the Society of Christian Ethics (SCE). Our program this year includes a joint SJE/SCE panel on issues of aging. But, as always, all the SCE sessions are open to SJE registrants. I encourage you to check out the rest of the SCE Annual Meeting program on its web site, www.scethics.org. For many of us, the interactions with this wider circle of colleagues is part of what makes SJE/SCE meetings so engaging and thought-provoking. We continue to be grateful to the leadership and staff of the SCE for its willingness to help with many of the arrangements for this joint meeting.

We have attempted to make our meetings comfortable for our religiously observant colleagues. We have arranged for a kosher Shabbat dinner and cold, dairy Shabbat lunch, and we will again hold Shabbat services both Friday night and Shabbat morning. If you have questions or concerns about this, please feel free to contact me.

If you wish to publicize a recent book or post an announcement, we will have designated display tables and bulletin boards for this purpose. Please bring this material with you to the conference, but be aware that the display table will not be staffed and you will be responsible for retrieving your own material at the close of the conference.

This year's Annual Meeting will be held at the Hyatt Regency Miami. A block of rooms at the special convention rate of $105. per night is being reserved for SJE members. Reservations must be made directly with the Hyatt Regency Miami, 1-800-233-1234. Please identify yourself as an SJE member when making your reservation (members of SCE have a separate block of rooms reserved for them). Rooms are very limited, so please make your reservations soon. If rooms are not available at the Hyatt when you contact them, you should try to make reservations at either of the following nearby hotels: Sheraton Biscayne Bay (305-373-6000) or Marriott Courtyard (305-374-3000).

Also please note that registration for the Annual Meeting is open to all SJE members. Our membership year follows the academic (and Jewish) calendars, so we ask that you please renew your membership now, if you have not done so since September 2004. Please also note that the deadline for registration is December 6. Registrations received after this date will be subject to a $50 late fee. The deadline for hotel reservations at the discounted rate is December 16.

Enclosed you will find a registration and membership form, a hotel reservation form, information about transportation between the Miami airport and the conference hotel, as well as an SJE member information sheet. All this information is also available on our website, www.jewishethics.org.

If you have further questions about the Society of Jewish Ethics, or about membership or registration for the Annual Meeting, please do not hesitate to contact Paul Root Wolpe, SJE secretary/treasurer at wolpep@mail.med.upenn.edu or at 215-573-9382. I can be reached at lnewman@carleton.edu or at 507-646-4224.

Please consider joining us for what promises to be a very substantive and engaging meeting. It is our hope that these gatherings of the Society will continue to be a fruitful place for all of us to meet, share our work as scholars and teachers, and help to shape the field of Jewish ethics.

I look forward to seeing you in Miami.

Sincerely,


Louis E. Newman
President


P.S.-Please feel free to post this information and/or forward it to any other colleagues who might be interested in the work of our Society. Please note that one can register for a single day of the conference at a reduced rate. Thank you.