Rottman Family Lecture: If I am Only My Genes, What Am I? Jewish Identity and the Genetic Self

Please join the Stuart and Suzanne Grant Center for the American Jewish Experience

for the 2021-2022 Rottman Family Lecture

A part of the TAWANI Foundation’s Audrey G. Ratner Speaker Series

If I am Only My Genes, What Am I?  Jewish Identity and the Genetic Self

The Genetic Age is coming, and with it confusion about the nature of our bodies, our biology, and our sense of selfhood.  The Jews have a unique contribution to make to this debate, for we have long been exploring the issues of identity and self that genes make so problematic.

Paul Root Wolpe, Ph.D. is the Raymond Schinazi Distinguished Research Chair of Jewish Bioethics, Professor of Medicine, Pediatrics, Psychiatry, and Sociology, and the Director of the Center for Ethics at Emory University.  Dr. Wolpe’s scholarly work focuses on the social, religious, and ideological impact of technology and biotechnology on the human condition. He is Editor-in-Chief of the American Journal of Bioethics Neuroscience, and sits on the editorial boards of over a dozen professional journals. For 15 years he served as the Senior Bioethicist at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).

He was a founder of the Academic Coalition for Jewish Bioethics and is the bioethics advisor to JScreen, the program to promote preconception genetic carrier screening among Jews. He also works in interfaith ethics and was a major contributor to a guide to Jewish end-of-life issues, Behoref Hayamim: In the Winter of Life.