Pirkei Avot (Ethics of our Fathers) advises "acquire for yourself a friend," but once we befriend someone, what do we owe them? Is "friend" a meaningful category in halakha (Jewish law)? When should we prioritize friends over strangers? How should we act when loyalty to a friend conflicts with other values? Do you have an obligation to attend this class if we're friends? Join us as we mine rabbinic texts for guidance on our friendship dilemmas and our responsibilities to our friends.

Joshua Z. Stadlan is a computational social scientist and Jewish ethics hobbyist interested in exploring the patterns and norms of social interaction. As a PhD candidate at Tufts University, he studies social contact from the perspective of network science. Previously, he worked as a computational social scientist at The MITRE Corporation and led the MITRE Social Justice Platform’s modeling and analysis team. He has written on Torah and ethics for The Lehrhaus (the other one) and has presented on Jewish friendship ethics at the Society of Jewish Ethics annual conference.