David Novak


David Novak is a theologian, ethicist, and scholar of Jewish philosophy and law. He is an ordained Conservative rabbi and has also trained with Catholic moral theologians. Since 1997 he has taught religion and philosophy at the University of Toronto; his areas of interest are Jewish theology, ethics and biomedical ethics, political theory and Jewish-Christian relations.
Novak has authored 16 books and more than 200 articles in scholarly journals. His book Covenantal Rights: A Study in Jewish Political Theory was named best book in constructive religious thought by the American Academy of Religion in 2000. He is a regular contributor to ABC News' Religion and Ethics Portal. He frequently addresses interfaith conferences and contributes to books and journals published by Christian theologians.

Early life and education

Novak was born in 1941 in Chicago, Illinois. He received his bachelor's degree from the University of Chicago in 1961 and his master's degree in Hebrew literature in 1964. He earned his Ph.D. in philosophy at Georgetown University, Washington, D.C., in 1971. He received rabbinical ordination in 1966 from the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, where he studied under Abraham Joshua Heschel.
He married Melva Ziman in 1963. They have two children and five grandchildren.

Rabbinic career

Novak was a pulpit rabbi in several US communities from 1966 to 1989. He also served as a Jewish chaplain at St. Elizabeth's Hospital, National Institute of Mental Health, Washington, D.C., from 1966 to 1969.

Academic career

In 1989 he moved to the University of Virginia as Edgar M. Bronfman Professor of Modern Judaic Studies, a position he held until 1997. Since 1997 he has held the J. Richard and Dorothy Shiff Chair of Jewish Studies as Professor of the Study of Religion and Professor of Philosophy at the University of Toronto. He is also a member of the Joint Centre for Bioethics. From 1997 to 2002 he also directed the Jewish Studies Programme.
In 1992–93 he was a Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, Washington, D.C. He also lectured at Oxford University, Lancaster University and Drew University, and was a visiting scholar at Princeton University in 2004 and 2006.

Contributions

Ethics

Novak has contributed to Jewish ethics by advocating a Jewish social ethics drawn from both the natural law tradition and Halakha. To this end, he interprets the rabbinic approach to Noahide laws as a useful grounding for cross-cultural moral reasoning. His expertise includes Maimonides, John Courtney Murray, and Paul Tillich. In his theology, he combines Jewish rabbinical tradition and logic with Christian teachings.
His specific normative claims in Jewish ethics include a mix of liberal and right-wing positions. An ordained rabbi, Novak had been affiliated with the Conservative movement in Judaism and then shifted to the Union for Traditional Judaism.

Interfaith

Novak, together with Peter Ochs, Tikva Frymer-Kensky, and Michael Signer, drafted a full-page advertisement which appeared in the Sunday, 10 September 2000 edition of The New York Times under the title "Dabru Emet : A Jewish statement on Christians and Christianity". Among the eight theological statements which the advertisement briefly laid out were: "Nazism is not a Christian phenomenon"; "Humanly irreconcilable differences between Jews and Christians will not be settled until God redeems the entire world as promised in Scripture"; and the statement which generated the most controversy in Jewish circles, "Jews and Christians worship the same God". The advertisement was signed by 160 rabbis, including many leading Reform, Reconstructionist and Conservative thinkers and a handful of Orthodox rabbis known for their interfaith work. Explaining his rationale for publishing the document, Novak told Jweekly: "I want Jewish readers to clearly realize that Christians are not necessarily our enemies. Quite the contrary, they can be very good friends to Jews and Judaism". The document was subsequently translated into eight languages.
While some modern Jews are offended by the traditional Christian belief in supersessionism, Rabbi and Jewish theologian David Novak has stated that "Christian supersessionism need not denigrate Judaism. Christian supersessionism can still affirm that God has not annulled his everlasting covenant with the Jewish people, neither past nor present nor future."
Novak suggests that there are three options:
  1. The new covenant is an extension of the old covenant.
  2. The new covenant is an addition to the old covenant.
  3. The new covenant is a replacement for the old covenant.
He observes, "In the early Church, it seems, the new covenant presented by the Apostolic Writings was either taken to be an addition to the old covenant, or it was taken to be a replacement for the old covenant."
Novak considers both understandings to be supersessionist. He designates the first as "soft supersessionism" and the second as "hard supersessionism." The former "does not assert that God terminated the covenant of Exodus-Sinai with the Jewish people. Rather, it asserts that Jesus came to fulfill the promise of the old covenant, first for those Jews already initiated into the covenant, who then accepted his messiahhood as that covenant's fulfillment. And, it asserts that Jesus came to both initiate and fulfill the promise of the covenant for those Gentiles whose sole connection to the covenant is through him. Hence, in this kind of supersessionism, those Jews who do not accept Jesus' messiahhood are still part of the covenant in the sense of 'what God has put together let no man put asunder' ." See also Dual-covenant theology.
Hard supersessionism, on the other hand, asserts that "he old covenant is dead. The Jews by their sins, most prominently their sin of rejecting Jesus as the Messiah, have forfeited any covenantal status." The hard supersessionists base their views on the bible passages found in and. This classification provides mutually exclusive options. Hard supersessionism implies both punitive and economic supersessionism; soft supersessionism does not fall into any of the three classes recognized as supersessionist by Christian theologians; instead it is associated with Jewish Christianity.

Other activities

He is a founder, vice-president, and coordinator of the Jewish Law Panel of the Union for Traditional Judaism, and a faculty member and vice-president of the Union for Traditional Judaism in Teaneck, New Jersey. He is a faculty member of the Department of Talmud and Halakha at the Canadian Yeshiva & Rabbinical School, Toronto. He also serves as a Visitor of Ralston College.
In the mid-1980s he was invited to join the Institute on Religion and Public Life by its founder, Richard John Neuhaus, and became a member of the editorial board of the institute's journal, First Things. He is also a member of the advisory board of The G.K. Chesterton Institute for Faith & Culture at Seton Hall University, South Orange, New Jersey.
In 2006 he was appointed as a board member of Assisted Human Reproduction Canada.

Published works

;Selected articles