My Eyes Grow Dim from Grief: A Jewish Visual Ethic of Death and Memory

In my dissertation I demonstrate how a visual approach to the dead body and to the memory of loved ones can inform our understandings of Jewish obligations to the dead. I argue that a visual approach to religious ethics broadly, and Jewish ethics in particular, can help us better understand the moral lives of religious practitioners. Using the theory of visual ethics I develop in the beginning of the dissertation, I apply it to a significant question in moral philosophy: how can we be obligated to the dead? Using theorists including Josef Soloveitchik, Mara Benjamin, Emmanuel Levinas and Avishai Margalit, along with artworks from early modern Prague and contemporary America, I show that our obligations to the dead are based in an understanding of the dead as a morally demanding subject, which demands that we look away from the body. I conclude by arguing that this insight has implications for bioethical questions regarding the use of dead bodies in medical experimentation.