Can law and spirituality coexist? In Professor of Law Jonathan Zasloff’s course, “‘Foundations of Jewish Ethics,” they can, and do. Every week.

Zasloff, an expert in environmental and property law, is an ordained rabbi who teaches both undergraduate-level and law school courses on Jewish religion and thought systems. The law course is unique in its focus on Pirkei Avot, a five-chapter section of the Talmud that offers guidelines on ethics, from humility and kindness to judgment and punishment.

“I try to teach the class as a course in ‘virtue ethics,’ which is a fancy way of saying, ‘How do we craft our souls? How do you make yourself the person you want to be?’ Which is exactly what we should be doing in an ethics class,” he says.

Zasloff, who has taught at UCLA Law for 25 years, is a Los Angeles native whose mother was a UCLA graduate in the class of 1952 (“Back then, there was nothing but the Quad and Kerckhoff,” he recalls her telling him). Zasloff earned his bachelor’s and J.D. at Yale University and his doctorate in history from Harvard University. His insatiable appetite for learning extends into his academic career, where he continues to teach and write on topics as varied as water use and fair housing to American diplomacy and the debt ceiling. “I’m sort of an academic vagrant,” he says.

His colleagues know him as Jay-Z, a moniker that started when he used just his initials, JZ, to sign off his emails, and evolved from there.

“The best part of being Jay-Z is that my wife gets to be Beyoncé,” he quips.

In 2010, Zasloff began taking courses to become a rabbi, which is a Jewish religious leader, but also means teacher. He received his smicha, or ordination, in 2019 from the Alliance for Jewish Renewal, an organization which he describes as “combining the traditional spirituality of Eastern European Judaism with more modern concepts including feminism and environmentalism.”

Although Zasloff keeps kosher and observes the sabbath, he continues exploring and learning from other religions. Last summer, he spent time at a Buddhist monastery, and he has participated in local Quaker meetings with his wife Katherine Trisolini, a professor at Loyola Law School.

Third-year law student Adam Danciu, who is president of UCLA’s Christian Law Association, took Zasloff’s Jewish law course in the fall, and was impressed by the breadth of Zasloff’s religious knowledge.

“He was super well educated on my faith, too, quoting papal encyclicals in discussions,” says Danciu, a practicing Catholic. “Not only did he expose me to a lot of the Jewish faith perspective, but he also helped me better understand my own faith perspective.”

Zasloff has served as a chaplain at Cedars-Sinai, given classes at synagogues in Los Angeles, and presided over the 2021 funeral service for UCLA law professor David Dolinko ’80.

“My job as a rabbi is to teach Torah in the broadest possible sense, which means all aspect of Jewish learning throughout millennia,” he says. “I’ll teach Torah anywhere that anybody wants me to.”

Case in point: he recently commissioned a stand resembling the one from the Charlie Brown comic strip where Lucy famously offers her psychiatric services for 5 cents. He plans to set up his “the rabbi is in” stand and offer stories and insights from Jewish teachings in bustling parts of Santa Monica on Friday evenings.

When teaching Torah and the Talmud, the foundational Jewish texts, Zasloff taps into the power of storytelling. The most meaningful and compelling aspects of Judaism, he fears, don’t get shared with young people often enough – even those who grow up going to shul, or temple. Zasloff opines that the two things every Jewish kid learns about are the Holocaust, and the two high holy days, Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, the latter of which requires fasting.

“The worst marketing job in the world is Judaism in the post-War era,” Zasloff says. “We didn’t get the good stuff. Even something like Pirkei Avot, a lot of Jewish students didn’t learn this, and there’s so much that is powerful and transformative in it.”

One of the stories Zasloff likes to tell is that of Rabbi Eliezer in the Talmud – “He’s like the Scalia of the Talmud; brilliant but always sides with the rich people.” Eliezer is arguing with other rabbis over whether this particular type of oven has ritual cleanliness. He tries to prove to the other rabbis that he’s right by asking for divine signals. A carob tree flies across the orchard and replants itself, a river flows upstream, walls of the garden begin to collapse, and even a divine voice speaks and tells the group that Rabbi Eliezer is correct. But another rabbi interrupts the voice of God and says, ‘It is not in heaven!’ That’s from Deuteronomy 30:12. We’re supposed to decide the religious rules and meanings through discussion and argument here on Earth, not in heaven.”

So, too, Zasloff requires his students to engage in Socratic discussion and closely read and analyze religious texts including Pirkei Avot.

“Pirkei Avot is a series of statements about ethics that’s more accessible than most parts of the Talmud,” Zasloff says. “In class we go passage by passage to get an intensive understanding of what this book means and how you can interpret it.”

One famous line admonishes the reader to “Find yourself a teacher, make for yourself a friend,” a seemingly simple phrase that can lead down various rabbit holes. How do you know you’ve found a good teacher? How do you define friendship? What is the relationship between teaching and friendship? Taking a closer look at the text can lead to relevant legal discussions such as the ethics of the friendship between Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and Harlan Crow.

Although many of the students who take Zasloff’s Jewish law course are Jewish, certainly not all are. Ryan Moon, a third-year student who attended a Catholic high school but does not consider himself religious, enjoyed Zasloff’s courses so much he’s taken two – a seminar through UCLA’s Fiat Lux Seminar Program, and the Jewish law course last fall.

“His classes are particularly unique in that they really encourage everyone to talk and have sophisticated conversations answering questions where there isn’t necessarily a right or wrong,” says Moon. He wrote his final paper on whether Torah would permit the consumption of cannabis, a drug not explicitly mentioned in Jewish law. “Professor Zasloff is someone who makes you feel like he cares about you and your future,” he continues. “He encourages us to speak and defend our thoughts because, at the end of the day, he’s looking to help you grow as a person.”

Zasloff’s passion for teaching about Judaism is driven, in part, by parallels he sees between contemporary Judaism and the critical years following the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem in 70 CE, when the first rabbis went to the coastal city of Yavneh. They debated and discussed Jewish teachings to write down their oral traditions, ultimately producing the Talmud, including Pirkei Avot.

“I believe that Judaism is one of the great producers of spiritual civilization in human history. It’s a spirituality and a civilization that’s worth preserving, augmenting and developing,” he says. “But it’s also true that the Jewish people is going through a long crisis of emancipation. We have to figure out why we practice, why it’s important to preserve Judaism. Right now, we’re in a Yavneh moment – but that moment lasted 500 years.”

As a rabbi and a teacher, Zasloff aims to contribute to the current moment.

“If some of the students come out of the class realizing there are a lot of deeply meaningful things in the Jewish teachings, and they might be interested in learning more, then I’ve done my job.”