Geoffrey Claussen

Books:

• Jewish Ethics: The Basics (Routledge, 2025).
• Jewish Virtue Ethics, co-edited with Alexander Green and Alan Mittleman (SUNY Press, 2023).
• Modern Musar: Contested Virtues in Jewish Thought (University of Nebraska Press and The Jewish Publication Society, 2022).
• Sharing the Burden: Rabbi Simhah Zissel Ziv and the Path of Musar (SUNY Press, 2015).

Articles and Book Chapters:

• "Character and Musar," co-authored with Christian Miller. In The Routledge Companion to Jewish Philosophy, ed. Daniel Rynhold and Tyron Goldschmidt (Routledge, forthcoming).
• “What Does Jewish Tradition Say About War?” In Judaism in Five Minutes, ed. Sarah Imhoff (Equinox Publishing, forthcoming).
• "Musar as a Challenge to the Justification of Mass Killing." Sources: A Journal of Jewish Ideas, vol. 5, no. 1 (2025).
• "Musar for a Time of War: Justice, Compassion, Solidarity, and Equanimity." Journal of Jewish Ethics, vol. 9, no. 2 (2023).
• "Simhah Zissel Ziv." In Jewish Virtue Ethics, ed. Geoffrey Claussen, Alexander Green, and Alan Mittleman (SUNY Press, 2023), 325–336.
• "Introduction," co-authored with Alexander Green and Alan Mittleman. In Jewish Virtue Ethics, ed. Geoffrey Claussen, Alexander Green, and Alan Mittleman (SUNY Press, 2023), 1–7.
• “Moses and the Kid, Judah and the Calf, and the Disavowal of Compassion: Reading Rabbinic Stories with The Question of the Animal and Religion.” Journal of Scriptural Reasoning, vol. 20, no. 1 (2023).
• “Musar in a White Supremacist Society: Arrogance, Self-Examination, and Systemic Change.” In No Time for Neutrality: American Rabbinic Voices from an Era of Upheaval, ed. Michael Rose Knopf and Miriam Aniel (2021), 352–368.
• “Teaching Modern Jewish Ethics Through Role Play.” Journal of Jewish Ethics, vol. 6, no. 1 (2020): 74–93.
• “Musar and Jewish Veganism.” In Jewish Veganism and Vegetarianism: Studies and New Directions, ed. Jacob Labendz and Shmuly Yanklowitz (SUNY Press, 2019), 195–216.
• “‘I Will Be With Them’: God at the Burning Bush as an Ideal of Compassion for all Creatures.” In Ehyeh Asher Ehyeh, ed. David Birnbaum and Martin S. Cohen (New Paradigm Matrix Publishing, 2019), 241–264.
• “The Exodus and Some Possibilities of Jewish Political Thought,” co-authored with Emily Filler. In T&T Clark Handbook of Political Theology, ed. Rubén Rosario Rodriguez (T&T Clark, 2019), 301–316.
• “War, Musar, and the Construction of Humility in Modern Jewish Thought.” Interreligious Studies and Interreligious Theology, vol. 2, no. 2 (2018): 216–242.
• “Two Orthodox Approaches to Vulnerability and the Exodus Narrative: The Stranger in the Writings of Irving Greenberg and Meir Kahane.” Studies in Judaism, Humanities, and the Social Sciences vol. 2, no. 1 (2018): 46–60.
• “Constructing Interreligious Studies: Thinking Critically about Interfaith Studies and the Interfaith Movement,” co-authored with Amy Allocco and Brian Pennington. In Interreligious/Interfaith Studies: Defining a New Field, ed. Eboo Patel, Jennifer Peace, and Noah Silverman (Beacon Press, 2018), 36–48.
• “Angels, Humans, and the Struggle for Moral Excellence in the Writings of Meir Simhah of Dvinsk and Simhah Zissel of Kelm." In Jewish Religious and Philosophical Ethics, ed. Curtis Hutt, Halla Kim, and Berel Dov Lerner (Routledge, 2018), 27–50.
• “Repairing Character Traits and Repairing the Jews: The Talmud Torahs of Kelm and Grobin in the Nineteenth Century.” Polin: Studies in Polish Jewry, vol. 30, no. 1 (2018): 15–41. 
• “The Promise and Limits of R. Simhah Zissel Ziv’s Musar: A Response to Miller, Cooper, Pugh, and Peters." Journal of Jewish Ethics, vol. 3, no. 1 (2017): 154–177.
• “The Kaddish, the Allegory of the Cave, and the Golden Calf: Meditations on Education and the Encounter with God.” In Kaddish, ed. David Birnbaum and Martin S. Cohen (New Paradigm Matrix Publishing, 2016), 307–336.
• "The Legacy of the Kelm School of Musar on Questions of Work, Wealth and Poverty.” In Wealth and Poverty in Jewish Tradition, ed. Leonard J. Greenspoon (Purdue University Press, 2015), 151–184.
• “A Jewish Perspective on War, Scripture, and Moral Accounting.” Journal of Scriptural Reasoning, vol. 14, no. 1 (2015): 1–15. (Also reprinted in Virtue Ethics, ed. Tom Angier [Routledge, 2018], 2:169–185.)
• “Pinhas, the Quest for Purity, and the Dangers of Tikkun Olam.” In Tikkun Olam: Judaism, Humanism & Transcendence, ed. David Birnbaum and Martin S. Cohen (New Paradigm Matrix Publishing, 2015), 475–501.
• “Introducing Jewish Studies through Jewish Thought and Practice.” Shofar, vol. 32, no. 4 (2014): 60–75.
• “Musar.” In Enzyklopädie Jüdischer Geschichte und Kultur, ed. Dan Diner (Stuttgart: J.B. Metzler, 2013), 4:268–274. (English version printed in Encyclopedia of Jewish History and Culture, ed. Dan Diner [Leiden: Brill, 2021].)
• “The Practice of Musar.” Conservative Judaism, vol. 63, no. 2 (2012): 3–26. (Also translated into Spanish and reprinted as “La práctica del Musar,” trans. Rodrigo Varscher, in Maj'shavot [Pensamientos], vol. 54 [2015]: 1–30.)
• “Jewish Virtue Ethics and Compassion for Animals: A Model from the Musar Movement.” CrossCurrents, vol. 61, no. 2 (2011): 208–216.
• “God and Suffering in Heschel’s Torah Min Ha-Shamayim.” Conservative Judaism, vol. 61, no. 4 (2010): 17–42.
• “Sharing the Burden: Rabbi Simhah Zissel Ziv on Love and Empathy.” Journal of the Society of Christian Ethics, vol. 30, no. 2 (2010): 151–169.
• “The American Jewish Revival of Musar.” The Hedgehog Review, vol. 12, no. 2 (2010): 63–72.

Translations:

• Yisrael (Lipkin) Salanter, "Light of Israel" (selections from Letter #30), in Jewish Legal Theories: Writings on State, Religion, and Morality, ed. Leora Batnitzky and Yonatan Brafman (Brandeis University Press, 2018), 65–68.
• Simhah Zissel Ziv, “Notice Posted on the Door of the Kelm Talmud Torah Before the High Holidays,” Jewish Review of Books, vol. 4, no. 3 (2013): 46.